Episode Transcript
In this episode, I want you to discover about self-love and self-worth. Self-love is a phrase that is more and more used these days. But do we really know what it means – or how to have more of it in our lives?
“ON A SCALE OF 1 TO 100, HOW HIGH WOULD YOU RATE YOURSELF ON YOUR SELF-LOVE? HOW MUCH DO YOU LOVE YOURSELF ALREADY?”
The higher the better. But if you are like me then you might struggle with the concept and actionable steps to take to increase the love for yourself. So I want to take the opportunity to shine a light on this topic and share what I have discovered so far.
Self-love is our topic today. For me, this is an important and at the same time uncomfortable topic. I have struggled with self-love for most of my life and still do. To be really honest, until a few years ago, I did not even understand what self-love actually is. Do you?
Some of you might have a similar issue to me with self-love. So let me start by describing what self-love is or is supposed to be. When you google self-love, you get this definition:
“SELF-LOVE MEANS HAVING A HIGH REGARD FOR YOUR OWN WELL-BEING AND HAPPINESS. SELF-LOVE MEANS TAKING CARE OF YOUR OWN NEEDS AND NOT SACRIFICING YOUR WELL-BEING TO PLEASE OTHERS.”
I like that one. The descriptions say as well: “Figuring out what self-love looks like for you as an individual is an important part of your mental health.” I think this touches already on one of the reasons why I was confused about self-love for a long time. It says that each one of us has to figure out for ourselves what self-love looks like.
※ LESSON NUMBER 1 – FIND YOUR OWN UNIQUE WAY OF SELF-LOVE ※
So, the first lesson for us is: Don´t take on someone else’s definition of self-love. Don´t try to copy someone in the way how they express or implement their self-love. The same as we don´t all love the same way another person, we all have our own unique way of self-love that we need to find for ourselves.
※ LESSON NUMBER 2 – LOVING YOURSELF IS A DISCOVERY JOURNEY ※
And that brings me to the second lesson straight away: Loving yourself is a discovery journey (Episode 31). You cannot just apply someone else´s theory and think that you are now good in the area of self-love. I truly believe that if we are not willing to go within and truly start to understand ourselves, our wishes, our desires, and our purpose – we are not able to love ourselves. And that´s why it is a journey and not a switch that you can just flick on or off.
When I keep reading one of the definitions of self-love on the internet, soon I come across this: vanity and selfishness, egotism, narcissism. This is the dark side of self-love! It’s one of the reasons why I did not want to learn about self-love for a long time. There is still a perception in our society that self-love is equal to being selfish. That if you love yourself, then you are just out for yourself. You ignore or worse, betray everyone else for your own benefit. I know that sounds a bit dramatic. But this is what some people think or even say about finding self-love.
※ LESSON NUMBER 3 – UNDERSTAND SELF-LOVE, WHAT IT IS AND WHAT IT ISN´T ※
That´s why it is so difficult to understand what self-love really is. Because it has this label to be seen as egoistic and selfish when it has truly nothing to do with it. So our third lesson is to truly understand the concept of self-love, what it is and what it isn´t.
The kind of self-love that gets its bad reputation is the feeding of the ego. That’s how I describe it and understand it. If we take actions and classify them as love for ourselves but truly they are selfish and harm others then these are actions that benefit a particular kind of ego and not our true self.
Our Ego is the identity that we are living and that we created over the length of our life. It’s what we identify with and what we say to others when we are asked who we are: parent, a husband, a wife, a manager, a teacher, a doctor, a German, an Australian, a US national, hetero, gay, white or black. These are all examples of identities that we collect over the course of our life. These identities build up our ego. We collect these identities to fit into the world and to be able to describe ourselves to others. Sometimes it describes our history, our journey so far. It can describe our accomplishments and what we are proud of to be. Sometimes it describes what we believe in and to which group of humans we belong – willingly or unwillingly.
And people can take actions to benefit and support the ego and the identity and call it self love. We can justify actions based on our identity – even if our actions hurt others. It´s another topic we can go into another time to understand what the ego is and what we do to hold up the facade of our ego. But today we are speaking about self-love.
“SO WHEN PEOPLE TAKE ACTIONS AND MAKE DECISIONS AND CALL IT SELF LOVE, BUT IT IS REALLY FOR THE BENEFIT OF BOOSTING THEIR EGO, THAT’S WHEN WE ARE LOOKING AT SELFISHNESS AND NARCISSISM.“
Most of us have a good feeling when we look at other people´s actions to distinguish if it was a true self-love act or rather selfish. We have a good nose for it and can sniff it out. But when it comes to ourselves it starts to get more difficult. We are more blind to our own actions and the reasons for them. But let me give you a quick reference that you can use to distinguish between self-love and selfishness.
- Self-love means to love and heal yourself and not the ego or identity that you portray to the world.
- Self-love actions are not hurting others, selfish actions can hurt others.
- Self-love leads us to understand our true self better and to connect with our higher self and the creativity and energy we can enhance through it.
- Selfishness leads us to do more and more to feed our ego, the identity that we cling on to – but it will never feed our soul, our purpose or our higher self.
- Self-love leads us to have greater compassion and empathy and love for others. Selfishness stops us from caring for others as it needs all the energy to feed the ego´s needs, desires and goals.
These are just a few guidelines between the two that can help you to better understand self-love and how it has nothing to do with being selfish or egoistic. But of course, that doesn’t mean that others will always see self-love actions for what they are. We are all learning and you can be part of bringing these lessons into the world.
※ LESSON NUMBER 4 – ACCEPT WHO YOU ARE AND WHAT YOU HAVE DONE IN THE PAST ※
Let me move on to a reason why we might find it so hard to love ourselves in the first place. A significant reason is that we can carry around memories and feelings from our past that create feelings of guilt, shame and regret in ourselves. For things that we have done in the past, that happened to us in the past or that others told us about ourselves in the past. And these memories, these thoughts and the feelings they create can stop us from loving ourselves or let us feel worthy of loving ourselves.
LESSON 4 IS THEREFORE TO ACCEPT WHO WE ARE AND WHAT WE HAVE DONE AND STILL GO ON THE JOURNEY OF SELF-LOVE.
The past is the past and can never be changed. But what you can change is the way you think about it and how much you will let it influence your present moment and your future. If you want to go on this journey of self-discovery and self-love but you carry around this baggage from your past that is pulling you down – you can choose today. Do you want to keep holding on to this baggage and let it slow you down on your journey – or are you ready to leave it behind?
I love this statement: A memory without the emotional charge is called wisdom. If we can let go of the feelings of shame, guilt, blame and regret from our memories, they turn into wisdom. They turn into life lessons that we can learn from. So for you to be able to let go of this baggage, you want to let go of the emotions and feelings that you associate with the memories. Various techniques can help you to let go of these emotions like forgiveness work or tapping.
※ LESSON NUMBER 5 – WE ARE ALREADY COMPLETE THE WAY WE CURRENTLY ARE – ALWAYS! ※
There is another way to block our self love journey. It is to be more focused on the present moment and the future instead of the past. I give you a few examples of thoughts that people can have:
- “First I have to lose 20 pounds before I can love myself.”
- “First I need to get this new job with a higher salary Then I will be able to say that I achieved something in my life.”
- “When I finally get married, that’s when I am complete and can love myself fully.”
- “First I need to have children that I will completely love, then I will be worthy of love myself.”
Does any of that resonate with you? All of these describe the situation in which we currently feel unworthy. That we are not allowed to be loved or love ourselves in the way we are. That we are not complete now, exactly how we currently are.
But we are whole. We are complete. There is nothing that we need to achieve to be more complete. We don’t have to be someone else to be complete. There isn’t a different way we need to look like it to be complete. And there is not another identity that we need to reach to be finally complete.
This is my final LESSON NUMBER 5. WE ARE ALREADY COMPLETE RIGHT NOW AND THE WAY WE CURRENTLY ARE – ALWAYS. If we accept that or can start to accept and understand, we can take meaningful steps towards self-love, self-acceptance and self-worth.
I am not saying this is easy. It might sound simple but for sure this is not easy. This is why it is a journey and a process of self-discovery.
※ A BOOK I CAN HIGHLY RECOMMEND ※
To go deeper into the topic of not judging ourselves so harshly anymore is “Judgement Detox” by Gabby Bernstein. It helps you to understand the concept of judgement better. It makes you aware when you’re judging others but more importantly yourself.
