Self Love: An Ongoing Journey [PODCAST]

[*Automated Podcast Transcript. Typos likely.]

Hi everyone. It’s Amber Desmond with Emotional Medicine Coaching at EmotionalMedicine,Coaching.com. I’m your host and self-awareness coach. So let’s get down to it today. I’d like to talk about self love. Self love is a major topic right now, which is incredible. It’s a buzz word. It’s on everybody’s mind. People are creating memes about it and that’s, I mean just what an amazing trend is. The trend of self love. I mean I remember just years ago, a couple of years ago that you said self love and people just kind of looked at you cross-eyed. Like what on earth are you talking about? Crazy person like do mean masturbation. It’s like no, I personally came across self love in a really powerful way through the teachings of Louise Hay. She was a real key figure in my own self love journey. She really brought it in a way that was incredibly understandable and digestible and I think that is really important because I think that it can be kind of a strange gray area.

So what I’d like to bring to this subject here is that self love. I think something really important to recognize and acknowledge is that self love is a practice that is a mindset and it is a lifestyle. It’s not something that you accomplish. It’s not like, you know, running a marathon is that you train for it and then you run the marathon and your win and then you’ve won the marathon and that’s it. Uh, you know, goal accomplished, done. I did that. Check that off the list. If it’s, it’s something that evolves, it grows, it changes, it shifts, it comes in layers. It definitely is something that I feel like once you build a foundation, it’s easier to stay in touch with it. But that doesn’t mean that you don’t fall off a self love wagon per se. I mean I feel like I’m somebody who genuinely practices self love and who loves themselves and that does not mean that I don’t still struggle and have really hard days and self doubt days is not some magical bubble of rainbows and sunshine that now I forever am just in a great mood and full of love all the time.

It’s, it’s a process and it’s, it really does require some deep digging to really get in touch with all of you because it’s really easy to love the parts of ourselves that are [inaudible] easy to love. You know, if you’ve got a lot of money in the bank or you’re really successful in your career and you’re really powerful or you’ve got a lot of status or you’re incredible athletes aware, you are incredibly fit and really proud of your fitness lifestyle or you know, whatever the many different things that we can approve of. Maybe you’re really creative or you’re super intellectual, you win awards for your intellect. These are parts that you probably really appreciate and enjoy and you openly share with other people about your skills and abilities. You know, if you probably do it humbly, I’m sure, but you still, you still know that like, Hey, you know, I’ve got that going on.

That’s my strength. That’s my area, that’s my jam. I’m really good at that and it’s something I’m proud of it. It’s something I’m willing to show others so that area doesn’t necessarily need a lot of work. That’s not the area that you’ve got to dig into and find the juicy could self love stuff because it’s just sort of a natural, easy place of power for you. Where it gets complicated is learning how to dive into yourself and explore all the ways that you don’t love yourself. Those are the places, and that is the beginning of where the self love journey begins, is recognizing shame, pain, past trauma, fear, guilt, anxiety, beliefs about your worth and value the voice in your head that tells you you’re fat, you’re ugly, you’re a loser, you’re never going to be successful. You’re never going to be good enough. You’re a terrible mother.

Nobody likes you. I mean, all the horrible inner critic stuff that can come up for us. I mean, each individual person can have their own very unique, special inner critic that is catered directly and specifically to their personal emotional struggles. And we might have similarities across the board, but everybody’s inner critic is their own special, special to them. Specialized voice that communicates to them exactly what they’re most afraid of and what they are most ashamed of about themselves and what they’re most fearful. Other people may think about them. A lot of like a great practice is to think what is the one thing or many things about me that I would never want anybody to know. Like if people knew this about me, then they wouldn’t love me or they wouldn’t like me or they wouldn’t want to date me or be close to me or hire me or whatever it is.

And that’s usually an incredible insight into the place that needs your love and attention the most. For me. I’ll offer up some of my own vulnerable journeys with my self love process and uh, there’s so many layers, so many layers that have just, I’ve been peeling over the years. I’m now 39 and I really feel like I started this journey at 29. Like really officially, I mean I’d always been a seeker and Explorer, but 29 was a real, a real catalyst of change and growth and transformation for me is what’s 10 years. And a lot, a lot, a lot has changed and shifted and grown and really transformed over those years. But I’m still, I’m still on the journey. I don’t know if I’ll ever be done. And that’s okay. You know, it’s like you’re never done loving your partner or your children. There’s always more.

Your, your relationships are always growing and evolving and shifting and changing and becoming and morphing and you know, from your child re you know, when your child’s little to when she’s or he is, you know, uh, you know, like eight or nine years old to when they’re a teenager to when they’re young adults to when they’re mature adults, you’re going to have very different relationships with your children in these very different times of their lives and vice versa. So of course as you grow and evolve, you’re going to be changing your relationship with yourself as well and recognizing and acknowledging your own growth and journey and the different people that you’re becoming. So part of my journey is my relationship with money has been, it’s been a, an area of shame and area of struggle. It’s been probably one of the harder area, harder areas of my life where I just feel like I keep hitting walls and feeling incredibly frustrated and angry with myself and it’s like, why?

Why can’t I get my shit together when it comes to money? Why am I struggling so hard? And I was so hard on myself even like no matter how hard I tried to be nice, like my programs and my deep shame around money was so strong that it was, it was really just destroying me for a long time. I’m not saying I’m completely out of the woods now, but I do feel that I am shifting drastically and dramatically as I really uncover the deep subconscious programming that has led me to the relationship that I have with money through the relationship I had with my parents and their relationship with money as I was growing up and how that had an impact on me. And recognizing that if I become aware of the beliefs that I’ve been carrying in the subconscious realm, which the subconscious controls so much of our lives, you know, cause the conscious Amber, the person you’re listening to now, you know, she’s this incredible empowered, intelligent, capable woman.

And so what’s like, why? Why has it been so hard for me to really come into my power when it comes to money? And it’s been a really, it’s been a really hard journey and I’m really discovering just more and more clearly and more and more deeply how much our beliefs about ourselves have such a tremendous impact on how we feel about ourselves and if how we feel about us is everything. Mastery of yourself is mastery of your life. If I don’t understand myself, if I don’t acknowledge and question, what am I feeling? What am I thinking? What am I believing? How are my thoughts and feelings about who I am having an impact on my life? Then I just kind of stumble around blindly. It took me having to really, really dig deep and discover that I had a really powerful belief that said, you’re not valuable.

Like, no, you’re not important. Or it’s like, what was what now I’m trying to remember the specific words. You don’t matter. That’s it. You don’t matter. And nobody cares. And this belief came many, many, many years ago in my formative years as a child based on the certain dynamics that were going on in our household and the internalized beliefs that I created around what was happening. So that means that some seven to eight year old part of myself created this story about my own worth and value and it was for my survival. So I formed culprit cope coping mechanisms to sort of counter that belief and I incredibly loving and giving and supportive of other people. I became a people pleaser. I became very codependent. I was always showing up for other people because of this deep belief that other people are more important. Other things are more important.

I’m only valuable when I am helping other people. And that could be a whole other podcast about codependency and childhood emotional neglect and so on and the impacts that that has on our lives. But just to bring it back around, this belief has not only impacted just my self esteem, it impacted me on just like multiple levels of, you know, my existence, but specifically with my career and moving forward, recognizing that this belief that like I don’t matter and nobody cares. Is that an abundance money mindset? Is that something that says success? It’s like, no, that is the opposite of success. It is definitely a sustain small, stay safe. You don’t matter. Nobody cares. Why bother? Don’t even try. You should just quit. You’re not good anyway. And it’s been a long, crazy, intense journey of me battling these different parts of myself. And so now as I’m aware of this, as I’ve come to see that this is what I believe, I’m now able to go back and what’s called like reparent so I could reparent that part of myself that decided long ago that she wasn’t important and that nobody cared.

And so, you know, not just having that realization doesn’t, you know, make the realization shift automatically. I’ve got to practice de escalating that belief. I’ve got to practice changing that belief. What is the opposite of that? Of course I matter and people do care and making that my mantra and making that the place where I step off, where I’m inspired, where I’m about to take action, the thing I want to tune into at that exact moment when I’m about to take a leap, I’m about to put myself out there and a job or a relationship or whatever it is, something that’s challenging. I’m going to practice being like I do matter and people do care. I matter and people do care. That is very powerful. I can feel it in my chest, I could feel it in my body. When I say that, the, the fear that comes up that’s like, that’s not true and that that is the work.

It is choosing to love yourself regardless despite of instead of these hurtful, painful, negative limiting beliefs, ideas and feelings that we’ve collected over the years. I can show up in a room and I may not be the most beautiful. I may not be the fittest, I may not be the most creative, I may not be the most successful. I may not be the most intelligent, the most strong, the most, the most athletic, you know, the most gifted or talented person in that room. But that does not mean that I do not deserve my own love. It does not mean that I’m not lovable because I’m not all of these things or even one of those things. I still deserve my love and others love because I’m a great person because I’m me because I’m uniquely me. Just as you are uniquely you are love should not be based on our successes and definitely not our physical appearance because everything is fleeting and changing physical beauty.

I mean you can age and be absolutely stunning as you age, you can age and still be beautiful. It’s just different. It’s a different version of you. And based on our culture and our cultural beliefs in America, youth is idolized. And so when you know, we’re just completely bombarded over and over. Can you just turn on TV and movies and everything is geared towards teenagers or young 20 something year olds. And so there’s just not a lot that says value value. You know, these older women in particular are, you know, older men get roles all the time, different, you know, are valued in a very different way than as women age. The depletion of a woman’s worth based on her physical appearance that she is no longer viable quotes sexually and that, that her sexuality and her physical beauty or youthfulness is what gives her value and credibility.

And that’s a really powerful message we’re all receiving. Even if it’s just subliminal and it’s, it’s getting to the point where it’s pretty blatant. It’s, to me it’s pretty hard to miss at this point. I mean if you just pick up any kind of beauty magazine, the amount of anti aging product ads is unbelievable. I actually did a little test one day where I got a bunch of them and I literally counted how many there were per page. Like based on the pages in the magazine, how many anti aging ads there were end. It was ridiculous. It was a huge, huge, ridiculous amount. And the hilarious thing is also a lot of these anti aging ads had like 20 something year old women in it or extremely airbrushed people and it was like, this is does this warped, this isn’t real. This is crazy. And even though my conscious mind, speaking of the unconscious and conscious, my conscious mind sees that it’s still registering on some level, I have to stay young to be attractive, to be important, to be noticed.

And that’s painful. I mean then don’t even just get into the weight stuff. I mean, goodness gracious, the whole weight war right now is just unbelievable and I’m, I’m so incredibly excited to be able to witness in my lifetime body positivity and women really fighting for the right to be seen and the right to be acknowledged as beautiful and valuable at many different sizes and shapes and colors and gender fluidity, fees and so on. I think it’s just, it’s an incredible time to be alive in many ways as far as I feel like the evolution of things that are taking place now and it’s also incredibly confusing and overwhelming at the same time. There is so much information out there that it can feel, it can feel really daunting and ah yeah there’s a lot of mixed messages but I think that recognizing that your physical size is going to change through time, your face, your body, things shift and change with age.

It’s just a part of life and it’s natural. But if we become super attached to having to look a certain way and be a certain way, accomplish a certain thing, it’ll have a certain amount of money, you know, be recognized as a certain kind of person in a certain sort of light. We’re going to lose sight of ourselves becoming attached to any particular way things have to be in order for you to be happy is, it’s the setup for, for really being incredibly disappointed and for failing ultimately because things change no matter what. Things change and and so just really recognizing like self love is, it’s really learning how to show up and be the person you are in that room full of all those different people that I, I described all the different stories that could exist in one room, different beauties and ages and levels of success and creativity and artistic abilities.

And you know, all the things, all the intellects and gifts that people have that no matter what, it’s okay for you to be who you are and to love who you are and to recognize and appreciate all of your own special gifts and talents and your own unique beauty and own that. Owning that it’s, it’s a choice. I can see somebody who’s younger, thinner, fitter, more quote, beautiful than I am, who has more money than I do, who’s got a quote, better job or a better house or a nicer car. All those things. And I could make that mean something about me and diminish myself. Or I can say, you know what? Good for her and that’s amazing and I’m going to choose to love myself anyway because self love and loving who we are and recognizing that it’s okay to be who we are.

It’s not about settling and sitting on a couch and just being like, I love myself so I don’t have to do anything. It’s about recognizing that self love is powerful booster for actual transformation and for creativity and for growth and inspiration. If you’re not spending inordinate amounts of time wishing you are something else and beating yourself up and all the energy that goes into that, think about all the freed up space. You have to actually create something to go out and seek the job that you’ve been wanting to take the risk to ask the person out to start exercising, to eat better, to you know, just discover who you really are and form a stronger relationship yourself. That is so empowering and that is a key to creating a truly magnificent life. I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s talk on self love. I will continue to post and create and expand on all of these ideas. Thank you for joining me. You can find me on Instagram at emotional medicine, a medicine coaching on Instagram. Thank you everyone. Have a great week.