Do you really love yourself?

Most of us would say we love ourselves. But what if love is about more than how you feel?

In this episode, I share a conversation I had with my mum that completely changed how I think about self-love, discipline, and the promises we make to ourselves. Together, we'll explore what it really means to honour yourself, why breaking your own word matters, and how keeping small promises can transform your relationship with yourself and with God.

Thank you for listening. Visit holyrebrand.com to stay connected.

Transcript

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She said, good riddance, I'm glad you're leaving. Hey? I'm sorry, what? She's like, yes, ma'am, I'm not even going to miss you. I'm so glad you're leaving. Hi there, welcome to the podcast. I'm your host, Tapiwa Nashishawa, and this is Holy Rebrand. Today's episode is based on a conversation that I had with my mom around December last year. We were having a general conversation, but you know, sometimes you might say the wrong joke or say the wrong thing at the wrong time, and that whole conversation can turn into a lecture. That's the route that this particular conversation ended up going. It ended with my mom saying, You don't love yourself. And I remember thinking, excuse me? What do you mean I don't love myself? Of course I love myself. And to me, that statement has never really made sense. Like, of course I love myself. In my head, the only way someone doesn't love themselves is if they're actively trying to harm themselves, right? For example, if someone is trying to cross the road and they don't look and they don't care whether or not they get hit by a car, then okay, maybe you don't love yourself. But me, I look both ways before I cross the road. I feed myself nice things and I've recently started taking naps in the afternoon. I buy myself nice perfumes, facial masks, self-care, you name it. I do all of that. So if anything, I love myself so much because I give myself things I want. The reason why my mom said this is because beginning of 2025, I'd given her a list of things I wasn't going to do that year so I could focus on school, you know, new year resolutions, and in the spirit of me sticking to my word, I told her as an accountability partner. And guess what? The accountability partner was now accountability partnering. She was like, girl, you don't love yourself. All these things which she said you were not going to do, you did most of them. And she was right. Most of the things I said I wasn't going to do, I did them to the fullest. And as my friends and I would say, I did those things pro max. And honestly, to me, it wasn't necessarily a bad thing. I remember defending myself to my mom saying, Life isn't black and white. People are allowed to change their minds. You can't be so rigid that there's no room for life to happen, there's no room for change to happen. Proverbs 16 verse 9 says, In their hearts, men plan their course, but the Lord established their steps. Essentially, this means that God genuinely redirects us. This episode isn't about never changing your plans, but it's about being honest with ourselves when what we're calling flexibility is actually inconsistency. In my situation, it wasn't God redirecting me. If anything, it was me getting off course from what would have been God's plan, and that backfired badly. And that's where my mom was coming from. So fast forward to a couple of months later, I'm back in Cape Town. I was taking a shower, and you know how showers are where God sometimes schedules meetings with you. Yeah. So I remembered an encounter I had with my younger sister, Shauna. She had just finished her A levels and she wanted to come stay with me for a while. You know how it is. After school, during the holidays, you don't really want to spend that time at home. If you've got an older sibling or fun relatives, you prefer to go stay with them. I know Shanna won't admit to this, but that was her calling me the fun relative. I don't know. So she wanted to come spend some time with me, and I told her I was gonna come pick her up. And then something else came up. I called her, I was like, sorry, I can't make it because of ABC, and she was very understanding. And then I said, I'll come pick you up on another day. Then something else would come up and I would move it to another day and again and again, and eventually I now had to relocate to another country. The day that I was meant to fly out, this girl sent me a text that had my jaw on the floor. She said, Good riddance, I'm glad you're leaving. Hey? I'm sorry, what? She's like, Yes, ma'am, I'm not even going to miss you. I'm so glad you're leaving. Before anyone starts worrying, we're fine. That was just two sisters fighting. But I remember thinking, where did that come from? Because in my head, every reason that I had for not being able to get her was valid. I wasn't canceling because I didn't care about her. Life genuinely kept happening. But imagine being on the receiving end of that. Someone keeps making promises to you. Every excuse makes sense, every apology is sincere, but they still kept letting you down. After a while, you're bound to stop looking at the excuses they give you and start looking at the pattern. It didn't necessarily mean that I didn't love my sister, but my actions for sure were not communicating love. And that's exactly what I had been doing to myself in 2025, which led my mom to say that I didn't love myself. Psh, mind blown. So as I was in the shower that day, that was the first time my mom's words started making sense. I was like, oh my goodness, I don't love myself. What? My actions were not communicating that I loved myself. I started thinking about all the promises I made to myself. I'll start the diet on Monday. Monday comes, so does another reason why I can't do it. I'll wake up early and go for a run, then the alarm goes off and I tell myself I'll run tomorrow. I'll start reading again, I'll start saving, I'll apply for that opportunity, I'll finally launch that thing. Always later, always another day. Individually, none of these things feel like a big deal, right? But when you look at these things together, they become a pattern. Proverbs 13 verse 4 says the soul of a sluggard craves and gets nothing, while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied. I don't think this proverb is trying to shame anyone, but rather it's reminding us that the life we want is usually built through the choices we make repeatedly, not just the intentions we have. Your intentions might be good, but what choices are you making repeatedly? Those things are the ones that determine the kind of life you have. So I asked myself if my best friend came to me and described her boyfriend like this. He always promises things, but he never follows through, and he always has good reasons, and then he genuinely apologizes and says he will make it up to me. Would I walk away from that conversation thinking, wow, this man really values my friend? Probably not. So why am I okay with accepting that kind of relationship from myself? Why is it okay when I'm the one constantly letting myself down? As Christians, we believe we're more than just bodies. We believe that we have a spirit, a soul, and a body. The body naturally wants comfort. It wants the easier option. Five more minutes in bed, another episode on Netflix, the chocolate instead of a salad, things like that. Comfort. That's what the body wants. The soul is where our thoughts and emotions and desires live. Then there's the spirit, which longs to live in obedience with God. So almost every day there's this internal tug of war where the flesh says, take the easier option, and the spirit says, choose what leads to life. Now the scary part is every time I consistently choose the easier option, I'm reinforcing a habit. I'm teaching myself that comfort gets the final say. And that's not good. I don't like that at all. I don't. So I started thinking about what loving myself actually looks like, right? If God created us with a body and a soul and a spirit, then loving yourself means caring for all three parts of you. Loving your body isn't just buying yourself nice clothes or treating yourself every now and then. Yes, that's part of it. But there's more to it, like getting enough sleep, bathing, exercising, eating well most of the time, going for that medical checkup you've been postponing, drinking enough water, resting, looking after the body God entrusted to you. And then we move on to loving your soul. This means paying attention to your thoughts, your emotions, and your mind. It's setting healthy boundaries, processing disappointment instead of pretending you're okay, choosing what you consume on social media, spending time with people who bring you closer to God. And then finally, there's your spirit. Loving your spirit means spending time with God, reading his word even when you don't feel like it, praying, worshiping, being planted in a church community, obeying God even when it feels uncomfortable, feeding the part of you that will last for eternity. When one of those areas is constantly neglected, eventually the whole person feels it. That's why I don't think loving yourself can be reduced to only buying yourself nice perfumes or taking yourself for coffee. While those things are lovely, self-love is much deeper than that. It is stewarding the whole person God created you to be. Galatians 5 verse 16 to 17 describes this tension perfectly. Paul says that the flesh desires what is contrary to the spirit, and the spirit desires what is contrary to the flesh. The battle isn't unique to just me or you, but rather it's a part of Christian life. The question isn't whether we'll experience it, but rather which voice are we going to choose to listen to. I think that's where discipline becomes an act of love. Because every time you keep a promise to yourself, you're communicating something to yourself. You're telling yourself, My health matters, my future matters, my relationship with God matters, my goals matter, my word means something. And every time you keep breaking all these promises to yourself, you're slowly teaching yourself not to trust your own word. Eventually you become one of those people that say, I'll do ABC, and you don't even believe it anymore. Jesus says in Matthew 5 verse 37, let your yes be a yes and no be a no. We often think about applying that to promises we make to other people. But I've started wondering what it would look like if I applied it to the promises I make myself. If I say I'm going to do something, does my own yes actually mean yes? This doesn't mean we can never change our mind. Life happens, plans change, God redirects us. Sometimes changing your mind is wisdom because maybe the version of you that made that decision didn't know what you know now. There's a difference between changing direction because you've prayerfully discerned a new path and constantly abandoning your commitments because comfort feels easier in the moment. So I guess next time before I change a decision that I made, I should first ask myself is this coming from a place of discernment or is this something that's just easier right now? And also changing the question from do I love myself to if I treated someone else the way that I'm treating myself right now, would they feel loved, important, or valued? Would they still trust me? So maybe this week, instead of making 10 new promises to yourself, just make one and try to keep that one promise. In conclusion, sometimes loving yourself doesn't feel like love in the moment. Sometimes it looks like saying no to what your body wants because you're saying yes to what your spirit needs. It looks like going to bed on time instead of watching one more episode. It looks like waking up for that run even when your bed feels warmer. It looks like saying no to relationships, habits, or environment that pull you away from who God is calling you to be. It looks like reading your Bible even when you don't necessarily feel like it. It looks like choosing long-term peace over short-term comfort. I don't think my mom was trying to tell me that I hated myself. I think she was trying to tell me that the way I was treating myself wasn't communicating the love I believed I had for myself. And honestly, I still don't get it right all the time. I'm still learning, I still negotiate with my alarm in the morning, I still told myself I'll do it tomorrow more often than I'd like to admit. But now I'm a little more aware of what those moments are actually communicating. So maybe this week, don't try to change your entire life, just keep one promise. And that's all that I have for you today. If this episode encouraged you, challenged you, or reminded you of someone who needs to hear it, I'd love for you to share it with them. As always, thank you so much for spending this time with me. Until next time, God bless you. Bye.