Loving Yourself Enough To…

In Episode 154 of The Hope Zone, Dr. B invites you to love yourself enough—to set boundaries that protect your peace, to embrace grace when you stumble, and to honor your worth by saying no when you must. This episode is a bold call to care for yourself as deeply as you care for others—because the journey to true love begins within.

The HOPE Zone...where there's HOPE for every situation!

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I'm Brenda Caldwell, aka Dr. B. Welcome to the Hope Zone, moving you from a place of hopelessness and brokenness to a place of healing and hopeless. A place where hope is alive to bring you more peace, more joy, more freedom, and more understanding of your God-given purpose. Let's enter the hope zone. Hi, and welcome into another edition of the Hope Zone with me, Victor Caldwell, aka Dr. B. You're in the hope zone where there's hope for every situation. We're in episode number 154 today. I'm excited about being here. I would love for you to hit the subscribe button and hit that notification button so that you can get the upload that we do every single Monday. Yes, we put another dose of hope in the earth. That's what we're here to do. And I'm so grateful for my team and so grateful in this fourth year that we are continuing the Hope Zone podcast. What are we talking about today? We are talking about loving yourself enough to dot, dot, dot. Oh my God, loving yourself enough to dot dot. So we're gonna talk about a few ways that we demonstrate that we really love ourselves. It's not about being in love with ourselves. Come on. It's not about being in love like a narcissist. Ooh, it's not about being in love, but it's about being able to value ourselves the way that God would have us to be valued. It's about treating ourselves the way God would have us to treat ourselves. It's about being able to see ourselves the way that God sees us. We're fearfully and wonderfully made with the apple of his eye. He loves us with an everlasting love. And it's important that we love ourselves. We are to love God. The first commandment is that we love the Lord with all of our heart, our soul, our mind, and our strength, and that we would love our neighbors as we love ourselves. So in order, in order for us to really be healthy uh in this life, we gotta be able to have a good, healthy relationship with ourselves. That's important. So we're talking about loving yourself enough to dot, excuse me, dot, dot, dot. And so the first one is loving yourself enough to set healthy boundaries. Did you hear that? Loving yourself enough to set healthy boundaries. What does that look like? What does that mean? Sometimes, you know, there there are there are times when uh we as people feel uh guilty saying no uh to people, saying no to loved ones, saying no uh to friends, saying no to some things that we don't really want to do. We have we have to love ourselves enough to be okay, to know that it's okay to say no, it's okay to have healthy boundaries and not be the answer to everybody's prayer per se, to not have to feel this uh need to do everything for everybody with no kind of uh respite for yourself. So it's important to understand loving yourself enough to uh uh say no to things that you don't want to do. If you don't want to go uh, you know, to the to the party not wanting to do this, that, or the other. Just loving yourself enough to say it's it's okay. No, I'm not gonna participate. No, you know, you're not having to feel like you got to come up with some, you know, uh, you know, a perfect excuse and things like that. So loving ourselves enough. Loving ourselves enough. That's very, very important. And when you talk about setting healthy boundaries, we're really talking about uh allowing yourself to uh know that you have certain rights, you know, having a right to your own space, having a right to uh making things a priority that are important to you. Uh just setting those boundaries where, you know, maybe you are not going to be on social media during a certain hour of the day or certain times, you know, just setting some boundaries where you turn your phone off. That's okay. You know, setting uh, you know, those those boundaries where you don't, as I said, give give in to everybody else's wishes. It's just important to understand you've got to love yourself enough. Gotta love yourself enough. And you get to kind of fill in that blank. We think, well, do I really love myself enough? Do I am I always stressing about what people think of me? Loving yourself enough. There's another one, loving yourself enough to become unfazed, unbothered, and unmoved by people, what people think of you, because what people think of us is really none of our business. Because they're just thinking, it's their thoughts, it's their opinion. So loving yourself enough not to be weighed down by the opinions of others. That's so important because the enemy would love for us to get caught up with the trap of being overly concerned about oh, people, what people are gonna think of me, what people are gonna say. Well, guess what? I've learned they're gonna talk anyway. They're gonna talk anyway. So you've got to get to a point where we just say, you know what, I love myself enough to dot dot dot. Are you with me? Are you with me? It's so important. I want you to know, uh, as my one today, you have the power to love yourself enough to make a decision that you're going to embrace yourself. You're going to, you know, you're going to be okay even if you fall short. That's another one. Loving yourself enough uh to receive grace when you fall short. Uh, the Bible says all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Every human being, no matter how much we may love God, you want to do things right, you want to honor the Lord, you're gonna fall short. You're gonna say something you shouldn't have said, you're gonna do something that you shouldn't have said. We we we we're gonna mess up, we're gonna fall short. Love yourself enough not to fall into the trap of shame, condemnation, and guilt. Oh my God, those are three cousins, close cousins, that really try to destroy our uh sense of uh self-worth and and value uh to the earth because we fall short. We fall short. And when you fall short, receive the grace. Repent when you fall short, acknowledge it uh when you fall short. Come on, uh, when you make a mistake, come on, love yourself enough uh to receive grace from mistakes. Sometimes we make mistakes in relationships, sometimes we make mistakes in business, come on, sometimes you may make a mistake, you know, uh on your job. Uh you may make a mistake with your child. You you may have you know done something you shouldn't have done or said something that you should have said. Love yourself enough to acknowledge it. Don't try to hide it, acknowledge it, but then receive the grace. Receive the grace, receive the forgiveness. Come on, receive the mercy. Uh, grace is not receiving, grace is receiving what rather what you haven't earned and what you don't deserve, and mercy is not receiving. Come on, not receiving what you've earned. But the bottom line is that it's the will of God for us to love ourselves enough. Jesus died on the cross. Come on, he literally laid down his life so that we could receive grace. But if we are not willing to receive the grace, he may as well get back up there. You don't want him to get back up there, do you? No. Love yourself enough to receive the grace. So we're talking about loving yourself enough to do some things, and receiving grace is a great thing to do. It's it's it honors God, it honors Jesus when we receive the grace that he died for us to have. Condemnation and guilt and shame. Uh, those are just very toxic emotions that do nothing but drag you down like a battery. You cannot have true joy and true peace. So love yourself enough. Love yourself enough to receive that grace. And and and loving yourself, here's one that's very important, I think. Loving yourself enough to treat yourself as well as you would treat somebody else. Do you have a problem with being good to yourself? Uh, you know, are you your worst critic? Do you find it difficult to buy yourself something that that that maybe you would purchase for somebody else? I I used to struggle with that. Boy, I had to get delivered. I mean, I could go all out and I'm very, I've always been very generous to people, and I will buy somebody something, but when it came to me, I would be like, uh, I don't really need that. I talked myself out of it. So many years I struggled with that. And I'm telling you, I'm telling you, we have to look inward and ask ourselves, why? Why is it that I'm struggling with being good to myself and treating myself well when I when I can so easily, you know, be kind and generous to other people. And I just realized that I needed to be freed of that. I I realized that that that again, sometimes we can be too conservative. I mean, I'm very good with money, but that's you can be too conservative and you can be you you can you can you can be out of bounds in some ways. And so I just want you to realize that you have to love yourself enough to do some things. Come on, maybe sometimes to make some changes. What's going on in your life that you can say, you know what? If I get real, if I'm honest, you know, people love to say, if I'm if I'm being honest, what is it that you can say, if you're being honest, you need to show that you love yourself enough to do? Sometimes loving ourselves enough is to maybe get out of a toxic relationship. If you're in a relationship where you're not being honored, you're not being appreciated, you're not being celebrated, you're not being uh, you know, shown uh uh uh the love that you deserve. Do you love yourself enough to remove yourself from that toxic, unhealthy uh relationship? You know, it it's it's a lot of different ways when we think about loving ourselves. You know, we can love ourselves sometimes enough to uh, you know, to be honest, to leave a job that is toxic, is unhealthy, is, you know, destroying your health, it is stressing you out to the to the core. And I know we all need money, absolutely. We need money, but do we love ourselves enough to at least start looking and realize we know maybe something better? You know, I need to not just feel like I'm stuck. Come on. Because when you feel stuck, you you just it it it it's debilitating, it's mentally debilitating to feel stuck. I mean, you lose all your drive, you lose your motivation, you lose enthusiasm, and that's not the will of God. So loving yourself enough, maybe in that regard, is loving yourself enough to leave. Come on, to leave, to make plans to leave, to look for new opportunities, loving yourself enough to realize that there's still, you know, chance for you to change uh, you know, work environment, home environment. Uh, you know, sometimes loving ourselves enough is to remove ourselves from, again, toxic uh family members, if we're just gonna be honest about it, uh, toxic friends, toxic people uh in general, and then it can be a hard decision, but you have to you have to guard your heart. The Bible says, guard your heart with all diligence, for out of it flows the issues of life. So we have to be careful to realize that you know, when you find yourself being, you know, talking uh with a lot of anxiety, a lot of anger, a lot of emotions that that drag your spirit down, then you need to look at who are you spending your time with? Who who who's pulling that uh weight on you? Who's who's who's who's weighing on your heart in such a way that you realize, hey, I need to, I need to do something about this. I I do I do I have to settle? Do I have to sometimes you can just you can love people and you can reposition them. You can love yourself enough, come on, to reposition people. Who in your life may need to be repositioned? What does repositioning mean? It means that you move a person from a close, tender part of your heart and you reposition them, you move them down. You you mentally basically readjust the way that you see them, right? Because when people betray you, when people hurt you, when people wrong you, when people uh uh are very toxic and they're very negative, sometimes they just need to be repositioned. Are you with me? So it's loving yourself enough to do some things that only you can do. Loving yourself enough. You know, it's very important. Again, it's not about being in love with yourself. That's that's totally out of order, right? And unhealthy, but it's valuing yourself enough to say, you know what, I want to live my best life. And I want to be able to be my best version of myself. I want to bring myself to I want to I want to bring out the best uh in myself every day. I want to offer my children the best of me. I want to offer my spouse or my friends or my loved ones the best of me. And and sometimes you got to take inventory to say, okay, where am I falling short? So so so if your confidence is low, if your self-esteem is low, if the way that if you feel uh uh that you're not good enough, well, you're not loving yourself enough. You're not you're not seeing yourself through the eyes of God. You're not seeing yourself through the eyes of God. No, you you you're seeing yourself through the eyes of somebody else. And it's important for you to recognize and realize that loving yourself is really and truly simply coming into agreement with God that and what his word says about you. You're fearfully, you're wonderfully made, you're marvelous in his sight. Uh, he loves you as the apple of his eye. I mean, he loves you with an everlasting love. His love never fails. Nothing, come on, will ever separate you from his love. So when you're talking about loving yourself, you're saying I honor myself because God himself chose me, loved me, values me. So that's that's because that's what the word says is it's not that you uh first love me. God, God says, I first love you. Come on, God first loved us, he loved us so much that he sent his one and only begotten Son. Come on, hallelujah, to come into this world, hallelujah, lay down this life. And the Bible says, No greater love has any man than this that he will lay down his life for his friend. John 15, 5. So it's important for you to know that you are sufficiently loved by the Father. But how do you demonstrate your love back to the Father? By loving yourself. Will you love yourself enough to honor your life and do be good to you and do good things, come on, not just for others, but to yourself. So, so doing good things for you, loving yourself enough to get rest, loving yourself enough to put the right things in your body. Come on now, come on. Loving yourself enough, come on, to to uh not overindulge in anything that could set you up uh for uh uh the trick of the enemy, you know, drugs, alcohol, uh those things that can alter uh you from being your best version of yourself. It's so many things, you know. It's just important for you to understand when you talk about loving yourself, you get to feel in the dot. Loving yourself enough to. So if there's something that you recognize, you need to change. If it's something you recognize that you do that show that listening to this podcast uh basically convicts you to think, you know what, I'm not demonstrating love for myself because I'm I'm doing XYZ. I'm tolerating XYZ, I'm I'm I'm putting up with or I'm overindulging in. Come on, I'm not, I'm not joyful, I'm not happy, I'm not happy with my life. When you're not happy with your life, you gotta look at yourself. You gotta look at yourself because it means that you're not loving yourself enough to make some changes. Come on. If you don't like your life, if you don't like where you are, what are you willing to do different? Because God has created us with what is called volition. What is volition? Volition is the ability to choose, and that's the powerful thing that you have. You have the ability every single day to choose what kind of life you want to live. And and and we have to get out of this mindset of thinking that we're stuck. You you're not stuck, you're never stuck. You're never stuck. If you're not in prison, physically in prison somewhere, come on, then you're not physically confined. You're not stuck. And even somebody who's in prison, who's an inmate in prison, I mean, literally, there are more people that are in sometimes that people are more free, I should say, in prison than people who are walking around free because the imprisonment starts in the mind. And so when you shift, you love yourself enough to shift your mindset about how you think about yourself and how you think about your life, and if there's some things that you don't like, then remember you can love yourself enough to make some changes. Come on. Because one thing I learned years ago, what you can tolerate will never change. What you can tolerate, it will never change. Come on. And so, if in order for you to experience breakthrough, in order for you to have joy in life and happiness in life, and I know happiness we say is based on what's happening, but you can have a happy spirit, you can have a spirit that allows you every single day to have a joy that is that is just unspeakable. You can have that every single day, but it's about what you choose to do, it's about you choosing to believe that you deserve, come on, to be happy. You deserve to have joy, you deserve to live in peace. After all, that's what Christ died for us. He died for us to have that. So loving yourself enough is sometimes loving yourself enough to make the necessary changes in your life. Sometimes that requires, as I said, leaving toxic environments. Sometimes that requires removing yourself from unhealthy relationships, breaking up with folks that uh are not honoring you. Sometimes it simply requires changing your eating habits and decide that you're gonna, you're gonna exercise, you're gonna take your body back, you're gonna, you're gonna physically, you know, work on yourself. Why? So that you can be the best version of yourself and have energy and and have zeal and zest for life. So loving yourself enough runs the gamut. It's from A to Z. Loving yourself enough to dot, dot, dot. You hear that? You hear that? Are you receiving this word? I hope you are. I hope you do. I believe that you are, and I believe that you have received it. And I believe that you're thinking about wow, how do I love myself? And how am I not loving myself enough to? So I just want you to know that this is a word that came straight from uh from the Lord as I prayed. I pray about all my uh podcasts, and this is for somebody, and I believe it's for you. I believe it's for you. And so that concludes today's podcast loving yourself enough to. Well, I'd love for you to go to my website at brendacauldwell.com to hear and see uh some other things that I, you know, I do, other work that I do and so forth. And I always love to say this in closing. In a world full of darkness, there's still a reason to have hope. So, what do I want you to do? But hold on to hope like it's a piece of rope. Until next time. I'm so glad you made it to the end of the podcast. If the hope zone is making a positive difference in your life, please subscribe to the show so you don't miss the next episode. Leave a review, and most of all, share it with your friends. And remember from your worst day to your best day, there's hope in every situation.