7 Tips for Building the Best Relationship With Yourself With Self-Connection Expert Jacq Gould
It's easy to get so wrapped up in your relationships with other people, whether with friends, family, teachers, co-workers or a partner, that we forget about the most important relationship in our lives—the one we have with ourselves.
Self-connection specialist Jacq Gould is on a mission to change that. She's the founder of Your Inner Babe, a unique platform that's all about helping folks around the world to finally to forge authentic and meaningful relationships with themselves. Building this critical bond can help you find your confidence and inner power, discovering what's truly important to you to allow you to lead the best life you can. We had the pleasure of chatting with Jacq in the interview below to learn more about her work and her top tips for building the best relationship with yourself.
Sweety High: Can you please introduce yourself?
Jacq Gould: I am a self-connection specialist and relationship expert working with clients through my platform, Your Inner Babe. I started YIB in 2017 after battling with myself all throughout my younger years. I had an eating disorder, major lack of self-worth and was in a very toxic relationship—with myself. After years of therapy and getting help on the clinical side, I realized that this "gap" I was personally experiencing in the mental wellness space wasn't going to be filled by anything in a text book or by a PhD or MD. If someone or something was going to bridge that gap and start shifting people's focus to the most overlooked side of their healing, it was going to be me.
(Photo credit: Jacq Gould)
SH: Can you tell us about your work as a self-connection specialist? What is the importance of developing your relationship with yourself?
JG: I work with people of all ages on cultivating a healthy and clear relationship with themselves because that one single relationship shapes your entire reality. From the second we're born, we're taught how to be in relationships with other people—from our parents, to siblings, extended family, friends, teachers, co-workers—the list goes on. We're taught how to navigate all of those relationships from inception; but when it comes to the one we have with ourselves, we're just expected to have this innate inner knowing. Well, we don't, and many people move through life assuming there is something fundamentally wrong or settling for way less than they deserve.
Relationship is a skill, and just like we have to be taught how to exercise that skill with others, we must be taught the same skill for our own relationship. I give people the proper system, extra support and accountability that they need in order to one day become their own self-connection specialist and to heal their relationship with themselves. I empower them through the lens of their own story, creating the space for them to see just how much control they actually have over their day-to-day lives. Once you start to play an active role in the narrative you're telling yourself about yourself, your entire world changes.
Jacq's Top Tips for Building the Best Relationship With Yourself
1. Adjust Your Self-Talk
JG: First and foremost, audit the way you're speaking to yourself. Start to pay attention to the words you use to yourself, about yourself, because that narrative is shaping your current reality. Just simply dialing up the awareness and bringing your attention to everything that's "unproductive" allows you an opportunity to take the power back by rewriting the narrative in the moment.
(Photo credit: Jacq Gould)
2. Implement a Disruptive Phrase
JG: Once you've begun to audit the way you speak to yourself about yourself, implement what I love to call a "disruptor." I personally use "drop it," but you can use whatever will disrupt the narrative in the moment (clients of mine also like "shhh" or "enough"). Once you've disrupted it, you'll replace what was unproductive with something more productive. A good example of this would be: "I'm so stupid." To yourself you'd say "drop it," then replace that thought with something like, "I love my genuine heart." Our minds are incredibly adaptable, so focusing your attention on the words that you're using in a deliberate way will help break the negative loops and rewire your brain's narrative.
3. Journal
JG: Implement a journaling practice of some kind. Create the space for you to have a dialogue with yourself, somewhere that feels safe to do so. If you want to take a pen to paper, that's amazing, but if it intimidates you to do that, you can open the voice notes app on your phone and record yourself speaking while walking or sitting in a quiet room. Whatever it takes to get what's on your mind out and into your heart.
(Photo credit: Jacq Gould)
Also read about: The Best Journaling Prompts to Get You Through This Back-to-School Season
4. Focus on Gratitude
JG: Practice gratitude and acknowledge "What's going well?" We are programmed to focus on what's not going well. We maximize on everything in our lives that we think we haven't done "yet," fixating on all the ways we think we're not enough, while simultaneously minimizing all that we've accomplished and the beauty of who we uniquely are. What you focus on grows, and if you actively choose to focus on the little things all around you, the more beauty you will not only see, but you'll also feel within you. Not every day is a good day, but there is good in every day. You have the power to see yourself and your life through that lens if you choose to.
Also read about: This Gratitude Journal Gave Me Better Sleep and Less Anxiety
5. Practice Self-Appreciation
JG: Self-appreciation. It may sound simple, but we can go weeks without acknowledging ourselves unless we make an active effort to do so. We get so used to extending acknowledgement and appreciation to other people in our lives, but we hardly ever turn it onto ourselves. Find one thing you appreciate about yourself each day, just one, and either write it down in your journal, in the notes app on your phone or record it in a voice note to yourself. This appreciation must be rooted in self, rooted in you. Now this may take longer for you to identify initially and that's okay, don't judge it. A little acknowledgement goes a long way.
6. Utilize a 'Hand on Heart' Practice
JG: What you feel, you can heal, and a lot of us deem certain feelings as wrong, spending our whole lives trying to avoid those feelings at all costs. However, our feelings can be our greatest teachers, and no feeling ever comes up to stick around. Slowing down enough to be able to recognize your emotions allows you to acknowledge and accept your feelings without judgment, which is an essential contributing factor to having a healthy relationship with yourself. The quickest, most efficient way to ignite self-compassion within ourselves, and disrupt any unproductive pattern or negative narrative, is by using a "Hand on Heart". You take your right hand and put it over your heart, place your left hand on top of it and close your eyes. With your eyes closed, take three deep breaths and quietly ask yourself in your own mind, "How am I feeling?" When you receive the feeling, without trying to change it or fix it, simply notice and acknowledge it. This will immediately take your body out of fight or flight and drop you into a parasympathetic state of "I am here, I am me and I am everything I need."
(Photo credit: Jacq Gould)
7. Practice Affirmations
JG: Using affirmations in the form of "I am"s is one of my favorite personal practices that instantly makes me feel more connected to myself and more secure in my relationship with me. An "I am" statement is a declaration of a quality you possess or dream to embody. I always say to people, whether you deeply feel it and believe it in the moment you're saying it or not is not the point, because the purpose of these affirmations are instructions to the universe. The universe is always listening, and if you wish to feel connected, free, brave, strong or whatever it might be for you, you must, at the very least, allow yourself to declare it as already part of your existence.
(Photo credit: Jacq Gould)
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