Flowers & the power of MINDSET
an ode and musing on self-love and how to craft it. With a side of Miley Cyrus.
Image from Pinterest
I’m not sure about you, but I have had Miley Cyrus’s song, Flowers, on perpetual repeat for the past few days. I’m not being dramatic either – this is really how I listen to music that piques my interest…just keep it on repeat until it’s time to move on.
Sure the song is catchy, but damn, those LYRICS.
Link to Flowers by Miley on Spotify
“Started to cry but then remembered I…
I can buy myself flowers
Write my name in the sand
Talk to myself for hours
Say things you don't understand
I can take myself dancing
And I can hold my own hand
Yeah, I can love me better than you can”
Gosh there’s so much to unpack here. If you can resonate with these lyrics, you know how powerful they are. To be able to 100% confidently say that YOU can be your best partner. YOU can love yourself in a beautiful and confident way. YOU can spend time with yourself and ENJOY IT. That you BELIEVE you deserve it and KNOW what it feels like to be radically and beautifully loved.
Damn.
I think it hits me so hard because 2022 was the year I could confidently say those things. It had taken me 32 years of exploration, trial and error, living in ignorance and everything in-between to understand who I am, that I will continually evolve and that’s the beautiful part, that I deserve the best love and treatment, and that while I love and value partnerships (romantic and friendship), I truly enjoy my company and love for my own self so much.
To get to a place where I’m 1000% comfortable being single…because if you don’t add more value to my life then it’s a hard no. If there’s not incredible alignment or you make things harder for me, it’s a hard no. there’s a whole list of non-negotiables that I live by that go into being able to say a hard no to someone, but to BE in that place! Ugh. Something I’m so proud of. And that’s why Miley’s words resonate so much with me. I really do love buying myself flowers, I totally can talk to myself for hours (I promise I’m not nuts…lol), and I know the love that I deserve and want because I give that to my own damn self.
And by now we all know that life is a journey (because I feel like I say that in every musing I write) and we can recognize that while we may love ourselves all the time, confidence / happiness / satisfaction / etc all oscillate as we navigate the seasons of life. To think that things will always be sunshiney and perfect is ignorant – there WILL be moments where you aren’t happy with yourself, criticize yourself, or feel down. I’m writing this article from one of those kinda places now…although I will say that listening to Flowers on repeat yet again in noise cancelling headphones with a vanilla latte at Tatte and dancing in my chair at the bar is proving to be a really powerful antidote for the blues.
I think this brings me to another point around MINDSET – that you control how you want to feel. This is probably a whole other article in itself but they key takeaway is that we have in our power the ability to control how we want to feel. We can train our brains and hearts to sit in uncomfortable feelings for the sake of processing difficult things and letting them pass versus avoiding them and letting them fester. We can decide that in a really stressful situation we can acknowledge that its stressful and then laugh about it instead of letting it cripple us. We can decide that we are worth exceptional, radical, titillating love and that we can give that to ourselves.
Now how does this mental training and mindset apply to Miley’s badass anthem of deep true self-love, you ask!? Here are my thoughts…
If you’re in a place where you DON’T think you can buy yourself flowers, you CAN’T write your name in the sand, you WON’T take yourself dancing, you CAN’T love yourself better than someone else can (and you WANT TO), then you need to teach yourself that you CAN. And with that, MINDSET enters the chat.
I think there’s a few steps here.
Awareness
For me, it took being SINGLE, to really lean into that mindset. Without the distraction of meeting someone else’s needs, compromising, etc, I was able to truly channel into me. What I love and what I don’t; what brings me joy and how to incorporate that into life more; how to best take care of my body, mind, soul; what my individual dreams and visions are. Maybe you can do this partnered, but just sharing that I really needed to be not romantically partnered to get this foundation set. It also took conscious understanding of my brain and it’s patterns. The most effective way for me to understand this is through journaling – like I pour my heart and brain onto a page and have so many “aha” moments. I could look on those pages and realize I was stuck in a cycle of playing victim or thinking I wasn’t good enough for something/someone, or have the realization that XYZ thing had consistently brought me joy over the week, etc.
Conscious shifting
Once you can be aware of your self talk or the way you view the world, you are then in a place to be able to consciously change it. I think people can get nervous at this point and think, “well, shit! How the fuck do I re-wire myself??”.The easiest, way is to take the inverse of whatever you’re telling yourself and tell yourself that / live that on a regular basis. Here’s an example: perhaps you believe that no one is asking you out because you’re not a fun person. The inverse of that is telling yourself that you ARE a fun person AND doing things that you think are FUN regardless if you have company or not. Girl, you think going to see a live comedy show is fun? THEN FUCKING GO and better yet, GO BY YOURSELF. Dress in a way that excites YOU, maybe have a dinner that excites YOU, and do the damn thing. Over time, the combination of this talk and action will have you living a completely different reality – one where you KNOW YOU ARE A FUN PERSON.
Some of these things are going to feel uncomfortable! But remember, you can control how you feel and act. You can say “fuck this is uncomfortable, I don’t wanna deal with it, I’m not gonna go to the comedy show”. ORRRR you can say “fuck this is uncomfortable. I don’t wanna deal. BUT fuck it im gonna go anyways and hopefully it’ll get easier. I deserve to have fun because IM A FUN PERSON”.
See the diff?
Piggybacking on my previous article on the Goldilocks Principle of Stress, some STRESS is GOOD FOR YOU. It keeps you focused, motivated, driven. There’s POWER and BEAUTY in operating in the uncomfortable.
So as you’re on your journey to be like Miley, don’t forget that:
1) You deserve the most beautiful, radical, titillating love in the world
2) You have the power to give yourself that, if you choose to believe it
3) In order to believe it, you need to focus on your MINDSET : awareness of it and conscious shifting of it, if necessary
4) Some STRESS and uncomfortability is GOOD FOR YOUUUU
5) You can definitely buy yourself the fucking flowers and you fucking deserve it you QUEEN!!!
Cheers to you being the most fulfilled, loved, and epic version of yourself. The world NEEDS YOU!!! XOXO