Self love is NOT acceptance (what self love actually is)

Self love isn’t just accepting where you are. It’s being honest about what needs to change. In this episode, we break down why “acceptance” can keep you stuck, the difference between real self love and avoidance, and what it actually looks like to choose yourself in a way that leads to growth.

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Transcript

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Hello everyone and welcome back to the self-trials where we cut through all the fluff and get real about what it actually takes to build your dream life. Jumping straight into the stuff you don't want to hear but need to hear, I'm your host, Kaylin, and today we are talking about all things self-love and what self-love actually is. Because self-love, it's not acceptance, it is appreciation. And the way you move when you actually love yourself and when your self-love is rooted so deeply within you and is true and real, is incredibly different than when you move from a place of using self-love as a way to cover up your insecurities. And I think we need to face the reality that a lot of us are actually using self-love as a way to cover things that we actually need to work on. And I think this is a conversation that can be really hard for a lot of people. And I think the pendulum is finally starting to swing back because I've talked about this in the past and haven't always gotten the best feedback on it, or people being really upset and really frustrated with me. And that's okay. Like I'm at a place now where I'm so comfortable and confident in who I am and what my beliefs are and the type of person that I am that I'm able to own this opinion. And I think it's so important to talk about it because I also feel like it's something that holds people back without them even realizing it. Because what we see self-love to be, like, right, when you think of self-love, a lot of the marketing around it, the conversations around it is all like, oh, you buy yourself flowers, you take yourself on self-dates, you you get yourself chocolates, you go get your nails done, a manicure. It's like, ooh, it's all, it's all airy-fairy and fluffy and foo-foo-y. But the reality is like, real self-love is hard. It's choosing hard now versus hard later, and it's showing up for a future version of yourself. And that is not always easy. So of course, yes, there is the really good, amazing things about doing all those small little things for you. Like you should be saying your affirmations in the mirror. You, you should be saying, I love me, I think I'm beautiful, I think this about me, I think that about me, I'm gonna buy myself flowers to give myself that self-love. Like that is not something you should, you should walk away from, right? That's just the baseline of one way to show yourself love. But it's making sure that you don't fall so deeply within that that you're using all of those affirmations as a cover for the insecurities that you're feeling so deeply. And so if you're sitting there and going, okay, well, I love myself, so that means that I can eat whatever I want. Like I can just eat whatever I want. I don't need to move my body because my body is perfect the way that I am, or I don't need to do self-work because I'm perfect exactly the way that I am. That is setting yourself up for failure and it's also keeping you stuck and it's keeping you in a victim mentality. It's going, I'm perfect, so I don't ever need to change, right? No, we're not perfect. But that when you can choose to look at yourself in the mirror and recognize I am not perfect, I will never be perfect, but I can still love that version of me. That is how you actually show up for yourself and also show up for all the people around you in the best way possible. Because the reality is you're not perfect. And that's okay. Like it is okay to not be perfect. None of us will ever be perfect. There's also always gonna be someone better than you. There's always gonna be someone worse than you in every single category. Like, you are never going to be the best at everything, you are never going to be perfect. Like, that is a reality we all need to face. And I think there's been this whole wave of like, you're perfect, you're amazing, go after it, go, girl, like do all these things. And while sure, there's an element of that that is nice, right? It gives you that rush of motivation, it gives you that rush of excitement, but it's not what stays rooted within you. When you can face yourself and you go, there are parts of me that I don't like, but I I can look at myself in the mirror, see that, and I can work through that. That is real self-love. Like that, that right there is the thing that you should be doing. And it's also like you should be so proud of yourself to be able to look at yourself in the mirror and go, okay, I struggle with this, but I know that I struggle with this, and I'm gonna own that, versus hiding from that. Because what it looks like to hide is then you fall into this whole, this whole way of it's basically self-sabotage where you're not even ever allowing yourself to reach your full potential. Because you then, like I said previously, you eat all the shitty foods. You go, I don't need to work on my body, I'm perfect the way that I am. Okay, well, if you love your body and you want to show up for your body, because and I'm using your body as one example, but there's also a thousand other examples. I think the body is just something that we see happen a lot, right? Like you can abandon yourself in a lot of ways, but I think sometimes it's it's in the physical is just an easy way to measure it, right? And it's an easy way to see for yourself the path that that that takes. And so using the body as an example, if you truly love your body and appreciate everything that your body does for you, you want to show up for your body so that way it's able to function its best. Like this isn't even goes beyond just the physical and what it looks like, right? This is understanding that the way the what you eat, the way you move, what you do for exercise, all these different things, that drastically affects like how your body feels on a daily basis. And like our body is the vessel for our soul, for our mind, for our spirit. So even if you want to look at being like, oh, well, I don't care about the body, like I love my body the way that it is, you still need to take care of it and you still need to show up for it because it is the thing that is housing the mental, the personality, like all these things that you say that you value, right? You also still need to value your physical vessel because it's holding all of those things for you. And when you when you show up for that physical body, it allows that body to function so much better. And again, this applies to everything. It's like when you show up for your mental, for your soul, all of those things flourish and those become so much better. So it's like if you really love yourself, you're not gonna sit on the couch and not move all day and be like, oh yeah, like I'm just gonna eat all this shitty food. It's like, is that what your heart wants? And not even in like, yeah, you're actually, you're probably like, yeah, my heart does crave that and desire that and all these things. But I mean, from a place of actually taking care of it, that's not what's best for it. And so you want to be eating the things that make you feel good. And that's also what's linked to a lot of things when it comes to like depression and anxiety. It's like you are setting yourself up for failure when you use self-love in that way. And I think a really great way to look at this is like think of anybody that you love. Like, I want you to think of the person you love most in life. And uh on another topic of this, which I'll kind of get in, I'll go actually no, I'll go there now. Is like when you think of someone that you love, I want you to right now think of the top five people that you love most in life. So I'm just just think about that for a second. Like, list those people in your head. Now, how many of you said yourself? How many of you love yourself in the top five of the people you love the most? You should be in there. And we are so quick to forget how important the relationship with self is. It's like if you don't immediately think of yourself along with maybe some other people too, that's something you need to work on. Like you, your the way you see yourself and the way you love yourself should be just as high, if not higher than everybody else, and not in a conceited way, and not in a way to be like, oh, you're the center of the world and you're the most important thing and all this stuff. It's just understanding that when you love yourself, that's also how you show up the best for everyone else. Like if you neglect self, you are going to turn into a version that can't properly show up for everybody else. Like that is the core reason of why being so close with yourself and having such a strong relationship with yourself is so important. So that's a little bit of a side note and something that I encourage you to work on. If that's not a place that you're already at where you struggle to acknowledge how much you you love yourself or if you just lack a relationship with self, right? But the whole reason I initially was going into that is to first think about those other people beyond self, right? So I want you to have the awareness that yourself should be one of the people that comes to mind when I ask that question. However, there's gonna be other people that come to mind too. Family members, siblings, friends, maybe your dog, like like who knows who it is, right? A relationship, a husband, a wife, whoever that is for you. How do you want to show up for them? Like when you think about another person, another animal that you love the most, you're not gonna give them super shitty food. You're not gonna give them super shitty advice. Like you are going to give them the best of the best that you possibly can because you love them so much. That is exactly how you have to show up for yourself. You have to go, I and sometimes when you're talking to your family or your friends or whoever that person is you love, sometimes the things that we have to tell them or the things that we have to do may seem very, very difficult. Or in the beginning, they might not see that as a great thing, but you know that you're looking out for them because you care so deeply about them. Like you're willing to do the hard things that they don't want to do because you know that it's good for them. That is the same thing for you that you have to do because real self-love is showing up for a future version of you, even if that means choosing hard now. Sometimes when you when you lay in your bed and you go, you know what? I'm gonna start working out, I'm gonna start prioritizing movement because I know it's good for me, I love myself. When that alarm goes off in the morning, do you know how hard it is, especially at the beginning, to actually get yourself up? Yeah, it's extremely uncomfortable. But it's knowing that the second you get up, you get past that little bit of things being uncomfortable, feeling weird. Again, that all comes back to other videos we've talked about, like those are just your patterns, it's what's familiar to you. But once you get over that hump, all of a sudden now you're out running, you feel really good. You you start to feel the dopamine and the high of all these other things, but it's knowing that you're choosing that hard right now so that you don't have to choose hard later. Because hard later, especially when it comes to like your physical body, like there are so many things that that go wrong when you get older. If you're not choosing to prioritize who you are right now and what it is that you're doing for yourself right now and the habits and the actions and the behavior, like those will catch up to you at a certain point. And so I say all of this out of a place of love, ironically, and it can be really hard to accept. So if you're feeling resistance towards this conversation or you're hearing me say this, you're like, oh, what a bitch, basically. Like, what do you mean? No, no, no, no. I'm like, yeah, it is. Like, this is what self-love actually is. It's messy, right? Like, like everything about life, everything about growth, it is messy, but trust me, it is very possible. And when you start looking at self-love that way, and you start looking at your life that way, and when you start looking at yourself that way, it may see hard it may seem hard at first, but it gives you the endless flexibility and opportunities will open up to you because you're starting to choose looking at your life as you being the creator. And that's where a lot of all the things that we come back to is putting you back in the driver's seat and being the one that's actually able to take control of your life. Because when you just like use the excuses to be like, oh, well, I love myself, it's like that is just such an easy excuse to use to not actually show up for yourself. And what I want for everyone is for you to actually reach your full potential, right? Like that's everything that I talk about, everything that I do. And so I challenge you this week to do something that that is okay. Actually, I challenge you to do two things. I'm like, I want you to do one thing that is a soft form of self-love, right? So, so say your affirmations, go get yourself flowers, like do something that that gives you that feeling of softness, that like I love myself, I can be kind to myself. Because one thing too is like while you are doing the hard stuff, you do still want to appreciate where you are right now. And I think I'm gonna go into to kind of how to bridge the gap between these two mindsets, right? So you have that soft love. And I want you to do that. And then I also want you this week to choose something that challenges you, that's hard, that's that's choosing that hard self-love, right? So you also have the balance of that. And what that's gonna be for you, it's gonna look different for everybody. So maybe that is making yourself wake up earlier, or maybe it's finally completing that task that you said you weren't gonna do, or maybe it's it's actually going to the gym four times a week instead of three times a week. Like, whatever that goal needs to be for you, do that for yourself. And when it does come, when it comes to setting goals, like don't give yourself a ridiculous thing that you know you're not going to be able to actually deliver on. Give yourself small wins. So if you were going to the gym three times, try four. Don't all of a sudden up it to six or seven, right? Then all of a sudden you're gonna be like, wait, why can't I, why couldn't I do that? Why did I have such a hard time with it? So actually set yourself up for success within that. So you're giving yourself that soft love and you're giving yourself that hard love at the same time. And those are both self-love and they're both just as necessary. And so the final piece of this is kind of bridging these two things together. It's knowing, okay, when you are working towards something hard, I think it's very easy to all of a sudden move out of a place of love. And this is why people stay within that self-love of going, oh, you're perfect, you're fine, everything's good. Because a lot of times when we try and reach goals and accomplish things, we do it in a way that's actually from a place of shame. Like we're like, oh, well, you're not good enough, you're not this, you need to show up like this, you need to do that. But if you change your mindset to go, oh no, no, no, I love myself so much, that's why I'm showing up to do this thing. It's not because I'm running from a past, current version of myself, but you're running towards a better version of yourself. And I think that mindset shift alone is what allows you to actually show up in a proper, non-damaging way, but still pushing you towards something that's actually better. So it's like the current version of you isn't broken. There's nothing wrong with it. You don't need to like change this version of you. It's going, okay, I see this version of me, I see the imperfections, and I know where it is I want to go. So rather than choosing to accept this and that I have to stay within this, I am actually choosing to continuously show up and continue to push myself to appreciate and love what I've been given so that way I can become even better and become even more. And this ties into something that I recently came across. It was a very interesting mindset shift for myself that I feel like will resonate with a lot of people because I think a lot of people struggle with discipline and they go, Oh, well, I like I get motivated, and then how do you get good discipline? And discipline truly is like the highest form of self-love. Like it is the highest form of self-respect. And I think a lot of us know that, but that doesn't change the fact that we still struggle with it. And I think it comes to what I had just talked about where discipline is a lot of times associated with shame. So you're saying, well, I need to do all these things because I need to change and get away and run away from this current version of me. So rather than looking at things as, oh, I need to be so disciplined, start going, oh no, I just need to be devoted. Because when you're devoted to yourself, devotion comes from a place of love. And I know that a lot of you can be devoted because I know a lot of you have stayed in relationships and you've been devoted to a version of a person that doesn't exist because you you were so in love with a potential version of them. So if you can fall in love with the potential version of yourself, oh my gosh, you are gonna be unstoppable. Like the way that I know so many of you, so many of you have showed up for other people. If you could just show up for yourself that same way, if you could just believe in yourself the way you have believed in your ex-boyfriend, your ex-girlfriend, your parents, whoever that is for you, you are going to be able to accomplish so much. So it's like use that devotion that you've used for other people, also give that devotion to yourself. And that is how you will effortlessly outwork everybody. And that's how you also you're able to make these decisions and show up for yourself from that place of love versus running from that place of shame. You're running towards your goals because you absolutely love them. You love the person it is you want to become. You don't hate the person that you are right now. So hopefully, all that gives you some mindset shifts to just think about about how to reapproach working towards your goals and to not allow yourself to fall into that super easy trap of just self love and acceptance and complacency and to actually dare to step forward and do more than that because you do actually love yourself even more than just that baseline. So, with all that being said, I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. It was a little bit on the shorter side today, but we will be back with another one next week. Bye.