Connecting with Your All-Time Boo

We often hear “I need some Me Time,” or “I lost myself in that relationship/job,” or “I learned something new about myself yesterday.” These phrases point to the somewhat fuzzy concept of relating with yourself (your many selves?), and the significance of keeping tight with your all-time boo (you).

Years ago, a little tea tag taught me: 

“Our only true purpose is self-awareness.” 

My first reaction was an eye roll at such a myopic self-absorbed worldview. But now I see the fundamentality of being aware of how I show up in the world, and how it sprouts directly from how I show up with myself, in my thoughts and behaviors. My self-awareness is the seed of every single other thing in my life.  

The majority of the time, though, I am on autopilot. It feels hard to be doing life, much less simultaneously tracking who I am being as I do it. But to sustain my wellness, my confidence, my sense of belonging (which all flow into my relationships, my work, my environments), I am learning I need to prioritize frequent check-ins. “Forget about all that out there for a minute… what’s up with you right now, Kate?” 

Each of us has different ways of keeping the connection alive amongst Me, Myself, and I. 

For me, it’s moving to a random song each morning based on what my body wants. 

It’s talking silly to my plants and thanking my inanimate objects for their service. 

It’s scheduling a weekly K8 Date where I cook or stretch or make crappy crafts or dance or clean or dance-clean or have sexy time or write or do a photo shoot of a random scene -- or all of the above. 

It’s working with my therapist to understand how my past informs my current patterns, and working with my coach to transmute these patterns to expand into my life vision. 

It’s 3:33 phone alarms that encourage me to rest for 10 minutes. 

My friend tells me she uses her shower scrub-a-dub time to focus on physical sensations and notice changes in her skin, her muscles, her functional form. Another friend says he takes his coffee to the back porch each morning, watching for what moves and listening for what communicates, to feel himself alive as part of the whole. 

What are some of your favorite ways to get to know yourself better? 

Image by Raoul Croes on Unsplash