Day 31: Honor Your Heart

In this step, you continue your journey by exploring a super simple way to create more ease, even on days when you’re exhausted and feel like the world is ending.

Using today’s focus will decrease your stress levels so significantly, your body and mind will feel like you’ve just been on holiday.

Step two is Honour Your Heart, so let’s begin by exploring why this is so important during this transitional time of life.

During menopause, your mind and body undergo significant changes. For some women these are rapid and unpredictable. For others, this time of life is calmer and more manageable.

Either way, your body’s doing its best to find balance and return to homeostasis in the face of daily hormonal changes. This means your body’s working harder than usual, so you might feel more tired and emotional than before.

No-one likes feeling this way. It’s incredibly frustrating when you feel like you can’t control or predict how you’ll feel each morning. Especially if this impacts your plans, as you realise you don’t have the energy to do whatever you originally scheduled.

In an ideal world, you’d respond to this by being more flexible, reshaping your days, getting more rest and perhaps taking up practices like meditation. But, in real life, nothing looks or feels like it does in the ideal world.

What happens instead is a pull between your heart and your head as you fight with yourself.

Focusing on the contrast between your expectations and your reality, is like opening a portal in your head for your inner critic to take over. No matter how hard you’re trying to navigate this time, your head will always have something negative to say about your approach.

Thankfully, as you learned in Step 1, whilst you can’t fully control your body, you can do a LOT to change how your mind thinks. This is especially true when it comes to giving your heart a helping hand, rather than feeding the lies in your head.

So, how do you adjust to the frustration you feel as you constantly fail to meet your own expectations? How can you get better at managing your own head?

The answer is, by choosing to honour your heart by developing a Kindset Mindset.

What’s a Kindset Mindset?

It’s a way of talking to, and treating yourself, that changes your experience. Even when you can’t change your circumstances.

As you navigate your journey, you’ll inevitably be in your head a lot of the time, because that’s how you’re wired to process change. Being in your head can bring all sorts of thoughts about not being good enough, because it’s where your inner critic hangs out.

We all have an inner critic – but sometimes we don’t realise when it’s started running the show. The inner critic is the annoying voice in your head that criticises you when you say or do something it disapproves of.

It’s normal to think what it says is fact, but usually it’s complete fabrication.

If you’ve ever said to someone ‘I’m not myself today’, as you find yourself snapping at them, it’s usually because your inner critic’s in charge.

The following focus helps you develop a Kindset Mindset by giving you a simple way to approach your inner critic with awareness, love and kindness.

This not only disempowers the critic, but also helps you honour your heart, so your whole experience changes.

Your Step 2 focus is ’Make Peace With Your Inner Critic’.

No matter how much you try ignoring your inner critic, she will have her say. This isn’t because your inner critic’s mean. The truth is, she just wants to protect you.

Even though the opposite seems true, your inner critic’s your ally, not your enemy. When she hassles you, says you’re failing or you can’t do something, really she’s trying to tell you something she feels is important.

Every time you accept what she says, or engage in battle with her, you’re using your own energy against yourself. Instead, you can use it in a more constructive, supportive manner.

Once you realise this, it’s easier to start making peace with her, no matter what she says.

Can you imagine no longer being triggered by her?

Being able to smile with fondness at her fruitless efforts to sabotage you?

How much lighter would that feel?

When you notice the thought of ‘not enough’ she sends you, there’s a moment where you can choose whether to react or respond. This is where you yield your power.

Rather than reacting by telling yourself off, instead choose to get curious.

Welcome her in, imagine wrapping your arms around her, and thank her for trying to tell you something. Tell her you know she’s trying to keep you safe. Reassure her that you’ve got this.

Next, ask her what she’s trying to protect you from, and get curious about the answer. If it helps, you can write this question down, then be open to finding answers as you let yourself write without judgement.

This doesn’t mean you have to believe what she says. It just means you’re no longer wasting energy resisting a voice that will come through anyway. Being kind to her gives you back your power.

Try to catch your inner critic in the act next time you hear her saying ‘who do you think you are?’.

Rather than resisting or pushing the voice away, answer truthfully with your name and maybe ask what her name is too. Naming her tames her and you’ll be amazed how much this empowers you.

Over time, this approach opens your heart and stops you being held hostage by your own head.

The more you play with it, the better you’ll feel. No matter what’s happening each day.

Your life doesn’t change in big sweeping gestures, or dramatic interludes. It’s the small intentional actions you take daily that create change.

You’ve got this. Keep believing and keep taking small steps.