00:00 

Hey there, this is Tanya Hale with Intentional Living and this episode number 104, "Cultivating Self-Love." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:22 

Alright, hello there, my friends, how you doing? I hope you were doing fabulous. Me, school is out for summer, which makes me very happy and very excited. Not that I don't love my kiddos, because I do. Those eighth graders just make me happy. However, I'm always grateful for a summer to catch my breath, to decide that I really like those kids again, and to review what's going on and what I've done and look at my craft and see where I can improve and what I can do better. A summer always gives me the time to do that, so I love that. 

01:01 

So today's podcast is being brought to you by the morning time and not the afternoon or the evening as it is generally during the school year. I love the fact that I've been able to work on this during the mornings. Today we are going to be talking about cultivating self-love. Self-love I feel is such an important topic, and the reason why I believe this is because our thoughts create everything in our lives to include our self-love. And when our thought are hateful, mean, and degrading toward ourselves, we are holding ourselves back from creating the best things that we're capable of creating in our life. We are holding ourselves hostage from becoming our best selves. And we are minimizing the positive impact that we can create in this world. 

01:51 

But let's talk about why self-love is sometimes so misconstrued and misunderstood. I find it so fascinating that the definition of self-love according to Merriam-Webster is "an appreciation of one's own worth or virtue." I think that's a great place to start with ourselves: appreciating our own work or virtue. But here's what is so interesting to me. When I go to the same Miriam-Webster's Thesaurus, instead of the dictionary, here's what I get...so these are synonyms for self-love. "Big-headed, complacency, conceit, ego, pompous, pride, self-admiration, smugness, swelled head, vanity." Is there any wonder that when we say self-love, so many people go to a negative place in their heads? Those are the words that we associate with self-love. However, if I scroll down even just a little bit more, I can see that some related words, which means it's not a direct synonym, but related words are "assurance" and "confidence." 

03:01 

Now, those are words that I would put as a direct synonym, and all those others I'd put like way down the list. Like, yeah, I think people can think that, but not really, right? But "assurance" and "confidence" fit way more in with my idea and my understanding of what self-love is. So all of the synonyms that we talked about had negative connotations, and I think this is why when people start to talk about self love, that our primitive brain can start to shut down a little bit or sometimes we get resistance from people. I know that when I talk to people about self-love there's sometimes this wall of resistance that comes up that says, "whoa I don't want to go there." I think that's why they're not associating it with our worth and with our virtue, right? They're associative with conceit and pride and self-admiration, those types of things. 

03:54 

So our primitive brain may be thinking that we don't have any interest in being conceited or pompous or prideful or smug or vain, but the definition first given is "an appreciation of one's worth or virtue." So this is the definition that will be really important for us to connect with when we think about self-love. This is a place we want to come from, really coming to a where we can see our amazingness and appreciate it, where we connect to our God -given worth rather than just reject it. 

04:28 

So let's discuss how love is created. Let's start off with one of the easiest people in world to love, and that would be our little  baby, right? I find it fascinating that someone can have a miscarriage at, say, 20 weeks, and they will struggle with that loss for years. Why do they struggle so much? i think it's because they have already developed such a great love for their child. And where did that love come from? How could they love someone they haven't even met yet or seen or held in their arms? 

05:04 

So let's go to the model and we can figure this out. Love is a feeling and feelings are created by our thoughts. So that mother or father is having such loving thoughts toward this unborn baby that they create an intense love for him or her. This may be having thoughts such as "I'm so excited to be a parent," "I can't believe I get to do this," "this baby will change my life for the better." These types of thoughts will create loving feelings. Now there are men and women who have babies and feel absolutely no love towards them. In fact they may feel so much resentment, or even hatred, toward this baby that they will abandon it either physically or emotionally. And how does that happen? The exact same way through their thoughts. They may be having thoughts like "this is such an inconvenience," or "this is the worst thing to happen to me", or "I don't want to have to give up my life for this," or "I don't even want this." These types of thoughts will create feelings of resentment or hatred. The baby has absolutely nothing to do with what the parent feels. The parent has created every feeling, both good or bad, that they have by their thoughts, by whether they've had loving or unloving thoughts. 

06:24 

So let's look at another situation: a marriage relationship. What creates the feelings of love when we are deciding whom to marry? Again, it's our thoughts, we choose to look for and see all of the positive things this person does, or we choose to not see all the annoying or disruptive things this person does. We choose what to think about them. When we are always thinking positive thoughts and seeing the good, then we will create feelings of love. If we choose to see the negative in someone we're dating, then will not create fillings of the love. Now, I know that there are a lot of considerations beyond what we think when it comes to getting married, but ultimately, we feel love because of what are choosing to think. 

07:14 

Okay, so I'm not going to say that we have to marry every person that we love, I'm just saying that we love because of what we think. So what about divorce? Same thing, yep. I know for me by the end of my 24 years of difficult marriage, that's a thought, right, I knew that it was a difficult marriage. But at the ended of 24 year of marriage it was very difficult for me to think positive loving thoughts toward my spouse. Most people start off their marriages thinking so many positive thoughts that they're creating so many loving feelings. In fact, they never have a negative thought and they get married thinking this is the perfect person, right? But over time, we can easily slip into focusing on the negative and thinking negative thoughts, which don't create loving feelings, these thoughts create feelings of resentment and anger. The exact same concept will apply to any situation where you feel love. Work, friends, neighbors, siblings, everything and everyone we love starts with a thought that will create love. Everything we don't love starts with a thought that does not create love. 

08:23 

So now let's take a look at ourselves. When we start talking about self-love we have to really recognize and understand that any loving feelings we are having for ourselves are coming from our thoughts about ourselves and any feelings of hatred or disappointment or resentment for ourselves is also coming from our thoughts about ourselves. 

08:49 

So let's take a little side note here to consider what narrative our Heavenly Father has going on in His head. How does He speak to Himself? I have a really difficult time imagining Him beating Himself up and speaking derogatory to himself. I only imagine Him having loving thoughts about Himself. How else could He create what He has created? If we truly are to strive to become like God, it's important that we also start learning to think about ourselves the way that God thinks about Himself. And it is not in a conceited comparison, better than anyone else way. It is a beautiful appreciation for His worth and value as our God. Self-righteousness and self-love are not the same thing. Okay? 

09:45 

So if you are someone who has always struggled with loving yourself and accepting yourself, or even if you're someone that hasn't, the first assignment here is to become aware of your thoughts. Really come to understand what your narrative in your head is saying about you and to you. So, here's a good place to start. I want you to sit down with some paper and a pen and start talking to yourself. Tell yourself everything you think about you. This is a safe place for you, to be completely honest with your thoughts. Don't hold back because you think you're protecting yourself; this isn't for anyone but you. And until you really see what's going on in your head, you cannot make adjustments. Remember that we have over 60,000 thoughts a day and it's estimated that 95% of those are unconscious thoughts, or 57,00 unconscious thoughts.

10:45 

A great way to assess some of those thoughts is just to sit down and start writing. Just let it go without paying too much attention. If it comes to your brain just write it down. You will be sorely tempted to start monitoring and censoring and judging and manipulating your thoughts. Resist the urge and don't do it. This is how we start to see the narrative going on behind the scenes that is wreaking so much havoc in our lives. So write down all the thoughts, whether you are embarrassed of them or whatever, right? Just write them all down and then you're going to go back and see what you've written. I do this with my clients and with my coach for me. When we just get started telling a story, oftentimes we will be telling a crafted story, one we have consciously played over and over in our heads. The longer the story goes on, the more unconscious thoughts will start coming up because we run out of our crafted story so when I'm doing my own thought download. I find it helps if I do a little bit of a zone out while I'm doing this. The reason why is because I if I start thinking too hard about it, I will censor out things and change the wording that comes out naturally. So what we're looking for here is to really take an honest look at what our primitive brain is putting out there, not a censored look, at what our brain that's putting it out. 

12:12 

Okay, so when I am coaching a client I love asking them questions that throw them off of their crafted story, because very often that is when the unconscious thoughts enter and we start to see what's happening behind the scenes. Working with my coach, it always amazes me the things that will come out of my mouth before I have a chance to censor them, but that's the good stuff. That's where I can find the work that needs to be done because those are the unconscious thoughts that are holding me back. So once you've downloaded all of your thoughts, it's time to go back through and see what thoughts are going on in your head. What are you seeing? Are you mostly positive or negative? Are are seeing any patterns? Is there a thought or two that seems to keep resurfacing or is there an underlying theme? This is the part that is really fascinating and shocking and painful. 

13:10 

Okay, so now that you've started to take a look at what's going on inside of your brain, good for you for having the courage to do that, to get this far. Nothing changes until we see something that needs to be changed. And I will tell you, this can be difficult work. It can really be hard to see your raw self, see some of the ugliness that is going in your brain. But only by choosing to see it, and stop avoiding it, can we address it and change it. That's the whole point of coaching. 

13:42 

Now if you're a totally normal person you are going to some thoughts you don't like. You'll see thoughts that shock you and that embarrass and probably even humiliate you. You will see thoughts that will make you feel ashamed. The discomfort of these emotions is powerful and you may want to just shut that paper up by getting rid of it, and I get that feeling. I know that those those really tough, raw emotions are hard to feel. So if you feel that way it's totally normal, but it is so important at this point that we resist the urge to shut down here. This is the place where the real vulnerability needs to happen. Right now the most important thing that you can do is feel all of the discomfort that you may be feeling and just sit in it. Allow your mind and your body to process the emotion by just sitting in it. Allow the shame, allow the pain, allow the embarrassment. Don't try to understand the whys yet. Don't go to a place of trying to figure out how to fix it or how to stop the uncomfortable emotions. Just sit, feel, and wait. If this is very uncomfortable for you, it may help to examine the feeling you're having by getting really curious about the emotion and asking yourself where it is in your body. How does it feel? Is it heavy or light? Is that hot or cold? is it hard or soft? Is it dark or is it bright? What emotion is? It does it have a color? Does it have flavor? Any question you can think of that will increase your awareness of what you are feeling. 

15:32 

Okay, so notice that as you allow space for the emotion, allow it to be there without judgment, which means drop any thoughts you're having about it. Anytime you start thinking about your about your emotion, push it aside, right? And eventually, that emotion will begin to subside. The processing of emotions is such a valuable tool that many of us have not learned how to do very well yet. Okay, we will immediately want to go and do something to distract us from the discomfort, but allowing the emotion to be there is the only way to process it and work through it. 

16:11 

One time a few years ago when I had been dating someone and that broke up and it was a very painful situation for me, I would come home from school and I'd just go in and lay on my bed and just cry and feel the emotion and let it work its way through me. And when you do that, you hit a point where it completely starts to subside and all of a sudden the tears stop  and you feel like "oh, okay, now I can breathe a little bit." This is the point that we're working to get to, right? We want to allow ourselves to feel that emotion. And like I said, many of us are not used to that. Oftentimes when we feel discomfort we have a natural instinct to do what we called "buffering," which is to do something to distract us from the discomfort of that emotion, okay? So we want to be careful not to start buffering here. We just want create space and time for us to just sit and feel. 

17:19 

Now some of you may not have such a visceral reaction, which is normal as well, but if you do, or even if you're having an emotion but it's much smaller, follow that same process. Allow the feeling to start, to feel it all the way, and then allow it to start to diminish, and you can start the next step. But like I said, whether you're feeling is strong or whether it is not so strong, still allow yourself to sit in it and feel it all the way through. Once the overwhelming feeling has subsided, we are emotionally prepared and can be willing to see it, and examine it, and get curious about it. Where did these thoughts come from? How much of me believes them? What evidence have I created to support them? When we've asked a lot of questions about these thought and we can start to them more clearly, then it's time to start doing some thought models so we start creating what we want to create. Now if you're not familiar with thought models because you are new or if you need a refresher, podcast number 96 and 97 talk pretty specifically about the thought model. So go back and take a refreshers course on those. 

18:39 

Okay, so here we go. It would be really easy to take all those thoughts in our head and get scared and want to run away, right, once we start asking all of those questions. But if we will take the time to see them, to feel them, and then to get curious about these thoughts that we've had, we can find a place of compassion. When we want to create change in ourselves, coming from a place if compassion surges us forward, while coming from the place a fear or resentment or anger will tie us down and hold us back. So we have to figure out a way to find the place in compassion for those thoughts. And this will all fit into a thought model. 

19:23 

Okay, so let's take a look at it. So let's start off by putting "thoughts about me" into your circumstance, or the C, line. So after you've read all of those, go back and reread all those thoughts that you wrote about yourself. If you have emotions that come up, it's time to sit and just allow yourself to feel those emotions. Do not resist them. Don't pretend like they're not there. Allow yourself to feel them. Once you've worked through that process, which can take 10, 15, 20, 30 minutes, depending on you, allow yourself to feel that. That whole process we just talked about, you're going to start coming out the other side. 

20:04 

So then we're ready to start processing the thoughts. We've just processed the emotions that came up, now we want to process the thought. Okay, so we are going to take our thought model. So we have circumstance, thought, feeling, actions, results. Okay, so our circumstance line, which is neutral, we're going to put "thoughts about me" into that circumstance line. So "thoughts about me" being the circumstance line. Well, the feeling we want to create is compassion. So we're going to write "compassion" on the F line, or the feeling line. Okay, so in between the circumstance and the feeling line, we have a thought. That is the thought line, okay, so when we read all of the thoughts in our head, and that's our "thoughts about me," the circumstance, what thought can we have that will move us to a compassionate feeling line? 

21:05 

Okay, so first we want to create compassion for all the thoughts about ourselves. We could have the thought, "I have been doing the best I knew how and I'm still in so much pain." Or maybe "it's so difficult to feel like there is no way out of this negative place." Something along those lines. Find something that you believe, a thought you can have about all those thoughts that you wrote down that's going to create a place of compassion for you. Learning to create compassion for ourselves through our thoughts is an amazing step forward. It could be so easy to go into a place of beating ourselves up for having those kinds of thoughts. But intentionally choosing to feel compassion for our thoughts collectively is an incredible place to start with increasing our self-love. 

21:54 

So once we've gotten to this place for compassion for the person that thinks all of those thoughts, then we will want to start looking at specific thoughts. Okay, again, the first thing we need to do with these thoughts is to learn to see them from a place of compassion and love rather than a place of fear. That's what all of the curiosity we just talked about helps us to do.  Let's say one of your thoughts was "I'm just so ugly and fat." So now we want to question, question, question. Why do I think I'm ugly? Or why do I think I am fat? Where did this thought come from? What's the first time I remember using this or having this? Ugly according to who? Fat according to who? Just keep going until you feel you understand that thought really well. Through this process, let's say that you recall your aunt telling you when you were 12 that you were just so cute and chubby, and you better watch it because you had the body type that could get really fat and then men wouldn't like you and you'd probably never get married. Okay, that lovely aunt, doing the best that she could, right, trying to warn you. But you could start to see how your brain could interpret that to mean that you were fat and ugly. And then it will start playing that line over and over in your head until it runs subconsciously in the background as one of those 57,000 thoughts a day that were unaware of. 

23:25 

But think about that 12 year old girl. Everything that she had already been conditioned to believe about her desires to be loved and to be married is suddenly in question. She starts to look at her body in a way she never has before, resenting it for already keeping her from a future she was told to expect and plan for. Doesn't your heart just break for that girl? I feel so much compassion for her. When we realize that her thoughts came from a place of fear and that she felt so horrible after what her aunt said, then we can soften our heart toward that past version of ourselves who was seeking so desperately to understand the world and her place in it. 

24:12 

If your your specific thoughts bring up deep emotions for you, follow what we did previously, and just allow yourself to feel these emotions fully. Just sit and feel. Don't distract yourself by looking at your phone or picking at you nails or going to get something to eat. Just sit, feel, no buffering allowed. And then again, once the feeling has subsided, then you can move on to processing your thoughts about it. If you had a situation similar to the example that I just gave about a 12 year old girl, you might think she was just scared and embarrassed and dealt with it the only way that she knew how. Or maybe she was so hurt and confused and didn't know how to manage that situation. Those types of thoughts will create feelings of compassion for her. 

25:05 

The thing we don't want to do is to see our thoughts and start beating ourselves up for them. Every one of those thoughts comes from some place that made complete sense to us at the time. It was us doing the best we knew how with the tools we had. Extending compassion towards ourselves for these thoughts is the only way to begin moving into a better place. We won't move into a better place by beating ourselves up. 

25:33 

Okay, so here we're going to take this unintentional thought and create an intentional thought that can take its place. For example, taking the thought "I'm fat and ugly," and replacing it with a thought that starts to move us out of that place, going to the place of "I am super skinny and beautiful," if you don't believe it, won't work because your brain knows that you do not believe. So we need to find a thought that your brain can believe, such as "I'm grateful my body is healthy and strong." Eventually you'll get to the place where you can say" I love my beautiful body," but if you're not there yet, to choose that as an intentional thought is not going to work because your brain is going to resist it because you brain knows that you don't believe that yet. 

26:21 

Okay, so we want to take that negative thought of "I'm fat and ugly," and we want to find a thought that's going to create compassion or create self-love. The thought of self-love would be like we said, a step up, something that you can still a hundred percent believe. Like the example I gave was "I am grateful my body is healthy and strong." Okay, so once we've decided on some thoughts to think that create compassion and love, now we start to integrate them into our lives. One of the misconceptions many people can have about this work is that we figure out what the new thought is that we want to have, and then we just have it and we move on. 

27:02 

But unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. It's a lot of concerted effort to get the new thought to supplant the old thought. Remember the path in the forest? That old thought that has been walked thousands of times in our primitive brain, and it really loves that thought? Creating a new thought is like creating a new path the in forest. It is thick and knee deep and unknown. Your primitive brain will avoid it at all costs, but your prefrontal cortex has the ability, and even the responsibility,  to override the primitive brain. Eventually with constant overriding, the new thought will get some traction and its own path will start to become well worn and easier to walk. But this is a process and it has to be a compassionate and a loving one. When you find yourself engaging in one of your thoughts that you're trying to change, don't get frustrated and yell at yourself for being so stupid. Speak compassionately to yourself. Something along the lines of, "nope, come on, sweetie. I really don't believe that anymore. I actually know myself to be a loving, kind and compassionate person." Or maybe you could say something along the line of "I'm actually quite smart. I've figured out how to successfully (insert your own right there.)" What is something that you've already learned how successfully do? Learning to speak about yourself in loving, kind, and compassionate ways makes a huge difference, okay? If we want to really get to a place of greater self-love, it's imperative that we learn to manage the chatter going on in our heads. 

28:41 

We learn to do this by becoming aware of what's already going on up there, and then compassionately challenging the thoughts that are not serving us. Beating ourselves up for not being where we think we should be right now is never going to help us move into a better place. If you were to beat your dog every time they did something that annoyed you, eventually the dog would cower in the corner and it would lose itself, it'd lose its personality, except when it got really angry and then it would come out in full force aggression, right? But if you give that dog love and compassion, if you gave him room to grow with gentle discipline, that dog will grow into a healthy, loving, engaging companion. And we work the same way. If we beat ourselves every time we do something we don't want, we will cower in the corner, afraid to make a move because if it's wrong we'll just get beaten again. We will hold ourselves back from our potential. But if we will learn to be loving and compassionate to ourselves, we give ourselves room to grow without fear. 

29:55 

So here's the process to cultivating greater self-love. This is just a quick review of everything we've talked about. Do a deep dive into your thoughts and really begin to figure out what thoughts are running around in your brain. Download, download, download. Okay, then we're going to take the time to really process and feel the emotions that may come up for you in having done the previous exercise and writing down all your thoughts. Then we want to be compassionate with ourselves by getting really curious about those thoughts and where they came from and why they continue to hang around. Fourth, we want to create new, compassionate thoughts that we want to think, that will eventually override the thoughts that are not helping you to love yourself. That is creating intentional thoughts, right? Okay, and then fifth, we want to be consistently compassionate over and over until your primitive brain starts to incorporate the new intentional thought. It's a process to, be sure, but one that will pay great dividends as time goes on. 

31:05 

If you feel as though you need some help on this journey to greater self-love, contact me and let's get to work. I have a program that walks you through this and we can do it together. I can help you work through it more thoroughly and efficiently. This is one of the things that I do as a life coach. And the benefit of working with a life coach is I'm just going to keep pushing you, to say things that are gonna make you angry and you're gonna go "I don't want to go there." I want you to feel that and I'm going to help you stay there so that you can work through this. Okay? That's what I do as a life coach. My job is to help get to this place. You can also do this on your own, but a downside to that is that it's easy to give up. It is easy to quit. It easy not to go as deep as you need to go to figure out what you need to. 

31:59 

So whether you're working with me or whether you're working through this on your own, I promise you it's worth the investment of time and money and effort to get to this better version of yourself. Getting to a place where you are living in peace with yourself and giving yourself the gift of growth and tapping into your potential will be one of the greatest blessings and investments of your life. Do this for you. Self-love is mandatory for us to create what we are meant to create here on this earth. I know that and I love growing up into this space. Don't you? Okay, that's gonna do it for me today. If you feel like this podcast is adding value to your life please subscribe, please leave a review. Five stars would be fabulous. And please share this with people. This information, this topic specifically, getting to a place where we really love ourselves we value ourselves, we recognize our worth, this is it this is what life is about. This is important so please share this with someone that you feel can use it. And please contact me if you need some help working through this process because it's tough, it is hard, and it uncomfortable. But to become that new better version of ourselves that can live in a place of self love is so worth it, promise you. That's it for me today. I'll see you next week. Bye. 

33:45 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help to get to your best self ever. See ya.