? QUESTIONS TO PONDER How well do you know yourself ? How do you nurture love for yourself ? Did you know that creating “me time,” taking spa days, affirming yourself daily, and even engaging in spiritual practices are not the keys to releasing the old patterns that have held you back from loving yourself ? As African women, we are brought up to take care of everybody but ourselves. We are told that our joy is complete when we make our spouses, children, extended family, and employers happy. This has resulted in many smart, successful women feeling undervalued, underserved, and overutilized. You will be guided through our 7-step coaching process to: Discover the hedges that have kept you hedged in. Discover the “FGL Code” to break through and break free from your hedges. Build strong connections between your conscious and unconscious selves. Re-print and restructure your natural tendencies. Adopt powerful “I am enough” practices. Createpathways toevolvebeyond thepatterns of your past and become your own best friend. To love one’s self means paying attention to one’s needs, listening to one’s feelings, hearing what one’s inner voice is telling them, showing compassion and affection to one’s self, and nurturing one’s self as they would do for others. Growing up, I saw and heard “self-sacrifice” all around me. My parents sacrificed and denied themselves of their desires in order to give us a good, decent life. I saw aunties and friends deny themselves to support the educational advancement of others. I heard the word “delay gratification” all around me. Five years ago, while driving my second daughter Natalie to work, I shared with her how overwhelmed I felt. I complained about all the things I had to do and how I could not afford to do them. I moaned about how I was lecturing, running my company, and meeting spousal needs, yet felt unfulfilled. Natalie asked me one question that set me on the journey to begin to love myself. She asked, “Mummy, howdo you feel?” “Tired,” I replied. “How do you know you are tired?” She asked again. I answered that I was working hard but not realising the results and outcomes I desired. Then she said, “What would you lose if you took some days off away from us and your husband?” We are old enough to take care of ourselves. Just go for three to four days. Go for a private retreat to pamper yourself. Do what you know best: pray, reflect on your life, listen to what your inner voice tells you, and come back rested, refreshed, and refuelled. That was the turning point for me. I did a lot of praying, reading, and reflecting. Together with reading my Bible, one other book that helped to create an internal shift was “The Law of Attraction,” by Esther and Jerry Hicks. I identified what I term “the hedges” in my way. Those things—people, beliefs, behaviours, choices—were standing in the way of me loving myself. I learned the art of shifting focus and attention away from the things that drained me and toward those that ignited me. I adopted the “eighty to twenty percent rule,” using twenty percent of my time and energy to achieve eighty percent of the outcomes and fulfilment. I created my own pathway to loving myself through my thoughts, choices, and behaviour. 29
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