Nurturing Foundations
- Year of You Staff
- May 30
- 4 min read
Welcome back to the Y.O.U. newsletter
Hello Wonderful Community,
In the first blog, we emphasized the importance of having a solid foundation similar to the structure of a building. Each installment has been designed to give you the tools and framework to support your journey through life as you withstand all elements. For example, work can be depressing like rain, relationships can be bright and inviting like the Sun, family can be warm and comforting like Fall, finances can feel frightening like a thunderstorm, etc.
You should feel proud to have laid a foundation to stand and lean on while you walk this journey of self-discovery, but do not be alarmed if your foundation seems to show signs of weakness. Every foundation eventually shows signs of cracks or shifts, but that is part of the settling process. When you rest, you let go, relax your body, and sometimes put all of your weight (i.e., troubles) on that object/space. Many of us hold stress or anxiety on our shoulders and don't realize we're tense until we take a moment to pause and pay attention to our bodies. Rest assured that as long as you build on solid ground and take steps to intervene if things ever become more serious, those minor imperfections will not risk the integrity of your overall structure. You can also take comfort that these newsletters are reminders to reflect and take care of your foundation. Today, we will go further than usual and take the entire time to pause, breathe, and reflect on our individual and collective journeys.
Before we check in, we'd like to invite you to a simple yet powerful activity that will assist you in reflecting on your journey of self-discovery:
Find a quiet space and listen to a 15-minute meditation audio recording
After listening, take a few moments to notice how you feel.
Do you see a difference in your body or your mind?
Make a mental note or journal your experience. Please revisit this practice once weekly, daily, or as often as needed.
Now that you’re in the right mental space, let’s see how you are doing and where you are in your journey.
Over the past installments, we've ventured into critical realms that touch the very core of our being. We started with self-awareness, deeply understanding ourselves better, and recognizing our unique paths. Building on that, we embraced the power of resilience, highlighting it as a skill that can be cultivated and that facing challenges head-on and experiencing setbacks is what strengthens it.
We continued our journey and touched upon setting healthy boundaries to protect our inner peace and foster spaces of respect and self-honor, followed by immersing ourselves in the nourishing practice of self-care, a realm of rejuvenation for our mind, body, and spirit. As we ponder these powerful concepts, we invite you to continue embracing introspection and self-compassion, the true pillars of well-being.
Think about the following questions:
How has fostering self-awareness created a stronger foundation in your life?
Does resiliency appear differently in your life? For example, do you feel more resilient at work than in relationships? If so, is it because of boundaries?
Have you used boundaries to safeguard/honor your personal space?
Have you increased your self-care routine?
We hope that your answers to these questions are different from how you would have answered them before you started your Year of You. If they are, we hope you acknowledge how much growth you have achieved in such a short period of time. Make sure you continue to reflect and continue what has been helpful in achieving that growth through these newsletters. If they are not, do not be discouraged. Instead, think about why that is.
Many of us are dealing with stress and trauma that has been building over months or years. That amount of pain and difficulty will take time to resolve, but try to think about how you might have still achieved growth. Perhaps it’s enough to have started the series! As we continue, keep pushing for growth and if it’s still a challenge, you might reach out to a professional to help unblock your progress.
For others, perhaps you can think about fortifying your foundation. You might think about re-reading past blogs to help better internalize your understanding of self-awareness, resilience, boundaries, and self-care. We would also encourage taking more time for reflection and practicing the activities we have shared in previous newsletters. Sometimes we can understand concepts, but not be able to put them into practice without enough, well, practice!
Regardless of where you are in your journey, we should all appreciate that there are others following along with Y.O.U. and it’s highly likely that someone else shares in how you feel. Think about how you would comfort that other person if you were to meet and share a conversation. Make sure the words of encouragement and reassurance that you would share with someone else is at least how you are speaking to yourself. We must always be as kind to ourselves as we are to others to help us grow to become the best we can be.
Thank you for joining us on this enlightening exploration. We hope you enjoyed taking the time for yourself to reflect on how you are doing. We will see you next time where we will talk about imposter phenomenon. Until next time!
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