You do you, boo!

Hi! Ashley here, to support you while you do you, boo! Look, leading with love is The Do Good basic principle. While we are going to promote people, groups, and companies that are doing just that outwardly, it is vital that we take a moment to remind each of us to lead with love inside ourselves as well. 

Our self love bank needs to be full. How can we expect ourselves to give when we are empty? We can't. I coach with a guy who preaches this well to every kid he comes across. He teaches them to take care of themselves first, then their teammates, and then they can take care of their team together. By the end of the season with him, if you ask any one of those kiddos “who do we take care of first?” they will tell you with confidence “me!” Shout out to you, sir, you know who you are! Same reason why flight attendants tell parents to mask themselves before their children. Soccer coaches and flight attendants are teaching good lessons in our world! 

What drains our self love bank? Raise your hand if you're a little self deprecating. If you raised your hand, I see you. I am you in moments. For some reason we do this to ourselves and let me remind you (and myself) of what you hopefully already know: it drains your self love bank. Raise your hand if you give beyond your means? Again, I see you. I have done that. It also robs our self love bank and can sometimes put us in a discouraging head and heart space. Stop these things. Do not do them. You yourself deserve more.

Let's run through an activity together. Grab a pen and paper or anything you can use to work through this. My hope for you is to find a purpose in this activity and do it monthly, quarterly, or at a frequency that you see fit. 

My name is ... 

Three things about me that I love...

Three things I do regularly to show myself love...

Three things I want to do soon to show myself love...

Three things I have planned for myself to show myself love...

There is a lot of repetition there. A lot of me, myself, and my self love. If you went through that with confidence and ease, good for you. If it feels weird, my guess is you don't do this often or maybe the concept of putting you first is new. There is potential you give so much outward because it's what you needed and didn't get at some point in your life. If that is the case, invest in yourself and give yourself what you need. Maybe you truly think all of your giving is filling your self love bank. I encourage you to pause and focus on you. Book the massage. Take yourself on a date. Take a midday nap. Read. Start that hobby you've dreamt of starting. Do you, boo. The world will still turn and I say this with confidence: while you're loving inwardly, somebody else is loving outwardly because their love bank is full.

The crash and burn. No, this isn't a new TikTok dance (yet). It's what happens to us when we fall apart, when we snap at those we love, when we rely on fast-food instead of quality fuel for our brains and bodies. These things happen when our tank is empty and they are hard. I believe if we have invested in ourselves enough, the crashing and burning feels manageable and we can come out without scathing others and ourselves. If we have spent all of our energy giving our love out and not giving ourselves any love inward, those things feel exceptionally hard and there is inevitably damage to be repaired. I think you deserve to be in control and know you’re worthy at all times, to put your best foot forward for yourself first, to make sure that you are leading with love inside of your own soul. Without a full self love bank, how are any of us able to love the next person or our community as well as we could? Again, I don't think we can. 

To close out this week’s blog post, I will share a few of things I’ve done for myself in the past couple of weeks to show myself some love: I put my phone down a lot more, read (the book pictured above which I highly recommend), did not work, slept eight hours a night, moved well, ate well, spent time with my family, and shared moments with friends. Self love is going to look like that for me (throw in a massage here and there). It might look similarly or different for you. However it looks, do it, know you are worth it, go on with your baddie self! 

As always, thanks for reading and I am cheering for you as ...

- Ashley =)