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Do You Like Your Own Company?
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One of the beautiful things about being a human being is that we can make CHOICES. If you aren't happy with your friends, you can always choose to be in the company of other friends. And though you cannot choose your family, you can always choose to spend more time with your more pleasant family members. But when it comes to YOU, you have no choice about being with yourself: you are in your own company for life.
What if you don't like your own company? What if you feel bored or uncomfortable being by yourself? What if you get "antsy" when you're alone?
Ask yourself:
- When you're alone, do you automatically turn to the telephone, the TV or your computer to keep you "company"?
- Do you avoid being alone with your own thoughts and feelings?
- Do you depend on the resourcefulness of other people to make you feel validated and to fill your day?
Take heart! You can CHOOSE to make yourself the kind of person whose company you actually delight in!
HERE'S HOW TO GET STARTED
One of the best ways to make yourself into someone you like to be with is to pretend you are going to hire someone for the job of keeping you company. What are the characteristics you would look for? It might help to take the following steps:
STEP 1 -- On a piece of paper, make a list of the characteristics that you LIKE in other people.
STEP 2 -- On another piece of paper, make a list of the characteristics that you DISLIKE.
For steps one and two, here are some characteristics you can choose from, but you can add your own "most favorite" and "most un-favorite" characteristics to your lists:
- Purposeful: someone who knows what is important to him for his life
- Un-purposeful: someone who doesn't care what he does with his life
- Romantic: someone who believes he can make his dreams come true
- Cynical: someone who believes he can't make his dreams come true
- Aware: someone who keeps himself informed and educated
- Unaware: someone who doesn't care about learning or what's going on
- Energetic: someone who has lots of energy - a go-getter
- Lethargic: someone with no energy - a couch potato
- Responsible: someone who takes responsibility for his life and his actions
- Blaming: someone who blames others for his life and his actions
- Sense of Humor: someone who can laugh at the funny side of things
- Grim: someone who thinks life is a never-ending duty and burden
- Happy: someone who enjoys being alive
- Depressed: someone who is "down" most of the time
- Expressive: someone who openly expresses how he feels in a constructive way
- Repressed: someone who hides how he feels...even from himself
- Natural: someone who is at home with himself and the world
- Putting on Airs: someone who tries to be something he isn't
- Caring: someone who wants to improve himself and offer value to others
- Un-Caring: someone who ignores his own needs and offers no value to others
- Respectful: someone who treasures his life and the lives of others
- Disrespectful: someone who harms his life and the lives of others
- Independent: someone who depends on his own thinking
- Dependent: someone who wants others to do his thinking for him
- Respectful Self-Image: someone who is proud to be himself
- Disrespectful Self-Image: someone who apologizes for being himself
- Bloated Self-Image: someone who sees himself as being "above" others
- Motivated From Others: motivated by fear or pressure from others
- Motivated From Within: motivated by values and personal passion
- Lazy: someone who wishes for things but never lifts a finger
- Productive: someone who works to achieve what he values for his life
- Honest: someone who honors the facts of reality
- Unrealistic: someone who has unrealistic expectations of himself and others
- Realistic: someone who has realistic expectations of himself and others
Come up with your own list or print out this list and circle the characteristics that you would like to "live" with and cross out the characteristics that you would hate to "live" with. This gives you a good idea of the kind of person you want to be. And it also gives you a good idea of the kind of people you want to associate with!
STEP 3 -- Now all you have to do is:
- ACQUIRE the characteristics you admire, and
- GET RID OF the characteristics you don't admire
This is nothing new. As a child I remember seeing certain adults I admired and thinking, "When I grow up, I want to be just like that!" And I remember seeing certain adults I did not admire and thinking, "When I grow up, I never want to be like THAT!" Then I would try to imitate the adults I admired. But I did not quite know what it actually took to become the kind of person that I admired.
As an adult, you can adopt a more purposeful plan. Once you "plant" your ideal characteristics of how you want to be in your head, you can then tell yourself to MONITOR your behavior and to NOTICE when you behave according to your ideals and when you do not. After a period of "catching" yourself acting in a way that does not measure up to your ideal of how you want to be, you will be able to catch yourself BEFORE you start acting that way. Then you can consciously CHOOSE to take the course of action that lives up to your ideal of how you want to be as a person.
When you start thinking before you act, a beautiful thing happens: you start to respect and admire yourself - and to enjoy your own company. You feel more secure in who you are as a person - which enables you to enjoy the company of others, and to be more selective in the company you keep.
Best of all, you stop taking yourself and your behavior for granted and you start making yourself into the kind of person you want to be!
I'd love to hear how these steps work for you -- feel free to email me at Terry@YourRecipeForLivingCoach.com, or post a comment on my Break Free Blog at www.YourRecipeForLivingCoach.com. Please know that you are welcome to share this BREAK FREE TIP by forwarding this message to a friend or colleague.
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