Show Up for Yourself, Reap the Benefits (10 tips)
Learning how to show up for yourself is an essential modern soft skill. It’s simple, yet remains one of the best ways to create traction and keep momentum for reaching goals and skill building.
It’s been a huge part of my daily routine. And I’ve been experiencing the results of simply showing up and doing the things that are most important to me.
So I hope this post provides some helpful tips and inspires you to also show up, stay the course and reap the benefits.
So let’s skip the small talk and just jump right in.
Let’s get it.
What Does Show Up for Yourself Mean? Definition + Benefits
First things first, what does showing up for yourself even mean?
I think it can vary from person to person, depending on goals, personality and situation. But here’s my take.
Showing up for yourself means taking daily steps and actions that support your own personal goals and self improvement.
I think this is a fair (and general enough) definition. But if you’ve got another way you see things, let me know in the comments how you define this concept!
So showing up, why does it matter?
Here are some of the reasons why simply showing up for you is so beneficial:
No one else is going to
Family and good friends will often support you – but no one’s going to do the work for you
We learn and perform best by taking action and doing
(Not by thinking about doing)
You’ll learn your true strengths (+ weaknesses)
Lean in on what you’re good at – strengthen what you’re weak at
You become stronger
Consistently showing up has one result – you become more skilled and stronger little by little
You become more confident
Showing up and realizing results over time puts a serious pep in your step
It’s a transferable, in-demand soft skill
Habitualizing showing up transfers to virtually every domain or goal in your life
How to Show Up for Yourself (10 tips)
It’s important to remember that some days will be better than others.
I still lose momentum and have off days. But I always recognize this, and get back to it.
Losing focus and having deflating moments is normal – but acknowledging them and confronting them with action and belief in yourself is where the magic happens.
So embrace the process, and remember these top tips to help you along the way.
1. Define Your Values
Knowing your values is a great first step (for a lot of things).
Understanding yourself and what’s important to you will make showing up a lot easier and clearer.
So what are your core values? What drives you?
For me, my main personal values are:
Creativity
Growth
Health
Authenticity
Uniqueness
These may give you some initial inspiration and ideas. But there are a ton of values to choose from.
So if you don’t know (or you’ve never thought about this seriously), that’s OK – and totally normal.
Luckily, there are plenty of resources and strategies to dial in on things.
I actually took a free online test (kind of like those personality tests we all love so much). It’s from personalvalu.es and it takes about 10-20 minutes.
After the test, you’ll get your top 5 personal values. And this is a great first step to being able to consistently show up for yourself.
2. Know Your Goals
The next thing we should do is clearly define our goals.
Our personal values will help identify our why. But now let’s add clarity around knowing our what.
What is it we want to achieve? What do we want to do? What are our goals?
Our goals should reflect what’s important to us and where we see ourselves in the future.
So be honest with yourself about this. Where do you want to be? Who do you want to be?
It’s awesome to think big here and imagine an ideal situation. You may define one clear vision, or multiple goals.
They may relate to your health, your wealth, your relationships, your skills – or something completely different.
There are no right or wrong aims here. So think of your top goal(s) and write them down.
Now let’s break things down.
3. Break Down Your Goals
Breaking down goals means we’re reverse engineering them into their core component pieces.
This helps to visualize things and creates a map (or action plan) to meet our goals. We can also understand the core requirements and components of reaching a goal.
For me, I like to follow a simple 4-step process for breaking down my goals.
It looks like this:
Define your larger, macro goal
Define the micro goals for the macro goal
These are the core components (or requirements) needed to reach this macro goal
Define the nano goals for each micro goal
These will be your daily tasks and the steps you take each day you show up for yourself
4. Develop A Meditation Routine
I’ve only recently gotten into meditation – so I’m no expert, but I wish I had started way sooner.
It’s one of those pieces of advice that almost sound like a broken record, which kind of sucks. Because meditating is so beneficial, especially when trying to better show up for yourself.
After all, meditation literally means to know yourself.
It provides clarity and self awareness. And it has a biological, biochemical effect on our bodies.
I use it to practice visualization, self awareness, remembering my purpose and to calm the mind (or reduce stress).
There are many different reasons and ways to meditate, so it’s up to you to try them and find what works best for you.
But if you’re new to it, I’d recommend first researching and learning a bit more about the exciting opportunities and health benefits of meditation.
Understanding the science of meditation creates a lot of motivation and inspiration to actually try it (and stick with it).
Next, I’d simply start trying different methods. One popular exercise often recommended for beginners is to close your eyes and simply focus on your breath.
And when wandering thoughts – or the urge to get up and do something, like check your phone – start to pop up, simply acknowledge them, push them away and stay in the present moment.
It takes practice. But getting into a meditation routine has helped tremendously and has allowed me to better know myself.
It’s helped me to continually show up for myself.
5. Reframe Setbacks and Failures
Meditation and self reflection help a lot with this tip.
But regardless, reframing setbacks and mistakes as positive things is super helpful for staying motivated.
Whatever your goals are, showing up for yourself isn’t always easy. There will be great days – and meh ones. It’s the reality of the universe.
Bad days are required.
Because honestly, without bad days, we’d have no good ones (and vice versa). But struggles, obstacles and slow-moving days always offer some invaluable lesson.
Mistakes always teach us something and failure makes us better.
I think we all know this, intuitively (and because the idea has been talked about a ton). But I like to reframe things by using a simple tree metaphor.
I see bad days, mistakes, failures and embarrassing or crappy moments as being nothing more than roots going deeper down into the dirt and dark.
The result?
A stronger, bigger, more beautiful tree.
6. Stack the Deck In Your Favor
Showing up for yourself isn’t always easy. As we discussed in #5, some days just suck.
So let’s stack the cards in our favor.
I’ll keep this one short and to the point. Here are three key areas I like to pay attention to when stacking the deck:
My inner circle
Who do you spend time around? Do they support your goals, values and vision?
My outer circle
Who do you listen to? What content do you consume daily? Do they support your vibe?
My environment
What’s your room or work station like? Are the colors, smells, sights and sounds motivating and inspiring for you?
7. Inspire Yourself
At the end of the day, we can’t always rely on external motivation or inspiration.
But we can practice being our own inspiration. It may take some effort in the beginning – and feel a bit unnatural – but the payoff is huge.
Being your own inspiration means the things you’re doing, did and will do are providing motivation to you.
It helps to zoom out or to have some tangible examples of how far you’ve come. For example, I often listen to old recordings of my singing from five years ago.
I was…bad.
But when I listen to my newer songs, I sound 100X better.
It’s inspiring and motivating to keep going.
So practice being your own self inspiration. This will help you to show up for yourself, day in and day out.
8. Apply the ‘Do Something Principle’
The ‘Do Something Principle’ is a strategy coined by Mark Manson.
Essentially, the do something principle means to just take action on something – anything. Just do something.
Oftentimes, we’ll find that motivation and mood come after taking action. And we’ll end up finding focus and working harder and longer than expected.
So yea, the advice isn’t groundbreaking or anything, but it’s effective for sure.
Just do something. Hah, go figure.
9. Organize Your Tasks With A Workflow
This tip circles back to #3 on reverse engineering your goals.
If you did that step, you’ll likely have a collection of nano goals, daily tasks and micro goals you’ll need to spend time each day working on.
This is where having a workflow can come in handy.
Essentially, a workflow is like a template for you to follow and use as part of your daily schedule.
It organizes your tasks and addresses weaknesses. A workflow is often a scheduled block of time for focusing on specific tasks and things related to your goals.
It supports habit building and is something that should stay dynamic and flexible as you progress.
But long story short, having a workflow can help us stay organized and forces us to actually show up for ourselves.
10. Practice Self Care
Self care is so important. We can’t run on all cylinders 24/7 – we get fatigued and burnout is a real thing.
I just recently put out another post on self care for creatives, so I’ll highlight some of the key takeaways there.
Pay attention to:
Your nutrition
Your physical health and exercise
Your mental and emotional health
Your goals and values
Your sleep and rest
Your social life
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