Self-Love Is The Whole Journey

You are not here to become someone else. That is the heartbeat of this Spiritual Shit Show solo, where I get blunt and tender about what self-love actually is and what it is not. If you have been treating your healing like a constant self-improvement project, consider this your reset: the whole journey is learning how to love yourself, not fix yourself into a perfect, polished, “enlightened” version.

We talk about why self-love does not equal arrogance, selfishness, or being the loudest person in the room. Real love is humble. It is quiet strength, compassion, and grace. When you stop performing for worth, you can finally breathe, create, and enjoy your life without competing for space. I also share the perspective shift that still floors me: the odds of you being born are about one in 400 trillion. There is only one you, and there will never be you again, so why measure your life against someone else’s?

Then we get practical. I walk through self-forgiveness as the pathway to self-love, because most of us are not struggling to love ourselves, we are struggling to forgive ourselves. We use the Ho'oponopono prayer as an inward practice, and I offer two exercises you can do today: the photo exercise to spot your inner critic and practice gratitude, and a letter-writing prompt that helps you hold every version of you with compassion.

If this hits, subscribe, share it with a friend who needs a softer mirror, and leave a review so more people can find the self-love and self-forgiveness tools we are building together.

Transcript

Welcome And The Real Goal

0:00

Hello and welcome back to the Spiritual Shit Show. My name is Julie Wynn. You're a spiritual hype girl and I am so happy you are here. This podcast is a follow-up from the previous one on self-love, and I just wanna say this as clearly as I can. The whole journey, all of it, is learning how to love yourself. Not to fix yourself, not to perfect yourself, not to better yourself, not to become some ideal, healed, enlightened version of yourself. Just learn how to love yourself. These spiritual practices seem so easy, but they're so hard, and I want you to think about this when you really zoom out for a second

A One In 400 Trillion You

0:45

and you start to realize how wild it is that you're even here. The chances of you being born are about one in 400 trillion. Like you right now, listening to this are literally a statistical impossibility. And you one of one, there will never be you again. There has never been you before in this form. Like you're it the way you experience life, the way you feel life, the way you create your life. It's you there. It's so unique. There has never been you before. There will never be you again. So why would your life be about becoming someone else? Why would your life be about constantly measuring yourself against other people feeling inadequate, feeling not good enough At some point, you, me, we. Have to remember, we are not incomplete. We are so whole in who we are. We have to love it. Fucking love all of it. The story, the journey, the experiences. Our ability to come back to ourselves over and over and over and over, and over and over again to remind ourselves who we are.

Self-Love Without The Performance

2:18

And I think there's a fear around self-love, like if I really love myself. Am I going to become really selfish? Does self-love equate to being arrogant and an asshole? And if I really love myself, then does that mean that I am positioning myself above everybody else, and I think that I am better than everyone? But let me tell you, that is not love. When you really allow yourself to deepen into love, you'll know what love really is. Love is fucking humble. The more love that comes into your life, the quieter you want to be, that love is compassionate. Love is gracious. Love, doesn't need to prove anything. Love doesn't need to be the shiniest version in the room. Love doesn't need to be the loudest one in the room. Love doesn't need to flex, definitely doesn't need to position itself on a pedestal. Real love is not performative. Real love is soft, and it's solid and it's powerful and it's grounded. Real love is the person in the back of the room who doesn't need attention to know who they are. Self-love isn't. I'm the best. I'm better than everyone. Look at me. Self-love is I don't actually need to prove a thing. Self-love is trusting in life, in self. Self-love motivates you to deep dive and have more fun and more joy, and what you're doing and what it is that you want to create. Self-love doesn't need to perform. Self-love is exciting too. Self-love offers you the ability to see other people truthfully, without needing to compete or to be in spaces and feel inadequate. Self-love is being in your own energy without abandoning any parts of yourself.

Self-Forgiveness Before Self-Love

4:44

So how do we get here? I'm not really quite sure I'm in the journey with you, but I can say for me, the pathway to self-love has been self-forgiveness because most of us aren't struggling to love ourselves. We're actually really struggling to forgive ourselves for who we were, for what we tolerated, for how we showed up, for what we didn't know yet. So we stay stuck in this low level shame and try to build self-love on top of it, but it doesn't work like that. You have to clear the shame first, and that's where the work begins. And the last podcast I talked about, the prayer of Ho Oona Ono. I love you. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. And how we can practice that not to anyone else, but. To you over and over and over and over again. I'm trying to think of some tangible things, some practices that we can do together because I know when I started practicing, I love you. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I did it to help relieve, I almost use it as a bandaid, but I didn't have an access point. How to get to the core wound of myself. We can do these practices, but until we get underneath of it all and really have the courage to hold compassionately these parts of our past or these parts of our experiences that are truly the core wound, that's kind of still in us. Which can be hard to hold. And you know, that requires sometimes like crying, crying, crying, crying, um, and then sleeping, sleeping, sleeping. So it's work. It's work

Photos Reveal The Inner Critic

6:40

it. One of the things I came up with is this, photo exercise. So I want you to go back and just look at old pictures of yourself, old photos, recent photos. It doesn't matter. And I want you just to notice what's your first reaction when you look at pictures taken of yourself? Do you cringe? Do you judge? Do you pick yourself apart? I do. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty? Or can you say. Oh my God. Look at me living my life. Or, oh, that was such a great, beautiful memory. I'm so happy that was captured. Or, ah, this picture brings me so much gratitude. This picture brings me so much gratitude. I know for myself, when I look back at photos of myself now, I'm like, oh my gosh, I was so skinny. I was so beautiful. I was so young. I look amazing. Look at my life. Look at all the fun things I've done. At the exact same time. I know in that photo I was suffering so much inside because I didn't feel loved. I didn't feel like I was enough. I felt completely broken. My life was shattered. And so the question becomes, if you couldn't see your beauty, then what makes you think you're seeing yourself and your beauty clearly now? The work is learning how to see yourself clearly in your truth. If you look at a photo and cringe, pause and try this, ah, this photo brings me so much gratitude. That's me doing my best. That's me living my life. That's me, worthy of love and worthy of that experience. Self-love isn't just about how you treat yourself today. It's about how you choose to hold, to see, to love, to love every version of you.

Write The Letter Then Begin Again

8:45

I also love this exercise from the past podcast too, of. Writing yourself a letter. Maybe you know, dear your name, I am so sorry that you have felt. Unloved. I am so sorry that you feel abandoned. I am so sorry that you feel like you have to compete with masculine energies and you can't show up in your power because of the system. I am so sorry that you that you abandon yourself too. Hold a compassionate love for spaces. I am so sorry. So that's another exercise that you can do. Like how can you write your own note to yourself? I love you. I am so sorry. Please forgive me for the times that I showed up angry, or please forgive me for all the times that I felt like I needed to protect myself or prove myself. Please forgive me for all of the times that I didn't love you and I didn't see you clearly. Please forgive me for all the times that I thought you were ugly and your body wasn't beautiful and you weren't good enough or talented enough, and then I love you. I love you. My gosh. I love you for who you are. I love you for how you show up. I love you for the work that you do. So get out your journal. I love you. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. And I wanna remind you that this whole journey might just be about how to love yourself. Not louder, not better, but just more, more honestly, more powerfully, more compassionately. Self-love. Maybe this is the chapter that we're in. I love you. Thanks for being on this journey with me. Till next time.