Embracing Self-Love and Acceptance: Unlocking Inner Harmony and Positivity

Are you struggling to love and accept yourself?

"if you're searching for one person that will change your life - look in the mirror".
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Join me on a transformative journey as we explore the power of self-love and self-acceptance, and the profound impact they can have on your mental health and overall well-being. Learn how to reconnect with your inner harmony and wholeness, and let us guide you towards a life filled with love and positivity.

In this truthful and candid conversation, I'll share techniques for building heart-brain coherence, practicing stillness and meditation, and cultivating gratitude and appreciation and of course  what not to do.

By embracing self-love and focusing on the positives in your life, you'll begin to see the beauty within yourself and the world around you. So, tune in and let's embark on this life-changing adventure towards greater self-love and acceptance together!



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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

In this episode I talk about the journey of self-love and self-acceptance. Now, this can be a really challenging journey for each and every one of us, but it's also the most rewarding, and inside I'm offering some ideas, some insights and hopefully a little inspiration too. Hello and welcome to another edition of the James Grant from Polkars Super Soul Model series, where I help you tune into your natural state of well-being. Self-acceptance is a major part in our own health and well-being. The cause of most mental health problems and challenges is the inability to love oneself, and when one is experiencing greater anxiety, greater challenges or even disruption in their life for one reason or another, it all stands down to accepting what is, because if you can't accept yourself and situations, what you're actually doing is living in a fearful state, and most people can live their entire lives in this state, which causes more disharmony and discordant. So the journey of love and self-acceptance is a very introspective journey, yet it is one of the most powerful journeys you can ever embark on, and those who find it unable to love themselves and accept themselves could be because of bad past deeds and bad past choices that they haven't yet forgiven themselves. It could be a lack of love, growing up and not being shown how to love oneself through guidance of some sort, or people who've been there to be able to show them the way. It could be because you may feel misunderstood, or it could be feeling upset that others aren't responding to you in the way that you want them to, and so you feel victimized or you feel outcast in some way. All of this stems from a lack of love. It stems from a lack of self-acceptance, and often this could play out in the mind as a state of imbalance, as a state of anxiety, as a state of fear, but also it can play out in the body as well. With heart problems and when the heart is closed because one is not loving oneself, one may feel the ability to love another person, but you can't really love another person till you love yourself, and so when one is feeling overworked, overstressed, full of anxiety, the heart begins to close in order to protect itself, but then that shuts down the heart, and that's how things like heart attacks can emotionally play out. Anything related to the heart when it is not open and not flowing the energy of love, which is this invisible force that essentially binds us and connects us all together. When there's that lack of love present. What happens is the mind begins to enter this state of stress and the heart begins to close down, with an inability to receive and give love as well. So it can be a very difficult and challenging time for people.

Speaker 1: 3:07

The healing part of this journey really starts with you, and in this episode I aim to guide you back home, in towards yourself, or at least give you the ideas so that you can start the healing process, receive some ideas that will be able to just be pearls or drops of wisdom. Part of the healing process is understanding it and then applying it so you get the wisdom. It's always the experience that is the teacher. So part of the process of your healing journey is always to return to a state of wholeness. That's where the word holy comes from. Holy means to make whole, and when your spirit is full, you feel full of life, you feel fulfilled, you feel the lightness of being. Essentially, you're being whole or holy in that moment. Now you can dance between that for sure. But people who have gone before us, people like Jesus, people like Buddha, even modern day saints like Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II and so many others they have demonstrated this quality of holiness, which means essentially just deep down as human beings. They are demonstrating this essence of wholeness, and we can do that too. Now. We may dance between feeling whole and feeling off from time to time, because we're human and that happens. But when you experience this wholeness, you experience feeling fulfilled, you're feeling good, you're in that moment, holy, and that is to return to that state over and over again. So it becomes a habit and you can be healed through understanding life, through this perspective and applying some daily actions and some daily insights, which is what I wanna share with you in this episode.

Speaker 1: 4:55

The journey of self-love and self-acceptance starts when you were a baby. When you were born, you came from pure positive energy, from source energy, and you are this perfect whole being. And the journey of self-love and self-acceptance is forgetting that and then remembering it again, because, as a human being, it seems a very challenging and trialing passage of time that you have to go through from being an infant, learning right from wrong, learning your social status, learning where you fit into society, essentially creating an identity as you go along, because you're learning from your family, behavior patterns, from school and through the peers that you mix and blend with. But somewhere down the line, often in your mid-20s, as you started to accumulate lots of experiences, no right from wrong and no way you stand in the world, your ego and identity has been created, and it's only when you experience suffering and trauma And in my case it's like a couple of near-death experiences My ego got shattered because I realized that what I'm doing and the choices I've been making have been so painful And they've not only caused me pain but for the first time I've realized it actually caused other people pain, and so you develop this compassion.

Speaker 1: 6:19

So the journey of self-love and self-acceptance is often when you experience some type of heavy trauma or suffering. Now, that could be a range of different things. It could be some physical ailment or some physical health challenge that you have, or it could be so many different reasons for trauma that the world will present itself with you because everyone somewhere is going through something. So whatever you're going through, there's suffering. There is a silver lining in the suffering, and when you begin to see that your challenges and problems are essentially a rerouting of understanding, so that you could perhaps develop compassion, you can develop a sense of gratitude and perhaps empathy for other people who are also suffering. Your pain is cloaked in a hidden blessing, in disguise That pain that you feel is helping to heal you. And when you develop an emotion of compassion for other people, you're actually now beginning to help others, and this is when you wake up and become conscious and the healing begins.

Speaker 1: 7:27

So the journey of self-love and self-acceptance really comes from your own challenges, your own suffering, and then learning how to deal with them in a way where you can then Transmute those by helping other people's. Because you need to go through the dark night of the soul in order to begin a self-love and self-acceptance, because No one can love you and protect you the whole time. Perhaps if you were lucky enough to have parents that would be able to guide you, love you and protect you, then that's great. But there's a certain point in time where you have to take the reins and take the responsibilities on yourself, and When you begin to do that, the healing begins. So self-love and self-acceptance really comes by helping yourself, taking true ownership, and true ownership of the responsibilities and Affairs and things that you have in your life that you need to take control of.

Speaker 1: 8:21

There was a time where my life was completely out of control Mentally, physically, financially, even spiritually just completely out of control. But it was only when I started to develop a few Responsibilities and habits that I could control that I've never done before that things began to Gently click into place and things began to make sense. No, it didn't happen all at once. But if you're looking into your life experience and you're thinking, you know, am I lacking self-love, am I lacking self-acceptance? It could be. Right now is because you're not trying to help yourself in a way that you really could. You're not taking full responsibility of your life for the way it's unfolded right now.

Speaker 1: 9:01

As soon as you start taking full responsibility and ownership For your life as it is right now and trying to do whatever you can to improve it, you'll find that this self-love will grow, because when you accept what is, you can move beyond it, as Eckhart Tolle said. But if you can't accept it, you're always going to be stuck in this resistance. When I realized I could think differently and I could turn up and take responsibility for all the Crap that I'd created, i Could move beyond it. So if you've been through a breakup, then that breakup is a wake-up, and if you go going through some sort of financial challenges like that, that's a wake-up, a call to consciousness to find another way to handle your finances. And if you're going through health challenges, that's a wake-up to be able to say how am I living? Am I choosing foods that good for my body? Am I exercising? Am I practicing Anything that is helping me soothe my mental state, like meditation practice?

Speaker 1: 10:03

Because as soon as you start to take ownership and acceptance of all the challenges and all the difficulties that you may be living, you begin to free yourself. And the word here, the journey of self-love and acceptance, is all about this one word freedom, the emotion of freedom. And when you start to find freedom from the pain that you felt, freedom from the conditions of your life, you can then move beyond it. And you can move beyond it by doing a few things that will begin to help you pivot from feeling those challenges, those difficulties, these heavy emotions, or feeling a lack of love and lack of self-acceptance and perhaps not even feeling good enough to a certain extent. And when you begin to soothe yourself, you begin to embark on this journey of self-love and acceptance. But it does require courage because you're not going to have someone to hold your hand, you have to do it yourself. But then people come out of the woodwork.

Speaker 1: 11:01

Once you've started and embarked on this journey, and one of the easiest things that you can begin to do is just understand this principle that life is a mirror, and when you feel great, life will mirror that back to you, and when you feel horrible, life will also mirror that back to you, because everything is a mirror, and whatever you're feeling, you're getting back in the form of a mirror, and so one of the best ways to actually begin your healing process is to go into the mirror every day, as Louise has said, and go there and say your name and try and say I love you. And in this case, i would go to the mirror and say I love you, james, i think you're brilliant If you can do that. Every single time you come into the mirror, or even give yourself a little wink or a little smile, you are then projecting outward from yourself, little by little, a beautiful new trajectory of energy, and this starts the self-love and the self-acceptance. Now, you might not always be looking amazing, you might not always be looking flash, you might not always be feeling great, but if you can go to the mirror, the mirror won't lie. It will always reflect back to you what you're putting out. And if you're trying to put out positivity back into that mirror by looking at yourself in a certain way, trying to look with eyes of appreciation, you begin this self-love journey Now. You might not have the best body, you might not have the best face, you might not have the best hair, you might not have the best clothes, you might not have the best skin, but guess what? You have a beautiful heart and you have a beautiful soul.

Speaker 1: 12:43

And one thing I learned from modeling is that there's always someone who can look better, someone who's got a better body, someone who's got a better face, someone who's got better hair, better eyes. But if you keep comparing yourself to everybody else, that is what Roosevelt said is the thief of joy. Comparison is the thief of joy, and it's only when you can lift yourself in the eye, in the mirror and go I'm proud of myself. I'm proud of myself for caring, that I'm trying to be better and trying to improve the quality of my life. And so here are some practical tools for you to be able to start that self-love and start that self-acceptance, so you can return to your wholeness, feel great again and be a leading lighthouse in the world, because what the world needs is more people who are lit up, being who they are, being whole, being happy, being healthy and, essentially, being role models. And you can't do that if you have a lack of self-love and a lack of self-acceptance.

Speaker 1: 13:40

I look at people in the entertainment industry and they may have gone to absolute heights with reaching top of the charts or multimillion selling records, but deep down inside there's a lack of self-love and lack of self-acceptance, and it pains me to see that people with so much talent can't love and accept themselves, yet they can create something that uplift so many people. But what if we could live in a world where people are creative and creating beautiful things, but yet they have a healthy sense of self, a healthy sense of love and personal acceptance and realizing they may not be perfect, because none of us are, but they have an understanding that they are good enough, that they are whole, that they are loving, that they are worthy and that they are deserving of all good things? and this is what the kids need to see. These are the role models that we want to see come out, and I'm always trying to be conscious of that, that I live that every single day, because it's not always easy. But if you can come from this place of you, know I'm good enough, i deserve the best, i'm worthy, i can accept myself for my perfections and my imperfections, then you've already started an incredible journey towards feeling great about yourself. And as that is one of the best things that you can do, abraham Hicks said the greatest thing you could ever do is have self appreciation. And if you've never appreciated yourself because you've never had someone to appreciate you perhaps like a loving grandma or a loving parent after a while you compare yourself to other people and you can lose yourself, and that's why a lot of people have lost themselves to self medication. I was one of those types of people once upon a time until I started to do this, and here are some practical tools that you can do. You've got to be mindful about what you're eating. You know, are you eating bad foods and processed foods? because you feel low energy? often we are attracted to foods that aren't great when we don't feel great. So you've got to start reversing that process and start going for healthy, organic, natural foods so you clean your energy, clean your insight, because when you're feeling less than your mind is troubled, so you need to reorientate and set a new destination in the map, which is I'm going to find a way to appreciate myself today. So taking care of your body is important. Taking care of your physicality is great.

Speaker 1: 16:14

One of the problems when you're feeling a lack of self-love or lack of self-acceptance is because your heart's not open. And there's a couple of things you can do there. Number one do a little bit more cardio every morning, at least five minutes first thing in the morning. We'll get your heart running. This will open your heart. And then putting your hand on your heart regularly for moments Just Heart Math Institute did this thing putting your hand on your heart can build heart brain coherence, which helps you tune back into the heart, because when you're focused on the heart, you're not in your mind, and a lot of problems of self-love and self-acceptance is because there's too much in the mind rather than in the heart. So just a simple act of putting your hand on your heart or even falling asleep with your hand on your heart can be incredibly soothing, particularly when you're feeling anxious.

Speaker 1: 17:00

Another thing to do is just to be present, really focus on being present in the moment. How often are you in your head, worrying about situations, worrying about yourself, worrying what other people think? because if that's you, i empathize because I've once been there. But again you're comparing yourself to other people and the anything that's ever really important is that you care about what you think and trust your own decisions and even if you make bad decisions, at least you're marching to your own in a beat and then you can learn from them. You know there's no loss here if you can learn from the decisions and choices that you've made. In my case, going into debt was a very difficult choice because I've made a series of bad choices going on holidays and doing things like that and spending money I didn't have. But when I got control of that, then it all changed and then I started investing that money and it started to compound massively since then.

Speaker 1: 17:57

So your journey, wherever you are, is definitely changeable if you can accept what is and if you can find a way to improve your own good feelings, and just these simple acts of taking care of your own emotional well-being and physical well-being will up your energy. So then you begin to rendezvous, through the law of attraction, with good feeling opportunities. Good, good feeling opportunities won't come until you change your emotional state, and even practicing things like gratitude is going to be absolutely paramount for you to begin self-love and self-acceptance, because when you're feeling love for anything in your life, you're emanating that feeling. You're in tune with that feeling. Gratitude opens the heart. Appreciation opens the heart. Cardiovascular exercise opens the heart. Eating good, healthy foods, particularly greens, opens the heart. Putting your hand on your heart helps you build a coherence, and spending time with people you love and having a laugh and really trying to watch funny or inspiring things will open the heart. Anything that will open the heart is what you've got to be thinking of right now.

Speaker 1: 19:10

And if you're going through something really traumatic, the most important thing allow yourself to grieve, but also find a way to practice stillness, practice meditation, practice. Not beating yourself up for not getting it all right. That is one of the most important things. Not berating yourself. You've got to break that pattern. I used to do this all the time this perfectionist pattern. It's actually you want to be an imperfectionist, but you've got to sometimes just let things be, and if you can stop berating yourself, you'll really have turned a corner with regards to self-love and self-acceptance. Just remember this that the only thing in your journey that will help you enjoy a greater life is greater in a peace, and the more peace that you can have by having healthy habits, healthy exercises and reframing what is, is that you'll get out of your ego and you'll get back into your heart. Now, the ego is a good thing because it can keep you focused, but when you're living in your heart, which is the balance between a coherent mind and a coherent heart I mean the coherences, what I'm really trying to refer to here you're going to get the balance, which is what you really see, and to be present and to be light, to find lightness in everything and to ask yourself at the end of every day what went right today and list them. What did you like about how you handled certain things? list them. As you write those down with a pen and paper every day, you're reinforcing where you've done well, where you're appreciating yourself, and that will begin to grow and build confidence in yourself, in self-love and self-acceptance.

Speaker 1: 20:52

I never forget the story on a film called You Can Heal Your Life With Louise Hay, and there was an I think she's a medical doctor and her name is Monica Shultz And I think she had something like cystic fibrosis or fibromyalgia. That was it, and it was a very difficult diagnosis that she'd been given. And she just said to the mirror every single day I love you, i love you, monica, i love you. And after a period of time she began to believe it I love you, i love you. I'm looking for things to appreciate about herself every single day in the mirror And little by little, that condition in her body begin to alleviate and return back to balance again.

Speaker 1: 21:36

What helps the body return back to balance again is love, is understanding, is inner peace, and a mind at ease is a body at ease. And when your mind's not at ease, you're going to feel lack of love and lack of self-acceptance. So always remind yourself that you're lovable because you are. Always remind yourself that you're good enough because you are. And a lot of people have been conditioned to think that they are not. And the journey of self-love and self-acceptance will always start when you can find a way to discover a greater sense of inner peace and a greater sense of inner freedom. And that always comes through understanding And usually it might have to come from the mind before you put it into physical practice and get the experience. But this is what this podcast is all about is trying to offer you insight or ideas so that you can be practical about your own healing, so you can enjoy living the good life, living the very best life has to offer. And that only starts when you look into yourself, particularly when it's challenging.

Speaker 1: 22:40

If you've enjoyed this episode and you've gotten some insight or some ideas, or you've liked any of the other shows, please give it a like and leave a review. It really does make an impact. All the people that have left reviews I can't tell you how thankful I am because you make this show and allows me to help give you more and more. So if you're enjoying the content and you'd like more, please leave a review, because it helps push the algorithm here of this show. Now, until the next time, i wish you a wonderful weekend and green lights all the way.