THE FRIEND WITHIN

Are you speaking to yourself like you would to a friend?

My sweet friend,

I hope the beginning of fall is finding you happy and healthy and well fed and well loved ❤️

I wanted to show you a bit of an obsession I’ve been having lately.

You know what it is??

Ok, I’ll tell you,

it’s this:

MY INNER VOICE!!!!!!!!

YEAH, MAN!!

Have you ever noticed yours?

You see. Something that happens to me, is that I can be REALLY harsh and cruel towards myself.

When?

• Well, maybe when I make a mistake (and I shame myself for it).

• When try to dare to do something I REALLY want to do but that scares me (and I tell myself it might not work out. And that I shouldn’t even try it!).

• When I get rejected by someone (and I tell myself nobody likes me).

(ETC)

Can you believe that?

The weird thing is that, I would NEVER talk to any of my loved ones that way. NEVER EVER IN A GAZILLION YEARS!!!

• If they make a mistake, I would tell them “My cutie patootie, we all make mistakes! You’re still a loveable person!”

• If they were trying to dare to do something that scared them, I would tell them “You can do it, my love! Try it! You will soar!!!”

• If they got rejected by someone, I would tell them “They just can’t see how beautiful you are, my sweet little dumpling! You’re a beautiful gift in anyone’s life”

Anyways,

you get the idea.

My question is this:

Why is it that I can be a better friend to other people than to myself?

…

A handful of months ago, I started drawing this little character.

I started finding it everywhere! I know I really love a character when I start finding doodles of them in every notebook I own. This one kept appearing on my pages over and over and over.

One day it even started to talk!

- “Are you being nice to yourself?”

And I knew it was talking about precisely that sneaky little subject of the inner voice.

My little character was asking questions about kindness towards myself .

- “Is this the way you would speak to a friend?”

- “TADAAAAAA ❤️”

(Very eloquent, I know!)

Anyways,

It’s faint little voice has been becoming louder and louder AND LOUDER

AND LOUDER!!!!!!!!!!

inside of my head for months and months,

and it’s been VERY HELPFUL ❤️

I’m starting to become more aware of the moments in which my inner voice becomes an inner bully, and then, I SWITCH.

I try to see myself like the sweet little vulnerable organism that was born into this earth, knowing NOTHING. Like the scared, fallible creature, deserving of warmth and love and safety and compassion.

And I talk to myself with as much kindness as I can muster.

And then I feel STRONGER.

Because, you know what?

I’ve decided I don’t want to have a self-bully inside of myself. I simply don’t want to!

If I have to live with myself, with my inner voice FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE ON THIS EARTH, I want that voice to be My Friend.

So, one day, my little character got a name!:

THE FRIEND WITHIN

Another day, after some experimentation, it got a colour:

I liked purple the very best!!!

So, The Friend Within was born in all its self-compassionate glory!!!

These days, every time I catch myself saying things like “I’m so stupid!”, “I can’t do this!”, “This won’t work out!”, “I’m unlovable!”

(or any of the gems my inner bully likes to throw at me)

I tell myself this:

IT’S TIME TO CALL THE FRIEND WITHIN!!!!

And, my sweet friends,

I’m so happy to report that, after using this little thought for some months, IT IS WORKING.

I won’t go into too many details, but, I’ve been under AN INSANE amount of stress.

To the point that I’ve been getting insomnia and other symptoms coming from it.

The other day, I was in New York, ready for a VERY important appointment about my upcoming book.

(Can you imagine?? An important appointment + With a very awesome human + IN NEW YORK!!!!!!)

But, I was getting sandblasted with a lot of stressful phone calls from back home. I had been so incredibly stressed out, and probably slept a total of 3 hours that night. My head was in such distress that: I MESSED UP THE TIME OF THE APPOINTMENT.

(Yes!!!! The VERY important appointment!! + With the very awesome human!!! + IN NEW YORK!!!!!! THE CITY THAT NEVER SLEEPS!!! Can you imagine????? AAAAAH!!!!!!!!! SO MORTIFYING!!!!!)

My inner bully would have said something like this:

“Ani!! You’re so stupid!!! What’s wrong with you!!!??? You wanna ruin your life??!! Can’t you behave like an adult??! LOSER!!!!”

(or even worse obscenities I won’t repeat here)

But instead, I said my inner mantra, IT’S TIME TO CALL THE FRIEND WITHIN.

My inner voice was put to a real test!

The Friend Within asks this question:

What would you say to a Friend?

Seriously! What would I say?

What I would say is this:

“Dear Ani, you’ve been under A TON of stress. You haven’t slept in WEEKS and that affected your thinking process today. All humans make mistakes. You are very hard working. Anyone who has worked with you knows that. You can take accountability of your mistake, try to fix the problem and then move on. You’re an animal, my little darling! An animal with clothes. And animals are imperfect. You deserve love and warmth and safety. YOU ARE GOOD. Even when you make mistakes”.

So, I hailed a cab in the middle of the streets of New York, flailing my arms and screaming “TAXI!!!” like in the movies (the taxi was moving too slow, so I had to pay, and run the rest of the way!) I did make it to the second part of the meeting, and it was a wonderful one!!!

Later that day, I was drinking some juice with a friend, telling him the story of my day, and I thought to myself… gosh…. this is totally new.

This has never happened.

I have NEVER had a day where I royally screwed up and was able to still have a happy day. To still see myself like a good person deserving of love.

Isn’t that weird?

To have always been convinced that, if I screw up, I have to shame and abuse myself. To beat myself up to a pulp, in order to feel like a “responsible person”.

I find that so sad!

And I think The Friend Within has real power!!!!

Since it has been helping me so so much, I knew that day that NEEDED to share it with my Fellow Humans.

(To be honest, I’m so obsessed that I’ve been writing a book about it. But a book takes YEARS AND YEARS to come into existence. And I believe The Friend Within is needed NOW by so many people who live tortured by their inner bullies, just like me. I wanted this message to get into the world as soon as possible!)

So, I went to my apartment and created this poster:

I printed it in Brooklyn:

I woke up at 5am the day I was about to fly home, invited a most excellent friend to come with me,

and I set on an adventure to wheat paste it around New York!

I would really love it if I could tell my Fellow Humans about this discovery,

about The Friend Within.

I want to tell everyone about the inner voice and how it can be a bully or an ally.

I would love to ask everyone, do we really NEED to bully ourselves into being lovable or acceptable versions of ourselves????

Or do we need to question a world that asks us to act and speak against ourselves, in order to conform to an idea of what an “ideal” person should be???

I hope that The Friend Within can be a reminder that LOVE

REAL LOVE

starts from accepting and loving our beautiful and flawed selves.

From treating ourselves with compassion and with kindness.

To know, deep in our blood and our bones that, despite our flaws, we are

INHERENTLY GOOD.

This might sound selfish, or self-serving.

But it isn’t.

A human who is full of shame and fear will inflict more pain onto others than a human who is at peace with themselves.

Someone who is full of love will be able to spread more love!!!

Imagine a world like that?

So,

today,

I ask you,

my beautiful friend:

Are you speaking to yourself like you would to a friend?

I hope you are!

Because you deserve it ❤️

I’m sending you lots of lots of love,

- Ani