Become the Love of Your Life: How Self-Love Changes EVERYTHING

We spend so much of our lives searching for love — waiting for someone else to make us feel seen, wanted, and worthy. But when we outsource our love, approval, and acceptance, we end up abandoning ourselves. We start chasing validation, overgiving to people who take, and settling for relationships that drain instead of nourish.

This talk is about breaking that cycle. It’s about coming home to yourself — becoming the source of the love you’ve been craving. Because when you stop chasing love and start embodying it, everything changes.

You stop attracting toxic, abusive, and one-sided relationships. You stop accepting crumbs. You stop making excuses for others bad behavior. You stop acting from a place of lack and desperation. Instead, you rise into your own worth — and from that place, you attract people and experiences that meet you at your level.

You’ve held the key all along. This is your reminder to use it. ✨

Watch now to begin your journey back to yourself — the most powerful love story there is. 💞

🌟 For FREE Resources, Book Link, 1:1 Mentoring, KB’s Self-Love Merch Shop and more: https://www.linktr.ee/kristenbrownauthor

Chapters:
0:00:00 Opening and inspiration
0:01:15 The void inside
0:02:54 Chasing love and approval
0:06:07 By products of self-love
0:10:55 The nuances of chasing love
0:13:56 The changes self-love brings
0:22:55 Getting comfortable with confrontation
0:24:02 What self-love looks like
0:32:00 Showing up for yourself
0:36:24 What happened when I showed up for me
0:42:05 Guest One: Daryl
0:47:53 Settling for crumbs
0:51:16 "Will I become selfish?"
0:52:42 Healing is not always glamorous
0:54:45 When things get uncomfortable
0:57:34 Saying no to people and things that no longer align with you
0:59:02 Setbacks and backslides mean this...
01:03:48 How to look back at your younger self
1:09:19 Closing practice and mantras

Transcript

Kristen: 0:00

For those of you who are familiar with my work and familiar with my teachings and what I talk about, you already know that I went on a self-love journey that absolutely changed my life. I didn't know that I was doing that at the time. I just knew I didn't like the way things were. And so my mind and heart were open to receiving information and to practicing certain things in my life that really started to change my inner world. It was probably many years after the fact that I realized I really had become the love of my life, that that is what I had done. And this is something that you know I will talk about a lot because I truly believe in my heart of hearts that this is where we start to move the needle in our life. This is where we really start to heal our inner world because there are certain things that we can do that unbeknownst to us, they clean up a lot of the spillage, a lot of the broken pieces, the things inside of ourselves that we deem unacceptable, and that someone won't love us. And what happens is this leaves us with a void inside, a void inside of desperately wanting to be loved, wanting somebody else to come into our life and to make us feel whole and complete. The problem is that this is a false narrative. It's never gonna happen. And for those of you who know, you know, you've already tried it, and you keep looking for that one person to make you feel good. And some of you might have even become addicted, so to speak, to a certain individual because you love the way they made you feel initially. And then as the relationship went on, you realized that nothing they really ever did or said truly filled that void inside. And this is why this work that I believe, this is my belief, that we truly have to do on this journey is to become the love of our life. Because amazing things happen when we do this. So, welcome everybody. My name is Kristen Brown. I'm a personal development and self-healing author, healer, and mentor. I am the author of two books from Dormat to Sweet Empowerment and the international number one bestseller, the Recovering People Pleaser. The Recovering People Pleaser is all about healing your inner world so that you can attract and create the most glorious outer world. And through a blend of lived wisdom, neuroscience, and universal truths, I help people rediscover their true worth and reclaim their personal power. My motto is all change happens on the inside first. And when you change your inner world, you change your life. There is no two ways about it. So so many of us spend much of our lives chasing love. We're wanting to be chosen, we're wanting to be seen, we're wanting to be good enough. We're looking for somebody else's approval. But somewhere along the way, we didn't know yet, or maybe we just forgot that the relationship we have with ourselves sets the tone for every other relationship in our life. So becoming the love of our life is about healing the root of your self-worth. It's about realizing that everything you've been seeking from others, whether it be validation, love, approval, acceptance, care, respect, consistency, safety, was never meant to be outsourced. You must become your own source. It's meant to be cultivated within. And when you become the love of your life, you stop living in a state of emotional starvation. You stop waiting for the scraps of love, attention, and approval because you have now nourished yourself on the inside. So just think of it like an empty cup. I feel, or I've kind of theorized that we have a worthiness cup within. And when we come here, that cup is full. As little beings, little souls that enter into a human body, we know nothing other than our worth when we first come here. And that's why we're so willing to be authentic. But as we grow and the brain waves increase and we become more aware, we start to take in information from the outside world, information that says there's something wrong with us, we're not enough, or maybe we're bad. And that worthiness cup starts to drain. The bottom, the way I pictured it in my mind's eye is that the bottom pops off like it's on a hinge, and all our worthiness starts to drain out. So now we're walking around with an empty worthiness cup and it doesn't feel good. We don't like the way this feels. So we search out into the world for somebody to fill this for us. The problem is though, that outside love, approval, acceptance, validation, care, all of these things that we're looking for, protection, it goes in the top of the worthiness cup and flies out the bottom because it was never meant to be filled from somebody else. It was meant to be filled from us. So what happens is when we really truly start to love ourselves and become the love of our life, the bottom pops up on that worthiness cup, and what we put inside sticks, it stays. And what is a natural byproduct of filling our own worthiness cup is we no longer settle for scraps, we're better discerning about energies that we are around, meaning from other people. We use more care in choosing who we want to allow in our space. It's interesting how this works because as I started to heal myself, I found myself saying no to situations organically. Very interesting. Even with meeting friends, even with meeting new people, I can immediately feel if this is a person who is going to meet me at the way I love myself or they're not. And I think this is a twofold thing. One, it's an energetic thing. So I started to attract people to me that matched my inner world, which was that I love and respect and care for myself. But two, the way I showed up in the world through my words, my behaviors, my actions, my yeses and my no's, my boundaries, my authenticity, that organically started to weed people out that were not a good match for me, whether it's platonic or it was romantic. This is a really important concept to really grasp because many people don't really understand what happens when we do love ourselves. It's kind of like this dream out there. We can't quite put our finger on what's gonna happen because maybe no one's really told us. We just keep hearing over and over again love yourself, love yourself, love yourself, become the love of your life, become your best friend, become your best caretaker. And we're like, okay, but what is gonna happen? So the things that happen were a little shocking, but not in a negative way, just surprising to me. Because I started to do the things that I had just mentioned. I stopped, I started to care less about gaining people's approval and stepped even more deeply into my authentic nature. I was able to walk away faster. Let's say, just even in a conversation with someone, and I have to go. So instead of sitting there and being afraid of saying, I gotta go, I gotta go, I'm more apt to say, I'm sorry, I I love speaking with you, but I got a boogie right now, I gotta be somewhere. Just these types of behaviors, you'd be surprised at how they what they yield you in the world, what's going to come back to you in the world. So, someone, let's say, that just wants to suck from you, they're not gonna like that because they want your time and attention all the time. And so they may move away from you and move towards somebody else that's gonna give them that. Other people might say, wow, I love his or her confidence. I love how they're so sturdy, how they're so solid. And that's gonna be wildly attractive to some people, and it could be a turnoff for someone else. And these types of things, when we don't understand that they can happen, they can be scary at first, especially when we're recovering from people pleasing, because we're used to trying to get people to stay. We're used to wanting people to stick around. And so if we start to feel someone floating away from us, the old narrative is oh my gosh, I gotta do something, I gotta change something about myself. And we might quote unquote chase because somebody has moved, they have stepped back. Now, in this stage of the game, for me at 58 years old and having practiced true, true self-love for 15 years, I'm at the place where I just observe it. I'm like, interesting how I'm showing up in this way, and these particular people keep moving towards me. They love it, they're basking in it, they're so happy that I'm in their life, and other people just sort of flittered away because the truth of my energy and my personality was highly attractive to some people and not to other people. And so when I got into observance mode about this, and I just sat with it and just paid attention and didn't judge what I was seeing, I started to see a pattern. And that pattern was revealing something really brilliant and magnificent and something that I had never seen before because I was chasing so much. When I say chasing, for me, chasing didn't look like blowing up people's phones and constantly trying to be with somebody. It wasn't that type of chase. It was an inner adjustment that I would make within myself to try to get their approval, to try to be that person, to try to prove myself to them. That's what chasing looked like to me was all these little adjustments that I would unconsciously make to get their approval. The operative word here is unconscious. We must understand that we're coming from brain programming. We have been conditioned into certain things, but we've also picked up what gets us approval, what does not. And the brain immediately goes doot doot doop and seeks to change ourselves, to move us away from our authentic self to try to get the approval. And then when we see that that works, we will double down on that thing. The problem is that we have now fractured away from our authentic self. We have denied our sacred self, we have made ourselves not a priority. How do you say that? How would be a better way? Is there a word for not a priority? We have deprior deprioritized ourselves. Hey, does that work? I like that one. We have deprioritized ourselves, and what happens is we tend to attract and keep people in our life who are interested in just taking from us on some capacity. When I tell you that I've had so many relationships, friendships, romantics, that as I started to do this work and work through this in the past 15 years, I'm a person, I'm very researchy. I want to see where dots line up. I want to see where puzzle pieces fit into place. I love to see patterns and I talk to other people and ask a lot of questions. So I am a researcher of human nature. I'm a researcher of patterns. I love to see what happens. And time and time again, this theory has proved true. Where when we're chasing, we're going to attract to us from a desperate energy, and an energy that likely is going to attract people to us that like that dimmed down version of ourself. They like that overgiver. They like that they're the center of our universe. They like that we they say jump and we say how high. So there's going to be some changes that happen in your life when you truly start to love yourself. And this is something that I want you to get comfortable with. Now I know it's going to feel weird at first. I get it. I understand it was weird for me too. Because people started to pop out left and right. Some of my best friends. I was like, where'd you go? What's happening here? In one particular instance, I had one friend in a quite a long time. I would say maybe 10 years. And I would consider a best. I don't consider people best friends anymore. I don't rate any of my friends like that. I call basically everybody a dear friend. If it's someone I'm close to, they're my dear friend. But I really don't label people as best anymore because for me, for Kristen, I had certain guidelines that a best friend had to live with under. And I found myself like expecting things from these people that were from more of a control aspect to make me feel safe. And so they could uphold the title or the crown of best. And I decided that wasn't healthy, and really to just let people show me who they are and to do and be exactly who they are. So with this one particular friend, we were friends for quite a while. And there's backstory. There's there's things that had happened along the way that I turned a blind eye to. I just kind of overlooked it. I just didn't call attention to it. And one very big one was when this particular friend tried to flirt with and hit on my husband at the time, who was my tsunami ex. She did something that was really just out there. It was obvious, it was rude, it was bad. She was under the influence of alcohol at the time, which I don't believe is an excuse because I feel many things come out with alcohol that are there in your sober thinking. But during the alcohol stupor or mist, if you will, or fog, people tend to do what they want to do, like right, because the inhibitions are lower. And I remember telling my husband and saying, What the heck was that? And he pulled me aside. He's like, Don't make a big deal of it. Don't say anything. Don't make a big deal of it. And like the very conventional doormat that I was at the time, I didn't say anything because he didn't want me to. Now, this was my best friend. He didn't know her very much. I have suspicions, though, to be honest with you, in hindsight. I I will never be able to prove this, and I don't know if it's true, but I have suspicions that there was more going on there, and that's because there were other things that happened after the fact as well that were quite ridiculous, like seeing him one time when we walked into an establishment and running over to him and quite literally jumping up on him and wrapping her legs around his waist. That's a bit of familiarity that I was like, mmm, for the five times that you guys have seen each other, that's kind of weird to me, you know. So there was something strange about that. But at any rate, I never called her out on it. I never called her out on it. I didn't say a word. And then time went on and I started to heal because I was doing things that were healing me. And I called her out on something else. I said, you know what? It really hurts my feelings that you blank or whatever it was. And we never spoke again. So the one time after all those 10 years, of all the fun we had, of all the deep conversations, of all the support and love, and I called her out once, and she got super defensive and nasty and told me, you know, whatever she told me. And I'm not even sure if this was via text or phone call, to be honest with you. I don't remember. And that was the end of it. Boom, relationship over, done. And I didn't feel like I was wrong because the thing that she did was very uncool, it was super uncool, it was disrespectful. I kind of waited, sorta, for her to reach back out and to say, hey, I'm sorry, that was, you know, I get what you're saying. I don't want to lose you as my friend, et cetera, et cetera, but it never happened. I will say during that time, though, my two in my intuition was telling me that it was not gonna happen. So there was 50% of me was like, is she gonna reach out to me? And 50% of me wasn't. Some of you might be asking, well, why did you reach out to her? Well, because I was healing. And I had all of these things that she had done in the past, all of these things. And I thought to myself, is this really someone who cares about me? Is this someone who really values me, who would do these very rude things and mean things, and not to mention that she was extremely moody and sometimes just nasty. So there was all of these these things, but I there was parts of her that I just loved. I just loved. We were the same age, we had the same sense of humor, we had the same musical taste. There was just so many things that were in alignment with us as friends, and we laughed a lot together. But as I was healing, it became, it wasn't even a question if I was going to reach out to her. I was willing to slowly let her fade into the background of my life because there was repeated disrespect. Now remember, this is post healing. Pre healing, I would have just accepted it. I never would have said a word, I would have swallowed my hurt feelings, I would have played nice. I would have pretended everything was okay. All the things, all the masks. Thank you, Michelle. Michelle said yes, with three explanation points. Good for you. Thank you. I appreciate that. This journey for me has been very solo. It's been very alone. It's been very interesting because if I were to mention something like that to somebody else in my life and saying, hey, this person did this, and here's what I did, thinking of a particular person in my life, like my mom, oh honey, you know, she was such a people pleaser in a doormat. She would have probably tried to talk me out of it. Not understanding, because she didn't have boundaries, that this was a really good thing. And so I didn't have people I could go to that was like, yeah, girl, heck yeah, you're not doing that. What is, you know, that's whatever. It's her bad. She needs to come forward, whatever. After the fact, after the friendship was over, I remember telling another friend who knew her, because we all worked at the same salon at one point. Everybody was in different salons eventually. But at one point, I told that friend, and that friend looked at me and she's like, girl, why did you not say it? She goes, I would have been up in that. She's talking, I'm talking about one of the flirting moments when um she cornered my husband in a room and standing in a miniskirt with big high shoes on, and she was 5'6 to begin with, so you know, probably three inch heels. She's about 5'9, 5'10, and she threw her leg up on the wall, like basically revealing her nethers, if you get what I'm saying, because her waist was super high at that point, because you know, she's tall and had the shoes on, and I walked around the corner and saw it. I was like, What are you doing? That was the thing he told me not to say anything about. So when I told my other friend, she was flabbergasted. She was like, What? Oh my god, girl, I would have said this, I would have said that. And I looked at her, and her name is Kelly, and I looked at her and I said, Kells, I know. That's where I was at. That's where I was at. And she just kind of looked at me like, okay, she got it. She's one of my dear friends. She got it. She was like, okay, like, all right. But I said, Thank you for saying that though, and this makes me tear up. Thank you for saying that though, because you're validating what I felt I should have done. But I was told not to. And that won't happen again. That will not happen again in my life. Because I am now the love of my life. I am now my best friend. And if someone pulled some type of shenanigan like that, I have gotten very, very comfortable with confrontation, if you will. It doesn't mean I love it. No one wants it, right? We don't want to just go confront people left and right. And when people say to me, I've heard this many times in my coaching, they'll say something like, well, you know, I'm just not, I just don't like confrontation. I'm just not good at it. So I just don't do it. And they act like, you know, it's just part of who I am. My my astrology sign says I don't like confrontation. You know, they act like it's this label or this just part of their personality. And so, yeah, Kristen, that's all great, but that's never gonna happen. And I say to them, you gotta get comfortable with with confrontation if you want to claim respect in your life, if you want to be able to set boundaries, you gotta get comfortable with it. Again, doesn't mean we need to like it, but it means we means we need to get comfortable with it. So we're gonna talk about what becoming the love of your life looks for or looks like. And I'm not gonna throw at you my typical five self-love tenets. You've all heard those. You all know those. They're in my book, The Recovering People Pleaser. Right? I'll say them quickly. Respect and protect self, which basically means boundaries, forgiveness and and grace of self, which means forgive yourself for your mistakes and be graceful about things that you're going through, compassion and acceptance, extend deep compassion to, deep understanding to, and accept where you are and who you are. Positive, supportive, and loving self-talk, okay, that speaks for itself, and self-care, which means taking for your needs, taking care of your needs. So it means taking your own needs seriously. It's meaning that I have individual needs in my life and I need to take them seriously. I need to understand that there's only one person who can really attend to my needs, my true, true needs, and that's me. So if I expect people should quote unquote just know, they should know, then I am defeating myself and I'm defeating the relationship because nobody just knows and should know without us speaking up. Not only that, not all people can meet those needs. We are designed to meet our own needs. That's how we fill the worthiness cup. It's not about expecting others to come in, swoop in, and do the thing. It's about you doing it to yourself, for yourself. This is also about which I already touched on letting go of require uh relationships that require you to shrink. One of the byproducts of healing ourselves is recognizing that I play small around this person, that I dim my light, that I don't speak my truth, that I'm not authentic 100%. Because I do believe a lot of us are authentic in a lot of ways. Okay, but there's just that that extra level up, there's that gold star level of authenticity that we might have just kind of ignored that. You know, we just let me just put that down because that might be too much for people. And so we're afraid of being too much. And many of us have been called too much, and it may not even be that somebody says to us, you are too much. It may not have come out that way. Could have come out like, let's say there's music on in the grocery store and you're dancing and you're having fun and someone rolls their eyes and like, oh, stay away from me. That's a message of too much. You see what I'm saying? It doesn't always, because when people were, you know, this whole narrative came out, oh, I was called too much, I was called too much. I thought to myself, I was no one ever said to me, I was too much. Those words, those two words were never said to me. But it was shown through eye rolls and facial expressions and people backing up or walking away or not meeting me where I was at. Like, let's say I was sharing my emotions or how I was feeling about something, and being like, you're never happy. It could be that type of thing. And I remember that was when I was in a particular relationship and I was continually trying to help this relationship and trying to talk about the disrespectful things that this person was doing over and over again, things that made that hurt me, that made me feel like they didn't care. And these were now all these years later, because I've done the math, I have gone back in all my relationships and said, was that on point or was it not? Was I correct in that thinking and assessment or was I incorrect? And I look back now, and if that was me that I was coaching, I'd be like, no, you're 100% correct to do that. But then I wasn't met at it. I was told things like, I just can't make you happy. Well, yeah, you can by stop being disrespectful, but nope, they didn't want to hear it. So those were the things that were said to me that made me feel like I was too much. I want to see a show of emojis for anybody who has been said directly, you are too much, or someone has implied it through other language, or just I rolled at you when you were being yourself. I see one that went up. Okay, now we're getting a bunch of people coming up. Yeah. Doesn't feel good, does it? We have Leah, Lisa, Janet, Jeanette, Deb, Paula, Truth, Michelle, Dr. Robert. Yeah, a lot of you feel that way. And I'm sure some of you who are on Android and can't actually send up your emojis. Dinga joined as well. Yeah. Okay. That's one of the things. So we play small. And this is where we learn to speak with ourselves with compassion instead of criticism. This is about, let's say, in this particular inst instance where I would be singing or dancing. I sing all the time, you guys, it's a thing. It's just a thing. If there's music on, it's a song, it's my jam, I'm gonna be singing. That's just all there is. I'm not always loud, I'm not making a scene. Um, maybe if I'm by myself, I might be. But, you know, I'm just singing, singing along, doing my thing. Let's say it was an instance like that, or dancing in the grocery store, because that that bothered my kids. And I'm laughing about it because of course it did. Mom, you're so embarrassing. Don't do that. But those things, being the recovering people pleaser, they mattered to me. I could felt myself shrink a little bit. I could, I even remember stopping because I didn't want to embarrass them. Again, not making this massive scene, breaking out on the floor and breakdancing spins and stuff. Nothing like that. Okay, just subtle in my space, singing low, doing my thing, and then these things would come out. Sometimes I would stop, but as I started to heal, I didn't stop. I didn't stop. Because I would look at them and I would say, This is my joy. This feels good to me. Sorry it bothers you, but this is an act of love. And do you know what happened over time? They stopped caring, they didn't care. And I was also modeling to them what it looks like to be unapologetically myself, and and hopefully leading them into being unapologetically themselves. So I started to be also compassionate with myself in ways that I would criticize if I did something wrong or I was going through something and I was judging myself or whatever it might be. Started to be very gentle with me, very compassionate with me. And I started to fill in so many cracks and so many little tiny voids. Think of a sponge. Think of your self-worth cup also as a sponge, where it's got all these little holes in it, right? That's what a sponge is, it's a million different holes. I started to fill many of those up just by being compassionate with me and being gentle with me and extending that same understanding that I so generously gave to other people. I started to turn it around on me. And like I said, the little holes started to fill up. And then I noticed I started doing it naturally. And again, way after the fact, I realized I had retrained my brain to see me differently and to treat me differently organically. It's also about showing up for yourself the way you wish others would. I waited and waited and waited to find a partner that would that would be protective. Now, I don't mean they're gonna go looking for a fight. You know, I'm not meaning that they're aggressive. I'm talking about naturally walking on a sidewalk and putting me on the inside of the sidewalk. See what I'm saying? Like those little acts of, oh, I don't want you driving, or you're gonna be driving to Flagstaff, I'm gonna go check the air in your tires first and check your oil. You know, just the the tiny ways that they could show protection of me and value of me. And many other ways that were standing up for me. Remember, I've had two abusive relationships, physically abusive relationships, of course, the mental and emotional as well. I had two of those. One was early in life and one was later. So they were certainly not protecting me, were they? They were doing the opposite. They were harming me. So I didn't even realize that I wanted someone to protect me. I didn't have the language. Do you know also that I didn't have the language of respect? I didn't know back in my 20s in a particular relationship that I was being disrespected. I didn't have that, those words. I just knew that it didn't feel good. What I would talk about the thing they were doing, but I wouldn't say, I feel so disrespected. I didn't understand that until again, after the fact, when that word came up somehow, somehow. And I was like, well, let me really because I knew the word disrespect. I understood it. But I didn't understand what that looked like in actual behavior that was coming to me. It was never spoken about in my home. You know, this that's language that I use with my kids. Like, mm-mm, that's disrespect. Mm-mm. I gave them a word for the experience that they were having. Or that's unkind. Or that's cruel, or whatever it might be. Yesterday I was coaching a client, and this person is really dealt with something yucky. I'm just gonna say, and it was a relationship situation, of course. Most of most of our stuff is, right? And I remember they were telling a story, and I just looked at them and said, that was really cruel of them. And they just looked at me like, yeah, it is cruel. I gave them a word that they could get on board with and to understand, like, cruel is not okay. So labeling it and naming the behavior was really helpful for me, but also for me to understand that it was up to me to protect myself, it was up to me to be kind to me, it was up to me to be gentle with me, to honor me, to take care of me. All of that was up to me because I kept futilely jumping from relationship to relationship to relationship, one after the other, just feeling like honestly, it was the the luck of the draw. That's the extent of my wisdom. If I just kept pulling from the deck, I would eventually pull a king. How could I not? There's 52 cards in a deck, right? Four of those are kings, but you get what I'm saying. And it never happened because I literally just thought it was the luck of the draw. So when someone I knew attracted an amazing guy that just loved and valued them and honored them and cherished them and all the things, I just thought they were and this isn't sarcastic. You're just lucky. It wasn't like that. It was like, oh, I thought they found why does why do the why are they getting the good stuff? It wasn't until I started to show up energetically and through my behaviors of what's required to treat to what behavior is required from them, what is acceptable to me and what is not acceptable to me. And this again happened organically when I started to give it to myself. Here's one of my favorite things, and it's a little bit mind-blowing. When I was treating myself poorly, by not respecting, honoring, protecting, being compassionate with all the things I've mentioned so far, I did not really, I couldn't name it, and I didn't really notice when others weren't, because they were matching the way I was treating me. It was just like a blend. You get what I'm saying? It's like pouring water into a water cup. You can't really tell what's their water in your water. But when I started to treat myself that way, their behavior, you know, with love, their behavior stood out like a siren was going off. Wow, wow, wow, wow. Mind blowing to me that I would start to notice these things and they were loud. So instead of it just being like a subtle feeling inside of me, like, oh, I don't like that. That's not, I don't think that's nice. And questioning, is that okay? I was questioning, going to other people and saying, is it okay that this person did this? Is this okay? Am I wrong? Because of course they would tell me I was wrong and I wasn't accurate in my assessment. But because I had never experienced the opposite of that, I didn't know it. But when I started to experience it in the most profound way that I could possibly experience it, which was the way that filled all the voids in my sponge and that filled up my worthiness cup, it stood out to me like a beacon. And so much so that I noticed it everywhere. In all areas of my life. I noticed it where a client, a hair client, because this was more during the hair period, where a client would say or do, where my children would say or do, where a partner would say or do, where a family member would say or do. I got a funny story. I told my brother this recently when he came to visit me, and he's like, I don't even remember that, Chris. I remember one time he's 15 months older than me. This is not cool beans, that some of you know. And he's 15 months older than me. We're like Irish twins, we're a year apart in school. One time, we just have the same sense of humor. We have the same taste in music. Like we're we're very much alike. In fact, Cool Beans would say, I was always so jealous of you and him because you know, you guys seem to get along so great. Well, he was also the meanest one to me out of all my brothers, just so you guys know. Anyway, that's youth. So he was gonna come over one night, and I was alone, I was single during this time, and he was gonna come over. He's like, What are you doing tonight, this and that? I said, All the kids are here, and I'm doing this, and blah, blah, blah. He's like, I'm gonna come over. He said, And let's watch MTV. This is when it was still music videos. I don't know what it is now. He's like, we're gonna watch videos because we that's one of the things we did in our youth. He's like, get some beer, and I'm gonna come over. I said, okay, so I got a sixth pack of beer. And he shows up, he walks in my house, I'm like, oh yeah, you're here. And I'm like ready to have our little sibling party. And he makes three circles around my island. And then he opens my refrigerator, he grabs my sixth pack of beer and he left. Oh my god. I remember just standing in my house going, what just happened? We need the laugh emoji, don't we, you guys? I swear to God. But I didn't, it didn't even re like really register to me. Because that's how he was with me, and that's how I let him be. And it wasn't shocking, it wasn't surprising. Like I said, when recently he came to town and we had lunch and it was amazing. And I told him that he's like, he starts laughing. He goes, I don't even remember doing that. I'm like, yeah, bro. He goes, he and he had some nice words to say. He's like, I'm sorry. I was in a messed up place during that year or whatever it was. You know what I mean? He's like, ah, this is when this was happening. I don't know what the hell I was doing. I said, I've kind of figured that he was just sort of lost and what have you. But anyway, no harm, no foul. It's fine. Forgave him, love him. I didn't even think I had to forgive him. I think I was just like, oh, okay, well, that's that's him. But my point is, is that it wasn't until after the fact, after my healing, where I looked back on that, and I thought to myself, that was not okay. Like, that is not okay. Like, who does that? That's weird. And probably why I brought it up to him years later instead of just bypassing it and ignoring it. Okay, we're gonna bring up my first guest and our very own beloved program director here at Noom Vibe, Daryl with the Dashes. Welcome, brother.

Daryl: 42:10

Hey, that's a great trick. I gotta try that sometime. Just what you want? Say something.

Kristen: 42:17

Till somebody get it, come over leave.

Daryl: 42:20

What a trick that is. Wow. It's it's really it's another form of trick and treat. He got the treat and it went out the door. But man, what a brother would be missing out on just hanging out and watching MTV. That's sounds like a lot of fun, I guess. You know, if if and it was his idea, Daryl.

Kristen: 42:42

That's what's funny. It was his idea. So I was totally down, and then that's what happened.

Daryl: 42:46

Yeah, you know, MTV now would seem so slow to young people today. They'd be like, what are you doing while all these songs are playing? Like it's you know what I mean? It's be perceived as so slow. Yeah, I loved MTV, and then it just totally turned into going down memory lane for MTV for just a second. Then it turned down, turned into all of these shows, and it never turned back to what it originally was. You know, I was thinking about that as you were talking about our lives, right? And how like our you know, 13 or 10-year-old selves had this like great idea of what we were gonna be, and that's what MTV was. Like it had this idea, we're just gonna put videos on and have these VJs who are still on Sirius XM, by the way. Um, oh wow, yeah. And you know, we would be this thing that is like radio for TV. Eventually, it turned into this uh back and forth of uh programming, uh, because you know it it maybe reacts better, or advertisers like that sort of engagement and things like that. But I re I just kind of think about this isn't about MTV, it's really about the idea of us and how we sort of can drift as we meet different partners or we meet um different jobs or we meet different roles, uh, how we can sort of drift away like MTV did uh from its original you know calling or you know remix of what radio was into the TV format. And that's a great metaphor, Daryl. Yeah, so I just wanted to just sort of bring it up because you were jogging that in my mind. I was just like, yeah, we can do the same thing and almost be unrecognizable to what our logo was. Our logo was M TV, and people would say, What does M stand for? Well, it was music videos, and you're like, wait, what did I use to stand for?

Kristen: 44:53

And go back to that, right? 100%, yes. Oh my gosh, yes. And you know, it's it's interesting too because there are this is a great metaphor for other things too, because have we ever had a product and then they give you the new version of the product and we're like, what is this crap? I like the old thing. You know, when MTV started to change into all of those shows, I I completely lost interest. I wasn't interested. I haven't watched it for I don't know how long. But the same thing with other products too, it's like that original form sometimes is the best possible form of the thing, yeah.

Daryl: 45:33

And also keep in mind that those, and this is where people don't give themselves enough leadership over themselves. When you have a sibling that doesn't get you, it feels like you either have to adapt or you're always gonna fight or go back and forth, right? But when you get in the world and somebody just doesn't get you, they're not for you, right? Yeah, and so if your MTV is me, M-E-T V, like it's about me, not in a not in a bombastically egotistical way, but as in what is my genuine 10-year-old self calling me to be? Like what is what did I stand for? What was my my origin goal in life? And if if you're falling away from that, you're betraying this self, this beloved that you are to love, right? And this whole concept of love uh becoming the love of your life, it's like learning that the love of your life has been there since those early formative years. And if you fall yourself away from that, you're gonna lose people, just like MTV kind of did. So I don't know.

Kristen: 46:52

Yeah, no, that's true. Thank you so much, Daryl. That was awesome. So glad you had time to come up. Bye, brother. Daryl with the dashes, everybody. Definitely give Daryl a follow. He has two podcasts that he hosts on here. He has Untrouble with Carrie Ham, beautiful, and also Deeper Planet. And Daryl's a really easy-going, nice guy, very gentle. Join his talks, come up on his stage and roll around in these deeper ideas and things that he comes up with because it's really fun to talk to Daryl and to hash things out. So definitely follow Daryl so that you're alerted when he comes on Untrouble podcast with Carrie Ham and Deeper Planet. By the way, he does have Carrie as a co-host, but they break for guests as well. So feel free to join. And he drops Carrie down, he brings up guests, and then it goes back and forth. So moving right along is a great segue into not settling. This is part of loving ourselves. And when we love ourselves, really and truly, again, the natural byproduct is that we won't want to settle for scraps. We won't want to settle for crumbs when we know that we are worth the full meal, when we are worth the feast. We'll stop settling for the crumbs. We'll start saying, This is not enough for me. We will stop trading good enough for amazing. Now, this is good enough. This is this is okay, this works. No, we'll stop doing that. And most of the most of the time I'm talking about in uh relationships, but this can go across other aspects of your life as well. Because you'll you will know your worth, your foundation of self-worth, your self-worth cup is going to be so full, your foundation is going to be so deep that you will inherently know that you're worth more than those little crumbs. Now, by the way, before self-love work, you are worth more than the crumbs. It's just that you don't know it. We don't know it until we feel that cup and our inner world starts to change, and the lens through which we see what's acceptable and not acceptable in life, when that starts to change, that starts to evolve. Then we start to see things through a different lens. This is also true with career and reaching new heights in whatever form that might be. The same thing will happen where we might think before before we do the self-love work and become the love of our life, we might just be settling with a lower-tiered and paid job. Well, you know, no, I I can't ever get up to that because you really truly, from your level of self-worth, don't believe it's possible. So self-love is the cure for many things. This is why it blows my mind and why it has become my number one favorite topic. Because when we heal that self-worth, which is healable, by the way, 1000% healable, this is not just for Bob, Sam, and Ginger and Linda. It's for it's available to everybody. But when we work on that self-love piece, when we truly start to give ourselves all of these things that I've been speaking about, the lens that we see ourselves, the lens that we see life, the lens that we see what we're capable of, everything up levels. It's a natural byproduct. And that's something I want you to understand. I want you to be very clear that this self-love work is not little fluffy butterflies and unicorns. It's not that. I love myself now. Okay, because a lot of people say they love themselves and they show up in the world as this defeated version or someone who doesn't think they're worthy. This is about truly the act of self-love. This is about truly saying, I'm going to become the love of my life. I just had the little intuition nudge that came into my head. It's somebody who's listening is thinking, My God, does that mean I'm going to become selfish? No. Because what is the root word here? Self-love. Love, capital L love. This is not self-ego. This is not self, I'm going to trick myself. This is self-love. And anything of love is healing energy. And healing energy leads us to a more centered self. That's what healing energy does. It doesn't make us a jerk because it's rooted in love, which is the highest energy. That makes sense, guys. I think it does. I think you guys get what I'm saying. I get very passionate about these talks. I got a back channel message. Uh, let me dip in real quickly. Oh, I love that. Janet said she recently bought a sign for her desk that says, you decide your vibe. Absolutely love that. And I already read that message. And Leah said that they just canceled MTV at the end of the year. Wow. Holy moly, that's been decades that MTV has been around. I want you to understand that doing self-love work and becoming your own love of your life, it's not always glamorous. And we talked about that already, that we can lose people. Okay? But here's what's interesting. Keep this in mind. I have never worded this out loud. Let me see if I can word it correctly. When you start to fill your sponge or your worthiness cup, and someone leaves, it doesn't feel as devastating as it would have before. Because instead of being a whole empty sponge, all the holes are empty. Some of those are filled. So when the people do leave, it doesn't feel as devastating as it would have felt in the past prior to doing your self-love work. Because some of those spaces are filled, you've already started to heal your inner world. You've already started to love yourself. So it still may sting, it still may hurt, but it doesn't feel devastating to the degree that it would have in the past. It's wild. So it's not that we're we're thinking, oh God, someone's gonna leave my life. You know how devastating that has already felt. And you're like, uh-uh, don't want to risk that. Don't want to risk that. But remember, it's a result of your self-love work and your foundation has changed. So the thick foundation you're functioning on now is going to respond and handle somebody's departure much easier than the little skinny plywood foundation that you were on before. Does that make sense, guys? Yeah. Also, before I do, also let me read this message. Robin said, I think that if you can recognize you have been getting scraps, you are on your way to expecting more. Yes, right there. Shift in trajectory, right, Robin? You are you've recognized, you know, I've been getting scraps right there. You've already gotten on the yellow brick road. If you love yourself enough to know you deserve more, it's paramount. Yes. It's just hard to move into that because you're not sure how to start. Yes. Get my book. That's what I'm gonna tell people. Listen to my talks. I go into this at length. It's it's all wrapped up and interwoven with everything I talk about. Everything I talk about is rooted in self-love, even if it doesn't appear, except when we did the recipe, the recipe talk, but it's all rooted in self-love. And I call it reclaiming your personal power, but also self-love. So when you start to put these stuff into place, these things into place, you're going to notice that things are going to change. Change is inevitable. If you're liking what's familiar, you're not in the right game. If you're that person that's like, I want to know what to expect every single day. I love the pattern. I love the, what's the word I'm looking for? Um, not the pattern. I can't remember. There's a I was just talking to someone last night about this. Now I'm forgetting the word. Wait, if you're so, so comfortable in where you were, and you're like, nah, I don't want it, I don't want to have anything else change for me, then you're not going to be able to reap the benefits and pick the fruit of your harvest because you want to stay stuck in that thing. So there is always a level of unknown and a degree of uncomfortability during this because we're entering into a space that we've never been in before. So sometimes this is gonna require that we sit in quote unquote solitude or be on a solo journey for a while rather than just slipping back to what's familiar. Well, let me just call that old friend back again because she's what I know. Uh-uh. There is no part of me, and do you know that I miss that friend to this day? I miss the good parts of her to this day. But there is no way in hell I would ever call and try to rebuild that friendship with her unless or until I know that she has done some healing work and she wouldn't show up the way that she was showing up. Not gonna do it. It's also gonna require that we say no to people and situations that no longer align with us. And that can be a hard thing for many. It's it's it is at first. I will say, it is at first because we're dipping our toe in the pool. We're not immersed in the pool swimming around the backstroke and the breaststroke and the freestyle. We're not just in there woo-woo-woo. We're like, and the toes kind of going in the pool, and we're like, what's gonna happen? Again, the unknown. Healing work is courageous work, it's vulnerable work, it's being honest with yourself, it's stepping into spaces you've never been in before. But rather than freaking yourself out and acting like this is a really bad thing, how about just getting curious and saying, hmm, I wonder what's gonna happen now? Hmm, I just set a boundary, and what's that friend gonna do? Or that partner, or that parent, or that child, what's this person gonna do? Let me see how they respond to this. It's about putting the toe in, and then all five toes, and then up to the arch of your foot, and then up to your heel, and then up to your ankle. It's about forward movement, it's about pausing, it's about backsliding sometimes. But the one thing I will tell you about setbacks or backsliding, every single time where I thought I was stagnant, or I was backsliding, or there was a setback, it was always a setup for something even bigger. It was kind of like pulling the rubber band back and then letting it go, or the arrow, pulling an arrow back. There's a lot of resistance, right? When you're pulling that arrow back, you hate it, you don't like what's happening in your life, and oh my god, and then all of a sudden, poop you let go and the thing flies. There was always some massive up-leveling that happened when there was a rocky road, when it got bumpy. So instead of falling into the idea that I'm doing this wrong or I'm not good enough, or this is taking too long, or I suck, sit with the idea that this is a process. Just like baking a cake is a process, just like making dinner is a process, just like building muscle is A process just like losing weight is a process, just like conceiving and and birthing a baby is a process. There's so many processes in life, and as humans, we want to speed everything up. We want to get to the goods now. Well, you don't want to take a cake that that requires 40 minutes of baking. You don't want to take it out after 20. You don't want to have a baby at five months when you need to have them at 40 weeks. You don't want to dig up a seed every other day to see if it's getting sprouts on it. Because it needs to to nestle into the soil. You don't want to cut open a cocoon to let the butterfly out because then it won't be able to fly. One of the best things that I ever gave myself was the gift of everything is purposeful and everything is working out for me. And everything is happening for me, not to me. Even the tough stuff. And I love still to this day when I hear that same thing set out in the world. I was listening to, I don't know, a podcast recently. I don't even remember who was on it. And they said that same thing. Oh, I think this was the one I was listening to on Mel Robbins podcast. And the woman is an astronaut. She brought up that concept too. And I love to hear how other people unpack it and talk about it and what it meant to them. It always fills me up. And I was like, yep. So we can look at life as a series of unfortunate events and we're just unlucky and everything sucks and all these things, or we can go, maybe I've looked at my life through a completely skewed lens. What if I looked at the fact that I attracted an abusive partner as a message? A message about my energy. I'm talking about me right now. Think about my my abusive partner I had from 17 to 19 years old. Maybe there was a message in there. Of course, I didn't have any teachers and mentors at that time, and I didn't really tell anybody what was happening. But just let's just saying I did. Let's say I knew what I know now. I knew that. Why did I attract this person? And moreover, why did I stay? Why did I find it difficult to leave? Why was I afraid to leave? Why was I afraid to tell people? What was going on? What did I need to know about me? Because in every situation, there's a lesson. There's a lesson or a blessing. A lesson or a blessing. It's funner to say lesson or blessing. It's also about as you're growing and healing, resisting the temptation to go back and say, I wish I would have known this sooner. I wish I would have done this differently. I should have known better. I wasted a lot of time. When we start to grow and heal and evolve and shift and morph and change and turn into the butterfly, it's so tempting to go back and just want to beat ourselves up. That does not work for us, that works against us. The best thing that we can do is to look back at that former version of you with love. Look back and say, you did the best you could. Like me. I'm always looking back and saying, like, I like the example of my abusive boyfriend. By the way, you guys, I never know what examples I'm going to use. I don't think of those things ahead of time. I just let them flow. So that's why I'm bringing this up. I'm not hinting at abuse. There's nothing regarding that in this talk. It's just the organic example that came up for me based on the flow that I'm in at this moment. But I looked back on that and I just felt so much love for younger Kristen. She's the sweetest thing in the world. She just wanted to love and be loved. She was kind, she's loyal, she's gentle, she's fun. She didn't know any better. And she was used to a certain degree of disrespect based on experiences that had already happened to her. Not to this degree, but she didn't know the line. She didn't understand where the line was. And she didn't know how to empower herself, and she didn't know how. Boy, someone pulled that ish with me right now. Can you imagine? But sweet little young lady Kristen at 17 to 19 had no idea. And by the way, neither did 35-year-old Kristen. And it happened again. She still didn't know. But she's here. She is gritty. She is determined. She's resilient. She's tenacious. She's courageous. And she made it through all of those things. And it actually came out better each time. And I'm sure this is the story for you. So don't think that you're gonna look back and you're gonna say to yourself, Oh, we should have known better. I wish I'd known better. I wasted so much time. The best 15 years of my life were spent with that man or woman, you know, these type of things. Say to yourself, did you do the best you could? Did you think you were doing the right things? I guarantee your answer is yes. And this is why self-forgiveness is so incredibly important. And why giving ourselves grace is so important? Because they're both acts of becoming the love of your life. The love of your life forgives you. The love of your life is graceful with you. In closing, we're gonna do a little practice, if you can, if you're safe to do so, it's gonna be very, very short. Everybody, if you will, take a very deep breath. Exhale, put your hand on your heart. You can do both hands if you want. Ask yourself this question Where in my life have I been waiting for someone else to give me what I can begin to give myself? Where in my life have I been waiting for someone else to give me what I can begin to give myself? What does love from me to me actually look like in practice? What does love from me to me actually look like in practice? What's one small way I can show up for myself today, even if no one notices? What is one small way I can show up to myself slash love myself today, even if no one notices? Remember, this is an inside job. We don't need to go announcing everything that we're doing. It doesn't mean a bold boundary sometimes. Sometimes it's just changing the language we're using to describe ourselves. Sometimes it's not beating ourselves up when we look in the mirror. It's not always going to be out there. So much of this is inside. Let the answers come to you organically, not from the mind, not from the overthinking, but from that deep inner knowing. Because we already know, by the way, you guys, we think we don't. I'm here to tell you and to stand on this hill boldly, we already know. So when we say I don't know, mm-mm, we do. Yeah, we may not know what country the Nile is located in or what city the pyramids are in, but we know things about ourselves. We know everything about ourselves because it's ourselves. We may not want to be honest with ourselves, we may be hiding from truth, but we know. So letting yourself know, and knowing that this is where your power lives, and this is where your self-worth begins to grow. I want to end this conversation today with a mantra. And I hope that you're in a place that you can say this out louder, at least to yourself. And we're gonna say them three times, okay? I am learning to love myself in ways I once begged others to. I am learning to love myself in ways that I once begged others to. You can change that up to any language that feels better to you. Like I'm learning to love myself in ways that I expected others to. I'm learning to love myself in ways that I never have before. Or just I'm learning to love myself. Make it yours. Anything I say, like in these this regard, make it yours. The next one, and there's only two, is I'm no longer waiting to be chosen. I am choosing myself now. I am no longer waiting to be chosen. I am choosing myself now. I am no longer waiting to be chosen. I am choosing myself now. Say these repeatedly, say them slowly, say them intentionally, and literally add the emotion to it. When we add emotion to our words, that creates heart-brain coherence and we actually rewire the brain. It's not enough to just say, I'm no longer waiting to be chosen, I'm now choosing myself. I am no longer waiting to be chosen. I am now choosing myself. I'm no longer waiting to be chosen. I am now choosing myself. Do you feel the energy shift in that? Always with affirmations and mantras, always add the emotion to it. Because this is why people say affirmations don't work. They actually do work and they work quite well. When we do them consistently, we add the emotion to them. This is how you train your brain. I want to thank everyone who joined me today on Empower Hour with KB. I hope you got a lot from this conversation. If you did, I always love when you guys backchannel me and say I needed that, or here's what I picked up from that, or that was great, or I'm gonna share this with so-and-so. It really allows me to know that I'm on track with delivering information that you guys enjoy and value. Also, you're always welcome to send me a DM here on NoomVibe, or email me at hello at kristenbrown.org if you have a topic that you would like me to touch on. Thank you. Happy Friday. Have an amazing, blessed, beautiful, glorious, authentic, and self-love-filled weekend. Please know you have everything it takes to heal. Everything. Everything. It's time to stop outsourcing your love and worth and give it to yourself. Thank you so much, everybody. Much love. Bye.