Article summary

You’re about to learn how to flick a switch in your brain to access your favourite self. 

You’ll also get to peek under the hood, and learn about how you’re rewiring your brain every time you’re doing this exercise. 

You’ll go through a thorough version of the favourite self exercise, to get to know and fully embody your favourite self. 

Lastly, you’ll get a quick checklist that you can easily run through in daily life to step into your favourite self as many times per day as you desire!

(Spoiler alert: The more you do this exercise to embody your favourite self, the more you’ll actually become your favourite self!)

Do you wish you could flick a switch to feel great?

Does your mind get caught in stressful thoughts, sadness and worries? 

Do you wish you could just flick a switch inside yourself to see your situation in a more powerful and enjoyable way?

Would you like to learn a quick and enjoyable way to access the strongest, most inventive, most joyful version of yourself, at a moment’s notice?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you’ve come to the right article!

On a personal note, what you’re about to learn is my all-time favourite exercise from my time as a therapist.
I absolutely loved seeing my clients step into their unique versions of their favourite self, and suddenly exude energy and take on their challenges in a fresh, new way!

They suddenly became the wisest, most compassionate, and most powerful versions of themselves. 

(You might be more familiar with the term “best self”, “highest self” or another version of “favourite self”. 

I prefer the term favourite self, because the other ones can sometimes have a performative vibe to them. Your favourite self is all about who you LOVE to be! So please leave all your “shoulds” and “have-to:s” about who you are outside the door, and get in. )

Please enjoy the ride!

This is not a “fake it til you make it” kind of thing

The exercise you’re about to learn is not about faking anything. It’s not about pretending to feel different or be someone different from who you actually are. It’s about embodying who you really are, underneath all the fear, stress, and sadness. 

Doing this exercise helps you turn down the threat system in your brain and body, and turn up the safety system. This means that you start feeling better, more powerful, connected and inspired. 

We habitually live our lives with our threat system turned on, and unfortunately many people never even get to experience extended periods of consistent system activation. This is partly because our body (rightly) responds to external stressors by turning on the threat system. But it’s also partly because the body turns on the threat system at the mere thought of stressors.

As you can see, that can quickly become a negative spiral:
You think about something stressful -> your threat system turns on, making you feel stressed out -> you think even more about what’s stressing you out -> your threat system goes up a notch… etc.
(This is also how panic attacks happen.)

The more you stay in this “default stress mode”, the more normal this becomes for you. You become a habitually stressed-out person.

I'ts time to unlearn that and re-wire your brain! 

Harness the power of neuroplasticity to change who you habitually are and how you feel

Remember that every time you do anything with your brain, you’re training it to do more of that. 

So when you engage in thinking anxious thoughts, you’re strengthening those pathways, and teaching your brain to do more of that. 

Luckily, you can harness this malleability of the brain and mind, and re-wire your brain so it works better for you!

So this exercise you’re about to learn harnesses the power of the mind to create the state that it imagines. You’ll learn to fully embody your favourite self, and make being that person into your new default mode. 

I’ll be giving you the keys to accessing your favourite self in the next section. 

What I want to emphasize before that is that the key to learning anything new, to becoming a different person is conscious repetition after conscious repetition after conscious repetition. 

No one becomes a new person in a day. But you can absolutely create a habit of being your favourite self if you build a system of reminding yourself to be that person, many moments each day.

You’ll be a different person in the future anyway. It’s up to you to decide who that person’s gonna be!

Embodying your favourite self, here and now - The exercise

You can do this exercise anywhere, anytime, and I encourage you to do it as often as possible. 

You can do it in bed, at work, by yourself, in the coffee shop, with your partner, parents or kids. 

The possibilities for when and where you can embody your favourite self are endless. 

Here you’re getting a thorough version of the exercise. After this exercise, you’ll get a simplified version for daily life, that will remind you of how you felt when doing this thorough version. 

Let’s start

Imagine your very favourite version of yourself.
The person you are when you’re not scared, or caught in sadness or other difficult feelings.
The person you are when you feel amazing.
The version of you that you dream of embodying every day for the rest of your life.
The version of you that can continue growing and evolving from a joyful and powerful place, as you experience more of life.

What’s Your favourite version of You like?

We’ll start with your posture. Take a moment to find the posture that your favourite self would have.
Check in through the whole body.
Take that posture and feel how it feels. (There’s no need to be stiff, enjoy the new posture!)

Next, explore how your favourite self would be breathing. Breathe that way. It might be a bit weird at first, but take a few moments to get comfortable.

Tell yourself about your favourite self - how do they see the world? 

How do they see themselves?

How do they feel? 

How do they speak to themselves? (Think about self-encouragement and self-criticism.)

What are they paying attention to when they’re walking and moving in the world? 

How do they care for themselves? 

How do they relate to others? 

How would your favourite self be feeling right now? 

Take a moment to explore how that feels, to embody those emotions. 

Notice how it feels in your body to embody all of this, of stepping into who you are underneath your habitual threat system activation.

Notice that this is who you really are. 

This is who you are when you have access to your pre-frontal cortex (right behind your forehead). 

This is the part of the brain that contains your creativity and inspiration. 

How does it feel to be this person, to have access to all of this capacity, enjoyment, and power?

Now, let’s spread being your favourite self throughout all of your body through the senses.

Notice yourself embodying your favourite self.

What’s you, as your favourite self, seeing right now?

What are you smelling?

What does your facial expression feel like?

How does your body feel?

What do you hear?

What do you taste?

Remember to keep embodying your favourite self as you go through all the senses.

Notice again that your favourite self is not some vague idea - it’s who You are, here and now!

It’s who you’ve been all along, underneath all of that habitual stress, fear, anxiety and sadness.

Let’s go a bit deeper

Remember that your favourite self lives in the real world, here and now, so as your favourite self you’re still facing the same real-world challenges you are now.

However, as your favourite self, you might see those same challenges rather differently…

How does your favourite self handle challenges and difficulties?

How does your favourite self react to having difficult emotions? (Anger, sadness, fear, anxiety, shame, guilt, etc…)

How does your favourite self react to having difficult or unhelpful thoughts? (Thoughts that drain you or make you do things that make your life worse.)

How do they handle the things that you habitually feel stressed out about?

How do they pick themselves up when they fall down?

What do they want to offer the world?

What are they inspired to do?

Wake up to your awareness being aware of itself

Now, look at the conscious awareness of your favourite self, and notice it being aware of being observed and observing itself at the same time.

This is who you really are.

Underneath all the thoughts and fleeting feelings.

You Are your favourite self. You’ve been this person all along.

You’ll continue to be this person when you forget.

And you’ll always be able to come back to being them.

You’ll just need to create a system to support yourself to remember.

How was it?

If you found this exercise difficult, it might be because your threat system is very active indeed. 

In that case, you might benefit from some other exercises that help you activate your safety system more, in addition to getting a really good hug from a loved one.

Remember that all your thoughts are coloured by which nervous system is activated in your brain and body. So if you’re having very negative thoughts, it’s because your threat system is active. Imagine in that case how you might see things if you were feeling really safe and connected.

If you found the exercise enjoyable, you might want to set an hourly reminder for yourself to do the simplified version of this exercise throughout your day. It’ll only take a moment to do, and everything will flow better as a consequence of it.

In terms of using your time effectively, it’s an exercise with excellent ROI! (Later, you can come back and deepen and refresh your vision of your favourite self, with this longer exercise.)

Here’s the simplified checklist to flip the switch to being your favourite self.

Your simplified checklist for stepping into your favourite self in everyday life

As you do this exercise in daily life, you might run through this quicker and simplified version in your mind and body. Here’s the checklist:

- Imagine the vibe of your favourite self, as vividly as possible. What are they like?

- Take their posture

- Take on how they breathe 

- Take on their perspective on the world

- Take on their perspective on themselves

- Take on their way of handling any challenge and difficulty

- Take on their way of handling their difficult thoughts and feelings

- Take on their guidance for what you’re excited to do in your life, here and now.

- Go through the senses and notice that your favourite self is you in this present moment, in your unique body.

- Relate to the next moments and the rest of your day as your favourite self. 

How will you be handling what’s happening for you today? See your self doing it. 

Now go forth and do it!

Driving home your favourite self

Do you want to make sure your favourite self sticks around in your daily life? 

Do you want to let your favourite self change the direction in which your life unfolds? 

If so, take a moment to reflect on the following questions:

- How would your life change if you remembered to embody your favourite self every waking hour?

- What would you be doing differently? 

- How different would your mornings be? 

- Your days? 

- Your evenings? 

- What could be the potential costs of forgetting to embody your favourite self? 

(In your career, in romantic relationships, in your family, in friendships, in how you feel about yourself?)

- What could be the potential rewards of more and more becoming your favourite self? 

(In your career, in romantic relationships, in your family, in friendships, in how you feel about yourself?)

See yourself living as your favourite version of yourself in all moments of your day. This can be your future if you create an environment for yourself where you’re constantly reminding yourself of who you actually are. 

Each moment you remind yourself, you’ll get the immediate benefits, and it’ll become more and more automatic to remember, the more you do it.

Enjoy being your favourite self, and please let me know how it goes! I’d love to hear from you!

Further resources

I want to give thanks to Caroline McHugh from whom I originally learnt and adapted this exercise! Check out her brilliant Ted X talk here.