What’s Inside:

• 💞 The Most Important Relationship blog post
• 🌱 Life Update
• 📚 What I’m reading & 🎧 listening to

---

The most important relationship you will ever have is the one with yourself. You spend more time with yourself than with anyone else in this world and unlike any other relationship, you can't escape this one..so you might as well make it a good one.

Relationships with others are important too - family, friends, work colleagues, strangers - but if you haven't figured out yourself, the one person you know better than anyone else, you'll have trouble navigating all your other relationships.

This isn't a 'one size fits all' guide. No such thing exists since we're all so different. Rather, I want to show you the importance of getting to know yourself on a deep level so you can develop real self-love and self-awareness - the only tools you need to fight the battle of life.

I hope this inspires you to do some soul searching.

---

Avoidance is not a solution.

This is such a short but powerful quote. We usually base quality of life on other factors like wealth, status and occupation. In actual fact, regardless of what you have, your state of mind determines your quality of life.

The happy orphan has a better quality of life than the chronically stressed CEO.

Your quality of mind and quality of life become apparent when you're left alone. When it's just you and your thoughts. That is when you objectively get to see how your mind actually is without any external influence. Essentially, that is your relationship with yourself.

In today's day and age, it's very rare to actually experience this. From the moment you wake up to the moment you sleep, we chase occupation and distraction.

The second you have nothing to do, you feel overcome by an existential dread - being alone.

When people are going through hard times, the most common piece of advice is 'Keep yourself occupied' or 'Find a distraction'.

There's a word for that kind of behaviour - avoidance.

When you avoid a problem, particularly an internal one, it only fuels it.

I'm not saying that we all have a burning problem inside us, but regardless of who you are, if you don't spend time with yourself you will simply lose yourself. You become reliant on your occupation, your distraction, in order to function properly.

If you wanted to get to know someone better, you would spend more time with them. Similarly, if you want to get to know yourself better, you need to spend more time with yourself.

Without regular time alone, you become distant and unfamiliar with yourself. That only leads to problems further down the line.

Do you ever wonder why people live for the weekend? Why they can't stand to spend just one night in their own company?

I think it's in avoidance of self.

Don't avoid yourself.

It's in the moments that you spend alone that you learn the most about yourself.

It's easy to do this when you're happy and feeling positive, but it's much harder to do when you're feeling down. I get it. You don't even want to feel down, why would you sit alone in a state like that?

Well, when you sit with negativity, you start to look deeper inside and you gain an understanding of why you feel the way you do. Once you understand why you feel good or bad, you're in a much better position to navigate your way through life. You're much better prepared to handle the other relationships in your life.

---

How well do you know yourself?

I can notice from minor body language movements and tone of voice, whether my siblings are upset, anxious, angry or upset. I've studied them since childhood and have seen them in every state. I can pinpoint the moment they 'lose it' and I'm good at diffusing the situation before that happens.

It's human nature to be observant of our surroundings for signs of danger. Even more so when you're obsessed with human behaviour like I am.

Observation, however, is always external. Very rarely do we observe ourselves.

At the time of writing this, I noticed I don't seem to have the same level of awareness about myself as I do with my close family and friends.

It's hard to observe yourself when you're not living in front of a mirror. It takes a lot of focus, awareness, and constant work to notice internal state changes, but then again, nothing good in life comes easy. Self-awareness is one of the greatest gifts one could be given, no doubt it will take work to achieve.

Being so incredibly in touch with yourself that you notice even the most minor changes is a unique skill. It's something that takes laser-sharp awareness. This is what they mean when you hear about being truly 'self-aware'.

Real self-awareness comes from being fully immersed in the self. It's as if you're a pool of water, so finely tuned that even the slightest stimulus will cause a rippling effect throughout your system.

Self-awareness is the key to protecting your internal state. When you notice every little impact on your state of mind, you stop reacting to each stimulus and instead you let the ripples soften out until you're still, just like water.

Let's come back to the quote from earlier to wrap this up.

To live a good life means to have a good quality of life. If the quality of mind is quality of life, then a good life can be achieved by protecting your state of mind. The only way to protect your state of mind is to achieve self-awareness. To become self-aware, you must get to know yourself on a deep level, which can only be done by spending more time alone. It all comes back to your relationship with yourself.

Your relationship with yourself is an important one, do not neglect it, for it will impact all other relationships you make.

---

Life Update

Evidently, I’ve been thinking about this for a while. I haven’t been as consistent with my blog this summer because I sort of lost myself. For the last few months, I’ve just stripped my life back to the basics and tried to rediscover my hobbies and interests. A well-needed recharge. Alhamdulillah, I’m back on track.

I’m moving back into university soon to start my second year of Medicine. Exciting! I’ll be living away from home which means I’ll have full control of my routine, diet, sleep and lifestyle so you can expect more regular blog posts. Lately, I’ve been enjoying posting on Instagram, so if you want a behind the scenes look at my life, follow me here.

---

Podcasts I’ve been listening to:

​Find Your Feet Podcast - Good for soul searching. Everything self-love and self-care.

​The Huberman Lab Podcast - Science and evidence-based tips for living a better life. Episodes on diet, sleep, emotions, anxiety and more!

​Impact Theory - Interviewing incredible people - one of my new favourite podcasts!

Books I’ve been reading:

​Love Is Coming by Persia Lawson - I’m halfway through this book. So far it’s been a good read. Whether you’re single or in a relationship, there are lessons in the book that we can all relate to. I might be biased when I say it’s good because I love learning about relationships, but it is well written, gives actionable advice, some funny stories and it’s filled with Ah ha! moments.

​Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by Dr D. Burns - One of the first books ever published on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). Whether you have chronic mental health issues or just a bad day, the CBT exercises in this book are amazing to pick up your mood. It gives a good explanation of anxiety/depression, what causes those thought patterns and how to stop them.

​Deep Work by Cal Newport - All about the importance of doing deep, uninterrupted work rather than half-assed distracted work in order to accomplish more at a higher quality. A great book for students or people who write/create content. I’m going to finish this one before university starts so I can experiment with the advice it gives.

​The Daily Stoic - Recommended for anyone who wants to work on their mindset. I’m around 90 days behind on this one lol. It’s 366 pages, so you read 1 page per day of the year. Each page is something from stoic philosophy which is very interesting. I quite like starting my day with one of these although I haven’t been consistent with it. I’ll catch up and continue with 1 page per day.