Stop Chasing People: Choose Yourself Instead

Have you ever found yourself chasing love, approval, opportunities, or success—only to feel disconnected from yourself? 

In this episode, I explore one of the most powerful lessons I've learned this year: the importance of choosing yourself first. Through personal stories and practical reflections, I share how self-abandonment can show up in relationships, business, and everyday life, and why coming back to yourself changes everything. 

We explore self-worth, emotional awareness, presence, and embodiment, offering simple practices to help you stop seeking validation from others and start building a deeper, more authentic relationship with yourself.

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In this episode, I explore one of the biggest mindset shifts I've experienced this year, choosing myself instead of constantly chasing people, opportunities, and validation. I share the lessons I've learned about self-worth, presence, and why the moment you stop abandoning yourself is often the moment everything begins to change. Enjoy the episode, and let me know what resonates with you the most Welcome to You Matter. I matter, a transformational podcast about reconnecting with what truly matters. I'm your host James, and each week is an opportunity to explore a little bit deeper who you really are with amazing guests. We explore topics such as purpose, connection, commitment, and what it really means to live more consciously. If you've been feeling disconnected from yourself, from others, or from life, you are in the right place. Join us on new matter. I matter. Now. Let's begin. in this episode, I want to talk about a topic which has been really, really important the last few months, if not this year so far, and that is choosing myself. And this has come out so many times in my life where I end up just chasing, and I chase people, I chase, I chase opportunities for work, I chase money, I, I basically chase everything. And I've, I've always struggled. And so in this podcast episode, what I thought I'd, I would basically talk about are seven key things that have cropped up in my life, uh, or c-c-cropped up in the last few months, tends to be the last few months, I think. Last few months. Last, uh, yeah, the basically twenty twenty-six. And the first thing is we spend so much of our lives waiting to be chosen when, in fact, we can already choose ourselves. And this is so important because as human, as human beings, we often... Especially if you're, if you're single. If you're single and looking for a partner, there seems to be th-this, this thing of where you... I, g- using m-me as an example, I would go, I'll go out into the public, I'll go out into whether it is festivals or I would go to wherever, CrossFit, and I would basically, my attention would be caught by some good-looking, um, hot woman. And then I would notice myself chasing her kind of thing. Not in as I... Not in a way of really, really chasing her around the room or chasing her around a festival, but more I would aban-- I would leave myself and I would chase her. So what I mean by that is I would literally abandon myself in order to give her everything of me, my attention. I'd put her on a pedestal. I would find out, I'd realize that, um, basically I would shrink into that part of me that perhaps as a child didn't get enough love. And so seeing this person, suddenly I'm seeing this person and I'm thinking to myself, "They can give me love, they can give me love, so I'll go and chase them." And I'll give you a few examples. I'm not gonna give you names, but I'm gonna give you examples. So at some festival, I noticed myself trying to impress this certain woman, this certain girl. And whenever she was around other, other guys, I would feel jealousy, I would feel frustration, I would feel anger. And in the past, I might have reacted in a way of storming off or kind of just left it, shrunk But doing so much-- whilst doing work on myself and being where I am now, I allowed my awareness to kick in. I realized that in this exact moment, I felt as though I noticed the jealousy, I noticed that I was self-sacrificing myself. I know I was-- I noticed I was abandoning myself. I noticed that I was feeling a little bit of anger and a little bit of, um, frustration. So what I did instead was that I took myself away back to my, my tent, and I just sat with that feeling. And I sat with the feeling and asked myself, "What is it that I actually needed? What is it that that person, that person who I'm looking to, um, try and be with, what is it that I need, I, I wanted from them in this exact moment?" And what came up was this idea that all I needed in this moment was love. And so I just allowed myself to connect to my inner child. And in the past, as a child, you have no idea that if your parents leave you for five, ten minutes, they're actually doing something that they need to do. As a child, I kind of saw that as they were abandoning me. They were leaving me. I don't feel loved. And so I would notice I would sometimes cry for attention to try and get them back. But that would just create fru-frustration from the other person 'cause they're trying to get a job done. So then they would say, "Shh," and they would have a go at you, so then you wouldn't feel needed or wanted. And so I kind of realized that what my inner child at that moment actually needed was just to be loved. So I just sat, allowed myself to connect to the part of my body where I felt love in that moment, and I just sat in that moment, cradling myself, cradling my inner child, and allowing myself to feel loved. After five, ten minutes of being in that place, I was fine again. In fact, I was that, I was that, in that kind of place where I just went out into the festival, and I was just in awe of everything. I was present. I was, I wasn't, I was no longer abandoning myself. I was actually, I was kind of choosing myself. I was choosing me. And so it kind of got me to that point where I just felt incredible. I felt loved. I felt wanted. I felt needed And it didn't require me having to chase that person. In fact, this is what- something that I've been doing obviously every time I feel that sensation, is to allow myself to come back to me, choose myself, allow myself to feel loved. And in doing that, I no longer need that craving of that love from that person On another occasion, at another festival, there was this woman that I connected with, with really deeply for five days. And again, I self-sac- sacrificed myself. And in the end, after so many days of messaging after the festival, she told me she didn't feel seen. So going back to that, what I kind of stepped into was the, the whole idea of writing my book, of becoming a more safer, connected, and present man. But And in, and that journey, that 12-month journey of me exploring that, I came to realize that by, by accepting myself, by seeing myself first, I was no longer abandoning myself. And in doing so, other people felt seen and heard and understood by myself. So it's this realization that If for whatever reason there is somebody in your life that perhaps doesn't feel seen or heard deeply from the conversations that you have, maybe you have to come back to yourself first. And I fully, fully believe that In order to see somebody fully, in order to hear somebody fully, in order to acknowledge and accept somebody fully, you have to see, acknowledge, and accept yourself first. Once you do that, then that, that person will feel seen, acknowledged, accepted. And that is... From my experience, that is the most powerful thing that we can do. Everything that we want in another person is already within us. So if you want acceptance from somebody, maybe you're not accepting yourself. So come back to yourself, come back to every part of who you are, and accept that every part, and just see the change. And what you'll notice is that you might no longer crave that person. You might no longer crave that relationship or friendship or business partner or whatever it is. And in doing so, you see yourself fully. You accept yourself fully. You acknowledge yourself fully, and in doing that, you kind of come to this realization that all you need is you. Everybody else is an extension, or everybody else is an added bonus to what-- to, to yourself I've come to notice that every time I chase someone else, I end up abandoning myself. And this creates this idea of kind of trying to prove my worth, put another person on a pedestal, and as soon as I do that, I almost get to that stage where I, I start to w- I start to feel like I'm worshiping them in a, in a, in a very, very unhealthy way. And whenever I'm ar- I'm, I'm around them, I get nervous, I get, "Am I saying the right things? H- How, how, how do I impress them? How do I really to, uh, allow myself to attract them?" And, like, I've not- I've noticed it many, many times in myself But the, but the instant that I change that and I come back to me, I instantly realize that I no longer nee- I d- I don't need to chase. I can be just me. And there's a few examples, like, like at CrossFit I've noticed on a few occasions where there's certain women I perhaps have chased, and then I realized what I was doing, so then I would naturally bring myself back into my body. I bring my energy back, and I would do that through just setting an intention and visualizing my energy coming back to me, and just asking, "What is it that I actually need right now?" And maybe I, I need love, maybe I need acceptance, maybe I need to be acknowledged, and maybe I need to, um Yeah, what- whatever it is. I allow myself to kind of connect to the part in, the area in my body that links to that word. So if I feel loved, I connect to a part of body where I feel loved, and I just sit in that sensation and allow myself just to be in that place. And then I no longer chase. I'm me, and what I notice is I get more attention. I'm more in my, I'm more in my body. I no longer have to chase w- and peop- people come to me. It's an, and it's an incredible kind of, uh, way to realize that, um, how, how to change dynamics. But it's not also, it's not egotistical in the response that I'm just trying to attract all these women into my life just through coming back to my body. It's more, uh, owning who I am, acknowledging who I am. And alongside that, one of the biggest changes when coming to ch- when choosing myself is actually becoming more present. Using my own presence and rather than asking questions, "What is it that I need to do now?" I ask myself, and I mentioned this in the last, I think, a couple of episodes again, I ask myself the question, "What's alive in me now?" And it might be a number of things. And then I will sit- allow myself to sit in the present moment And then I might ask myself another question like, what is it I need to know? What is it that I need to do And then I'll just sit in the present moment and allow whatever I need to do to come to me. And this is part and parcel of coming back to myself and realizing that everything starts from me. When everything starts from me, I become the oracle of my life. I'm able to dictate how it thi- how things work. I am able to create things. As in the manifesting world, I'm able to create things out of thin air. Not necessarily out of thin air, but I'm able to, to visualize, I'm able to, uh, step into this deeper part of myself, which is able to really hone in on, in my direction, my purpose, and take the necessary steps to get me there. And I kind of realized that I don't need to become someone else because I already am. And so what I mean, what I mean by this, what I mean by this is there's an old-- there's always been an old part of me, whether it's attracting a partner, whether it's business, whether it's running retreats, podcasts. There'd be an old part, part of me that says, "Please choose me, please choose me, please choose me, choose me." And so can you, can you imagine, can you imagine that if somebody came to you and said, "Please choose me, please choose me," you'd probably be like, "Hmm, this doesn't feel right." But the thing is, everything that I'm already-- that everything that I'm chasing I already am. And so rather than chasing things, I've started to embody. To like, with my re- with my retreats, rather than trying to chase people to come into my retreats, I will start-- I'm starting-- I start to embody the version of me who run re-re-retreats already. I start to embody the confidence, the, the, the, the assurance, the idea that I know it's gonna be full. And I start to be able to embody the parts of me that can run the retreats, the, the part that can really hone in onto what needs to be done. The, the, the part of me that can run the retreat in a systematic way. The part of me that can tune in to the dragon energy to do with the retreat. The part of me that has run this retreat multiple times. And so it's this, this shift from pl- um, kind of chasing and get- hitting anxiety and worry about what's gonna happen when actually, when you come into this part of yourself, and you connect to this part of yourself, and you, you no lo- you no longer abandon yourself. You bring yourself back home, as I like to call it. So back into the body. You actually start to embody these parts. So maybe this applies-- this can apply to everything from love, business, retreats, abundance, confidence, um, being a, a confident man. It can be a s- come to do with speaking. It can be to do with anything. And so it's kind of asking yourself the questions like, "This version of me that I want to be, what kind of qualities does this person embody?" And so then allowing yourself to pick one quality, whether it could be confidence, it could be love, it could be, uh, abundance. And allowing yourself to sit in that energy. And from that energy, having-- You can have-- You can start to have a conversation. You can start to have a conversation with that part. Quite often-- So one of my next books after the f- one I'm writing currently, I'm gonna write a book on the emotions of the human body. And the whole idea of this book and this whole concept is to kind of- write, write down what's going on for each emotion inside me with the idea that this might help others. Because quite often, uh, with myself, anger c- anger for me can quite often mean that I'm not setting boundaries, I'm not s- been able to say no. Anxiety could be the fact that I'm just fearful of a certain situation. Scaredness could mean that there's just an old part of me that's just sitting there that no longer serves me. But then being able to really connect to these emotions and to talk from these emotions, I'm able then to communicate properly in a way that's healthy for me. And as we've mentioned multiple times, it's all about coming back to ourselves, and we get this i- we get this idea that Focusing on you is selfish, but it's not. It, it's the opposite. 'Cause if you focus on you and you pull yourself back to you, you set boundaries, you know what your emotions mean to you, and you're able to connect to yourself more and more deeply, you're, you're able then to give more to other people. You-- They are able to feel heard, seen, understood, acknowledged, accepted And it comes back to the idea that I think I've, I think I've made mentioned multiple times in episodes, every emotion wants to be chosen. And there's so many times where I have heard about, um, people wanting to get rid of their anger, wanting to get rid of their grief or greed or what- whatever it is. Every part of ourselves wants to be accepted. And my, my own, my own realization from this, this, um- Realizing this c- is come to r- uh, my r- my own realization here is that when you try to push something away, you bump heads and it comes back twice as strong. But if you kind of allow it to be there, you sit in its energy, you understand it, you accept it, you acknowledge it, within a few minutes from This is from my, my own personal experience. Within a few minutes, that emotion transforms into something else Because it suddenly it feels needed, it feels wanted, it feels acknowledged. And rather than you hitting heads all the time, you can both, you c- you can speed together in the same direction And when you start to choose yourself I feel like your whole life will become lighter, and that is from my own personal experience Choosing myself isn't just emotional. It can be physical, it can be mental, it can be spiritual. And here, h- for me, you know, like I've ha- held, had my car for like 10 years, and when I finally had the courage to let it go, I felt a weight completely drop, and that was because I chose myself. And I kind of realized that my car was creating this, this kind of mental block inside me. And so as soon as I let the car go and sold it, I felt this sudden... It, it just cleared. Everything cleared. Everything got lighter. Another one is quite often that I'll sometimes give myself permission to leave the dance floor early. In the past, I see myself as a good dancer, especially on my own. I'm a freestyle dancer. I, uh, love to do aesthetic, aesthetic dance, and I do. I've Quite often when I dance, because I dance, I dance very free, I get a lot of people looking at me, which then I feel after a certain period of time becomes a burden because s- suddenly I shift from being me in my body to having an expectation of I need to dance harder to kind of impress these people. And I did this at a festival, and then I realized it, it was happening, and I was like, "Do you know what? I, my body's tired. I'm absolutely shattered. I'm trying to perform now, so I'm going to leave." And that was the best thing I could have done. Yes, I missed out on dancing to other music later on, but I felt better in the morning. I didn't feel like a nervous wreck. Another one is sometimes I, you know, I might be at 40% capacity throughout the day, so I allow myself to nap when I need to nap. That's another thing. And so someti- the lessons here, sometimes lessons can be everything from just letting go. It can be, it can look like resting for an hour or two. It can even be, "Do you know what? I've had enough. I'm going away." And for myself, I'm a projector in the human design, which means that I have a lot of energy for certain things that I love, but if I run myself into the ground or I overdo it, then that's gonna have implications later on in the rest of the week. So it's being able to keep an eye and kind of tuning into myself, acknowledging myself, kind of, and then kind of asking myself, "What kind of capacity am I at?" 'Cause right now I feel like I'm at probably 40% capacity, which probably means I perhaps need to have a bit of a rest this afternoon Or, you know, I need to go for a walk. I find walking in nature really helps me to tune back up massively. And actually, one of the side effects is that when you choose yourself, you naturally attract what you want. You naturally become attractive, and you naturally attract looks. So like at Soul Revolution this year, when I was dancing how I like-- love to dance, I would turn h-heads. I would turn heads. And I do, I turn a lot of heads at different events and different festivals because I'm just a free dancer. You know, and also there's another one, another example might be at the retreats. So, uh, some of my-- When I try and to get people on board my retreats, when I would worry about numbers, nobody would book on. But when I let that go, suddenly everybody started booking on, which is quite a, um, big, big impact that I've noticed from choosing me rather than letting me, letting me down. And so the more that I choose myself, the less I need everyone to choose me. And strangely, that's when life starts responding to me differently So for years, I've asked who will choose me? Whether it's, it's a, it's a partner, a client, a friend, an audience. But somewhere along the way, I realized that I was asking the wrong question. The real question became: how do I choose myself? Have I chosen myself today? Have I listened to myself? What parts of me need to be heard today? Have I stayed myself when fear appeared? Have I honored what was alive in me? Because when you shift from chasing to choosing you, your whole life changes in an absolute, um, an absolute immense way. And don't get me wrong, I am still working on this. I notice there's times when I shift back into chasing, and then I might come back to choosing me, and then back to chasing, back to choosing me. But that's not the point. The point is to always to kind of slow down enough and to know that what you're going through is part of the human condition, and to learn to keep coming back to yourself. Because when you stick, keep coming back to yourself and choose you, everything changes. Thank you. Thank you for listening. If something in today's conversation resonated, take a moment to sit with it. And if you feel called, share this episode with someone who might need it to you matter. I matter is a growing space, and if you would like to stay connected. You're welcome to follow or subscribe wherever you are listening. It really helps us work to reach people. It's meant for. These conversations matter. You matter. I matter. Until next time, take care of yourself and the relationships in your life.