Inner Work is An Essential Part of Levelling Up

On my blog you’ll find two main types of article, some written about ‘levelling up’ and others about ‘feminine energy’, hence the LUFE (Level Up Feminine Energy) acronym I use.

What is ‘Level Up’?

To level up is to embark on a journey of personal development that will never end. Although people describe themselves and others after a certain time on this journey as ‘levelled up’ that is only in relation to how they were previously. No one ever truly finishes levelling up as there is always something new to strive for. Anyone can choose to start levelling up.

Three Facets

Levelling up has three facets. Inner work, outer work and being class aspirational. Increasing your income and developing skills with money is also important to any level up journey, but this doesn’t easily fit under any of the other three categories. This blog is going to focus on inner work.

inner work the most difficult part of levelling up. — Inner Work

This is probably the most difficult part and the most private aspect of Levelling Up. This is all about healing demons from your past and working on yourself.

Do you self-sabotage in relationships? Do you know your attachment style? Are you acting out scenes from your childhood or past relationships when dating new guys? Are other things in your life not going as well as you would like them to be? Is fear preventing you from taking that uni course or changing career? Are you not organised enough to save your money and start investing?
Of course, therapy is vital here and can help you improve all aspects of your life. There are things you can do on your own though to help yourself in-between therapy sessions.
To help me remember these things you can do at home, I refer to them as ‘JAME’.

Journaling, Affirmations, Meditation and Exercise.

Journaling

I don’t know anybody for whom journaling hasn’t helped. I first started when I embarked upon Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way programme. She advises everyone to do ‘morning pages’ as soon as you wake up, put pen to paper and write 3 pages of anything that pops into your mind. Now I need my workout to be the very first thing I do in the morning (else it might not get done) and I found 3 pages too much (it takes about 30 minutes).

Instead, I do 1 page, with no distractions. I once timed myself and it takes only 7 minutes to write one page in my journal provided all social media notifications are turned off (just turn off your phone and computer). Just this 1 page gives me so much mental clarity and focus, I really know where I want to go. I see Cameron’s point about doing it first thing in the morning, it sharpens your mind for the day ahead. However I’m a realist. If I put off journaling I can easily do it later. If I postpone my workout, far less likely it is going to happen!

Affirmations

It was from reading Louise Hay’s book You can Heal Your Life that I really began to understand affirmations. Just repeating a mantra once or a few times a day didn’t really make any difference to me. However Hay recommends saying the affirmation you really want to focus on 400 times in a day. 400 times! She points out though, that when you’ve just experienced something unpleasant, a really negative situation, then the events will replay themselves out in your mind at least that many times per day, if not more. Any one who has been through a painful break up will know what I mean here. The event just plays on repeat, trying to get your mind to stop makes the memories even more forceful, the anguish you feel is just as distressing as when you first experienced it.

So in order to re-wire your thinking, you need to repeat the positive affirmation at least 400 times. This has a grounding in neuroscience. There’s a scientific law (Hebb’s law) that ‘neurons that fire together, wire together’ . Think of a time when a smell has evoked a certain memory or taken you back to a moment in your childhood, that’s because of the neuronal connections. Neurons keep wiring and making connections throughout your life, regardless of your age so it’s never too late to start making the positive associations. You are essentially ‘re-wiring’ your own brain.

It’s unrealistic to have an entire list of affirmations and attempt to say all of them 400 times per day (plus you won’t have time to get any of the work done to achieve said affirmations). So pick one of them. The one most poignant to you. Is it a deep seated desire to lose weight once and for all? Is it an urge to not spend money as soon as you have it? Maybe you want to write a book, run a marathon or meet and marry the man of your dreams? No one else needs to know, you can say your affirmation internally to yourself.

Meditation

This is something else that on the surface also seems totally hippy dippy but has now got so much grounding in peer reviewed scientific research, particularly Mindfulness Meditation.

Professor Mark Williams writes in his seminal book ‘Mindfulness a practical guide to finding peace in a frantic world’ that “Numerous psychological studies have shown that regular meditators are happier and more contented than average.” He goes on to describe a whole bucket list of physical and mental benefits to regular meditation. A single lady on a level up journey can be fraught with anxiety and have moments of doom where she wonders if all this effort is really worth it. Is she destined to end up alone and poor. Dark thoughts of if she should just accept ‘Bruce’ down the road in-case she ends up as a lonely spinster. This is not factual, this is fear. This is dread. These moments of fear and dread all decrease with regular sessions of meditation.

Professor Williams goes on to say “With regular practise, (meditation and in particular) mindfulness meditation brings about long-term changes in mood and levels of happiness. Scientific studies have shown that mindfulness not only prevents depression, but that it also positively affects the brain patterns underlying day-to-day anxiety, stress, depression and irritability so that when they arise, they dissolve away again more easily.”

Not only does meditation help you deal with negative emotions more robustly but meditation can also help you to be more compassionate. This can open an entirely new world for you if you were brought up without loving parents and have nothing to model a caring marriage on. Even if you have nothing to model any other caring relationships with family members and friends on.

How does meditation make you more compassionate? Brain imaging (fMRI) shows that the part of the brain called the insula becomes energised through meditation. The insula is connected to our ability to feel empathy and compassion for others. Opening up your own compassion from within will help you to be a more caring and understanding spouse in the future, a better friend, a more understanding and kind person overall. You will have much greater insight into relationship dynamics when you start to tune into your self. All this benefit from such a simple action, so start with sixty seconds a day. Start today.

To read more about the science behind it please check out The Emotional Life of Your Brain by Sharon Begley and Richard Davidson.

Exercise

The two-for-one option as exercise is so great for both your physical and mental health! Since this blog is all about inner work, I’m only going to focus on the mental health benefits today. I’ll talk about the physical benefits another time, but I think everyone knows exercise makes the body leaner, trimmer, more muscular, fitter and stronger.

Exercise has been shown to be an effective preventative measure and treatment for some cases of depression, anxiety, ADHD, PTSD and stress. I’m not claiming exercise by itself should ever be used as a stand alone treatment. Any mental illness requires the guidance of a medical doctor, psychiatrist and therapist. However, exercise could be a useful addition to more standard treatment.

Exercise is an effective way to manage emotions — Manage Anger with Exercise

For less extreme conditions, for just managing the regular rollercoaster of emotions we all experience, exercise is unparalleled in its power to manage them.

If you’re incredibly angry, then you’ll probably have the best gym session of your life. After 20 minutes of pounding the boxing pads or the treadmill, you’ll find your mood has completely changed.

That infamous endorphin rush. You might also have no energy to feel angry any longer.

I remember a friend of mine taking up running after her engagement broke down. She told me that when she ran she wasn’t able to cry at the same time, it physically wasn’t possible! I’m not saying she magically recovered when she went running, but it did help her.

If you’ve been churned up with anxiety, turning your focus to form and reps at the gym will mean after your workout you most likely will have thought of a solution. When you leave a problem alone, your mind keeps working on it unconsciously so that when you return to it, you’ve got the answer. Remember the saying ‘sleep on it’ ? That’s where it came from!

Not only will you feel better mentally, but you’ve done your physical body a favour too by working out. It’s the thing most of us feel least like doing (hence my earlier comment about needing to work out first thing in the morning otherwise it won’t get done), but is generally the best thing for us. Make a commitment to yourself that you will exercise 3 times a week for 30 minutes.

JAME it Up!

I hope you found these suggestions helpful. Are you incorporating any of these activities into your life? Have you been put off previously by how cringe affirmations and meditation can seem? I hope some of the science I’ve posted here has convinced you there’s a value to all four of these practises, regardless of how they are portrayed in some ‘self-help’ circles. Please leave me a comment below.

If you’d like to discuss any aspect of levelling up or feminine energy with me then please schedule an appointment, subscribe to my newsletter and check out my book, Feminine Energy 101.

Inner Work