Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome to My Wellness to Success podcast. It is a podcast where I discuss health, wellness, and accountability tips so that we can live our best life. My name is Dr. Martin Canal, and I am a health and wellness accountability coach, and I have been a nurse for over 26 years, and everything that I. Those are my expert opinions, but it is no way, shape or form any medical advice. So if you need or if you feel the need to get medical help, please reach out to your own medical professional today. We gotta talk about self-love. I feel that it's an important topic because how can you love others if you don't love your. you always have to begin with your loving yourself first before you can show any ounce of love to anyone else. So it is an, you know, an aspect of wellbeing because if you go around walking around without loving yourself, it is gonna affect the way that you see. The level of happiness that you may experience, as well as the level of gratitude that you may have for anything in your life. So I'm gonna discuss some strategies that you can use to practice self-love. One positive strategy is to have positive. Talk. When looking at yourself in the mirror, how do you respond to the person looking back at you? You have to speak to yourself with kindness and respect. You cannot have these negative thoughts about yourself. If there's a certain area in your body that you do not. you cannot keep repeating. I don't like, I don't like my arms. I don't like my flabby arms. I don't like my love handles. I don't like my feet. No, you were made in a certain way and you need to appreciate your body and everything that comes with it. So you have got to challenge your negative thoughts and replace them with positive affirmation. I love my. I like the shape of my eyes. I love my arms. I will work on my arms to make them firmer. I love my love handles and I will work on them and they will get tighter and slimmer. You have to have positive thoughts around all that you think is negative in your body, and you also have to have a healthy mental. status and have positive a affirmation. I am happy. I love myself. I am dedicated to loving myself. I am determined to love myself and love others. I respect myself. I am grateful for everything that I have. So this is all, these are all, you know, positive affirmation that you can do as you're talking to. And sometime you don't even have to be in front of the mirror sometime while I'm driving. This is a time for me, and this is a time where I bring out everything that I think is is positive in you. Because if I'm always talking about the positive aspect of my life, of my body, of my mental, Then this is what, in my mind, in my subconscious mind, this is what is always gonna come at the forefront. So I will not have the time to think about negative thoughts and, negative self thought. Because remember, it's all about living it, leveling up. It's all about stepping up to the next level and loving. because once you love yourself, you are gonna be stronger, be more confident. And anything that someone may say to you, I don't know, regarding your love handles, will not affect you because you will stand on your own two feet and be proud of you and the body that you have and the mental status that you. and you will have this aura about you that, and nobody will be able to mess with you because they know that anything they say to you will not affect you. My second strategy is practice self care. You guys, you know that all about self care every day. I always ask you a question, what did you do for self-care today? Self-care is a priority. Putting yourself first is a. you have got to make time for activity that bring you joy and make you stronger as a person. Make you relax and just fill up your cup with whatever activity that you want to do. If it's just meditating, exercising, reading a book, cooking, going for a walk, anything that brings you joy, you need to do it on a daily. Basis. Even if it's just taking a nice bubble bath with some music playing in the background and you just releasing all the stress of the day, you have got to do that for yourself because you know why you are worth it. My third, practice for self-love is surround yourself with positivity. Negativity goes a long way and it can drag you. along with it. Being around people that are always negative will make you become negative yourself. So you need to surround yourself with a community that will lift you up, that will affirm that you are worth it. Anything that you are trying to achieve, it's worth it because you just, like I say, sometime you are the captain of your cruise ship and where it sails, it's up to you. So, yourself with people that believe in where you're going. It's a must because this will give you the power that you need. The this will give you the focus that you need. It will make you achieve your success, give you the courage. The discipline and that will make you commit to what you wanna do. And surrounding yourself with people who love and support you will decrease some the amount of negativity that can surround you in your life. And believe me, there's a lot of negativity in this world and is sometimes harder to look for the light of positivity than the darkness of negativity, because not everybody will see the roses like. but if you see the roses, your life will be a lot more easier than these people around you that, that are trying to drag you down. And sometimes you have to set boundaries. This is another strategy set boundaries. It is important for you to be able to say no to people who don't serve you, to people who doesn't want to see you happy, that doesn't support your wellbeing. Healthy boundaries will help protect your time, your energy, and your emotional health. Okay? You don't have time to be babysitting people that doesn't want to go the same path that you do. They don't want to go up to the next level like you do. And it's easy for these people to drag you down again, as I said before. So set these boundaries. because at the end of the day, remember it's all about you, not these people, because people will come and go and the real people that are there to support you no matter what, they will stay in your circle of trust. Now another strategy is to learn to forgive yourself. Sometimes we can be very, On ourselves and blame ourself for whatever's happening in our life. And remember that things don't happen to us. It happens for us. So you have got to see whatever setback that you have as an opportunity for growth. So you have got to learn to forgive yourself so that you can move on and grow from that challenge and end up on top, stronger, better, more confident, and. In control because once you commit to something, the output, the outcome to what you want and with hard work will happen and you cannot. just hold on to, to the guilt or the shame. Forgive yourself and move on. Because remember, I've heard that saying that whatever happened in in the past is just a thought. You can shift that thinking into a positive one so that you can move forward and work toward you living your best life. Okay? So just forget about the thought and shift your mindset and move forward. And with that, Another strategy is to celebrate your success. Any little win that you get for anything that you do, take the time to celebrate it. Don't wait till the end, till you reach your end goal to celebrate. You have to do it along the way because this will give you the courage, it will give you the determination, the focus that you need to keep on moving. If your goal is to lose weight, let's say you wanna. 20 pounds. Don't wait till you reach 20 pounds to celebrate. No. If you lose two pounds, it's something to be grateful for. And celebrate. Celebrate with. I don't know. You can, I don't know. Go to the movies, do something great that you like for yourself. Do something that you love and every time that you think that you've achieved a goal that will get you closer to your other goals, the ultimate goal, and celebrate what you've done and just focus on moving forward. No matter how small they it, it may seem, it is a step forward and you moving in the right direction. So celebrate that. And the last strategy that I'm gonna talk about is practic. gratitude, being grateful. Believe it or not, guys is such a powerful. Powerful impact on your wellbeing, and this will affect the way. the outlook that you have about yourself, about your life, and that will increase your self-love. So practicing gratitude and sometime journaling can help out with, with practicing that ritual, being grateful. Like for example, I write. on a daily basis what I'm grateful for, and that brings on the forefront, you know, giving me that positive thinking of everything that I have in terms of me physically, mentally, and all the things that I have surrounding me, the environment, my work, everything that I do. I am grateful. My bank account, my cars where I live in a beautiful, sunny Florida. I'm grateful for being here guys, when I hear that they're like 10 centimeter of snow or 20 centimeter centimeter of snow. Heck yeah. I'm, I'm grateful for living in Florida because I don't have to shovel that snow. I don't have to scrape that ice of my car. And you know why? I know it? Because I used to live in Canada, so right now I'm practicing gratitude for all of it. And practicing gratitude will make you focus on the positive aspect of your life rather than dwelling on what you. So implementing these strategies on the daily, on your daily lives can help cultivate a strong sense of self-love and improve your overall wellbeing and ultimately your happiness. Right. At the end of the day, it's all about living a productive, passionate, and joyful life. So this is what I wanted to talk about today, self-love. I hope that you can take some tips and apply to your life, and I wanted to thank you for listening to my podcast until the next time. Please do take care of yourself and put yourself first because it's all about you living your best life. I'm Dr. Martin Canal and I'll see you on my next episode.