Never be afraid of Being Yourself

I have always loved dogs and wanted one of my own since I was a young child. My daughter was no different, so our dreams became a reality in 2019 when we brought our first ever pup home.

Even at 9 weeks old, Tilly left her mark from day one.   She is FULL of personality and is never afraid to show her true self. 8 months after her arrival, we were all catapulted into remote working and home-schooling.

Working/schooling from home has given us a great insight into how our furry friends live life to the full. Having observed her over the last 2+ years, I think we could all take a leaf out of her book.

Here are Tilly’s Top Tips on Being Yourself:

Put your own needs first

No matter what stage we are in life, self-care plays a vital part for us all to feel ourselves. If you are not naturally inclined to put yourself first, watch how our furry friends behave. Firstly, we are relentless in our pursuit of good food. 

We will shamelessly follow our humans until we get what we want. Even if we don’t get it the first time, we never give up on what we want.

We will always ensure we are well hydrated when we have water available to us. We love the fresh air, and we very are excited to exercise every day, several times a day. Walking, running, climbing, jumping, and swimming are all on the cards. We ensure to catch some Vitamin D every day when there is daylight.

Finally, we enjoy our sleep like no other. Unlike our humans, we don’t try to stay up all night. 

We love our routine of getting up, stretching, exercising, and enjoying some nourishing food. As some of our humans, we are known to overeat, if we are allowed, but overall, we follow the same plan every day as we know it works.

Practice Unconditional Love

We love our humans. They have no idea how much. We know they find it annoying sometimes when we are all over them, but we like to show them how much we love them as often as we can. After all, we are so grateful to them for giving us a roof over our head, a comfy bed, lovely food and great company. We know that we get under their feet and sometimes they are not too happy with us. They make loud noises sometimes. These are the times when we want to remind them that we are always there, no judgement, just love.

Spend Quality Time with those you Love

We can’t wait to see them and greet them when they return home, and we look forward to seeing them when they are not with us. For ages now we are getting used to seeing them nearly ALL the time. We feel so lucky. We don’t ever get sick of our humans. We happily sit in their company, no expectations. We get better at this with age. We love to lie at the same level as our humans on the grass, floor, bed or couch. 

Our favourite time is when all the humans come together to watch the moving pictures on the wall. Some days they bring in food to eat in front of the moving pictures and they laugh out loud. We find when they are in this room together, they smile a lot more and are usually more generous with their nice food. We would love it if they all spent more time laughing and enjoying themselves.

Build-in Playtime

We are never too old to have fun. We love to chase that ball. We also love to play tug of war and play with our humans. We can see that our humans are sometimes sad looking, and we like to bring over our ball or toy to play with them. We know the benefits of play and we make sure we build it into our daily lives. We don’t always get the timing right to bring the toys over to our humans, but we never give up on the things we enjoy.

Continue your Curiosity

All my furry friends have such a desire to learn. We love to understand new things. When we explore new things and how they work, we learn more. When we hear new sounds, we remember them for the next time, so we are less afraid.

Each week and month we develop our minds more by remaining curious.   

Dogs are like Einstein who said, “I am passionately Curious”!

Be Loyal to Yourself

We love our humans because they make us feel loved and special. We treat our humans as our pack and we show our loyalty through our ongoing affection, we just can’t show you enough love.

If anyone looks suspicious,  we will give our everlasting protection and empathy to our pack. This is never in question, loyalty never waivers.

Apart from being loyal to our humans and our pack, we ensure we are loyal to our desires.

Bad Hair Days Pass

We are prone to having an off day or two however we don’t want to inflict the rest of the household with our moods. We try not to dwell too much. We keep to ourselves more and we try to let you know by turning our heads away, we need some space.  

We understand that when we are feeling like this, it will pass. We know that when we take some rest and time alone we will be back to ourselves very quickly.

Summary Path to Being Yourself 

Consider a Self-care plan that will complement your life and what you want to achieve. Keep the routine up and you will reap the benefits. Build-in times to your daily life where you reflect on how good you have it and feel grateful. Even if we feel things are going bad for us, get into the feeling of gratefulness and things soon start to shift for the better.

As Tilly advised, our pups love when we are happy. 

Laugh out loud whenever you can, watch and read more funny material to help lift your mood. This will also help balance out the content on the news that we have had to endure over the last 18 months.

Smile as much as you can. Again, this may need practising during the more trying times however a simple smile can change the tone and course of your day. It relaxes us, reduces stress and it has also been reported that smiling more often can help boost our immune systems! It’s also FREE, give it a go! 

There is no judgement from our furry friends but as humans, we tend to be more critical. By practising a less judgmental outlook we can become more accepting of ourselves and others.

Being non-judgmental does not mean that you are ignoring your feelings or are being blind to the behaviour of others. It means that you are choosing to separate your own or the other person’s behaviour from who they are as a person. This way we can isolate the feelings about the event/issue and not attack ourselves or others.

Our furry friends never get sick of their humans, they have no expectations of us. We often place way too high expectations on ourselves which can lead to disappointments. 

To feel ourselves more, we need to manage our expectations better. Setting ourselves up for success is more effective than unrealistic goals we can never seem to achieve.

Being curious and having a desire to learn is paramount in keeping our spirits high. Curiosity through learning is a great way to feel ourselves. We can follow our passions by playing sports, taking up a new hobby, learning a new skill or listening to podcasts to broaden our mindsets.

Remaining loyal to what is important to us will keep us grounded. When we honour our feelings, we are willing to pay attention to them. It is very important that we let our feelings matter at least as much as everyone else’s feelings. When we are loyal to ourselves, we can see an increase in our confidence levels, and this is a true effort in self-love.

Finally, allowing yourself regular alone time and space to think will keep everything flowing.

Remember there  is only one YOU.  You were not made to fit in, you were born to Stand Out!

As a Personal Development & Relationship Coach, it is vital for me to keep a balanced outlook and therefore I practice a Self-Care routine to maintain this balance. When I let this slip, I quickly notice how my outlook changes and I can easily slip back into a negative pattern.

I hope you will be able to make some positive changes to your life.  If you would like to find out more on how to achieve this and the services I offer please review here.

I look forward to hearing from you and I would love to work with you on your Self- Care Plan and moving forward to feeling and being yourself, please reach out to me here.