This exercise has two layers that will help you to raise your self awareness and your self-love. The more that we love, understand and accept ourselves as we are, the more we can love, understand and accept others. That leads to more of a flowful, peaceful, and rewarding experience of life. As it should be! Let’s dive in. 

Layer 1: Seeing the two sides of your coin

This exercise helps us to see that what we tend to admire about ourselves, is necessarily linked to what we do not admire so much!

Simply get relaxed and make two columns on a big enough space for taking any notes you’d like:

1. The qualities or traits you consider to be your strengths and virtues
2. The qualities or traits you consider to be your weaknesses and vices

For each item on both lists, think of the opposite of the quality in question, and explore how they are connected to the weakness or strength. You may find that you start drawing connecting lines between the two lists!

A few examples of the method before we move on to the next layer:

• Somebody who values their empathy and kindness may find it harder to set boundaries and be selfish, and vice versa.
• Somebody that is great at book learning, theory and ideas, may find it harder to learn the more practical and grounded aspects of life.
• Somebody with a great ability to work with details consistently may find it harder to see the bigger picture.

This exercise can help us to realise more acceptance for ourselves as we are whilst increasing our self awareness.

These opposites are not rigid binaries fixed in stone, they are sliding polarities and the more aware we become of all aspects of ourselves, the more we can create a balance between them without losing our original qualities.

Layer 2: Loving both sides of the coin

In this exercise, we move towards loving the parts of ourselves by acknowledging the gifts that they give to us; these may be meeting our physical and psychological needs, the fulfillment of values, feelings, experiences, connections and so on.

Like before, you can use the existing two separate lists of positive and negative traits, qualities and labels for yourself, or make another set.

Here, instead of looking at the opposites of each quality, you just look at how they serve you and help in their own way. At first, you can start with the seemingly more positive ones before you start with the negative.

Now for each item, just say ‘I love X [quality/trait] because…’ and say whatever comes to your mind. Thank it for helping you.

This exercise gets juicy when we hit the seemingly negative parts of ourselves, it may feel hard to see how they help, but they do! When we realise this, we truly deepen our self understanding and compassion.

For example, due to past experiences, sometimes my body gets more anxious around people when I’m alone in public. In this exercise, I thanked my body for keeping me alert and protecting me. I don’t have to pretend there isn’t a negative side to that or start planning to get rid of it, it’s around for as long as it needs to be. While its here, I’ll try to be aware of it, relate to it without attaching to it, and love it for what it is.

So for the negative traits and qualities, here are some prompts:

• How does this part of me protect me or care for me?
• What does this part seek or desire on my behalf?
• In what ways has this part helped my life or that of others?
• If only negative judgements come up, think instead of the opposite quality, what you would gain from that instead, and then think of the potential tradeoffs to having the opposite quality and its benefits.

I hope these exercises can be of help on your journey!

Kyle