Do you high five yourself??! 🙏 🙏🏾

I listened to an interesting podcast this past week that discussed why intentionally high-fiving yourself in the mirror might just be the remedy we need for self love and productivity. I know this sounds odd, exactly what I thought too, but let me explain, maybe it will sound...less odd. 🤷‍♀️

When you high five someone, what are you communicating? It's usually support, celebration, love, encouragement, a sense of pride etc., right? You would never high five someone to communicate negativity, you always high five to relay something positive, so that's the idea with high-fiving yourself, you're communicating all things positive to yourself, just as you would to someone else.

The concept discussed in the podcast is called The High Five Habit. Simply put, it's waking up, making your bed, brushing your teeth and looking yourself in the mirror to answer questions like;

• How can I show up for myself today? How can I be more productive?

• How can I be kinder, bolder, more courageous or loving today? etc

You can obviously cater the questions to your needs but once you answer the question, you raise your hand in the mirror and high five yourself. This is all supposed to take a few seconds max. It's a small gesture that I believe has the potential to create life changing effects in the way we see and treat ourselves. A self five will feel silly, strange, weird, funny, etc., but science supports this concept and here's how, briefly;

1. High-fiving yourself allows you to tap into behavioural activation therapy which simply means it allows you to act like the person you want to become.

2. When you high five yourself, your brain releases dopamine aka "the happy hormone" that is associated with reward-motivated behaviour and pleasurable activities.

3. The nervous system is encoded with celebratory energy that releases jolts of energy when celebratory gestures like high fives are carried out.

So the way I see it? When I high-five myself, I'm practicing being my biggest cheerleader.

The High Five Habit is meant to help us practise self love and kindness, to stop us from beating ourselves up and allowing us to overcome negative thoughts a day at a time. It isn't supposed to change the obstacles around us but it's supposed to change us, our beliefs, attitudes and perspectives towards difficult things and how we respond to them. And dare I say, we would all rather be going through challenging seasons with a positive attitude rather than a negative one, right?

What do you think of The High Five Habit? Will you try it out?🌟

Catch you in the next post!

Chich