How Self-Love Impacts Our Health and Happiness | Gupta Program |

Hello there. I hope you're sitting comfortably, ready for story time. Today's story, if you're sitting comfortably, is about Tina. And she's a ballerina. And Tina the ballerina is somebody who experiences a lack of self love. Now, how did Tina get here? How did Tina begin to experience this lack of confidence in herself, this lack of self love, this lack of awareness of what can actually make her happy? This is what we're here to find out in today's Facebook life. And we're going to be looking at the difference between self esteem and self love as well. Self esteem being that feeling of how we evaluate ourselves, whether we feel we're good enough. That's more an evaluation. Self love is really that feeling of how much do we really appreciate, care for, and nurture ourselves and what's missing. So, coming back to Tina's story, Tina as an adult finds life challenging. She finds that in her relationships, whether they're romantic relationships or work relationships, she comes across challenges. She often doesn't feel adequate or good enough. Sometimes at work, she feels that imposter syndrome where she feels that she shouldn't be even in that position or in a romantic relationship. She's always concerned that her partner doesn't really love her, or she's concerned that her partner might run away. Or indeed, if she's single, she may be experiencing attracting the wrong kind of guy into her life. And all of these things are impacting on her sense of health, our physical health. Tina's physical health suffers when she experiences this lack of self love and self care, her mental health, her emotional health suffers. And spiritually, she finds it difficult to move to the next level of her evolution. So how did she get here? How did Tina get to a sense of lack of love? Well, in terms of a lack of love, a lack of self love, it often starts in our childhood. Yeah, if in doubt, blame our parents. But this isn't about blame. This is about actually understanding what, you know, what happened in our childhood and how it impacted our adult lives. Without blame, without a sense of resistance, but instead realizing people did the best they could given their resources. So often a person like Tina experiences a perception of a lack of love and nurture during childhood. Now, the core fear that we all have as human beings is this fear of separation or abandonment from the tribe. So the reason we are here is that we grow into adults, we produce babies, we pass on our genes to the next generation. But if we don't make it to adulthood in order to be able to procreate, then of course our genes don't survive. So children have that inbuilt system to need that protection because under the age of 7 or 8, they aren't self sufficient. They require the parents to look after them. So separation from parents or the tribe is potentially very dangerous. And so a child is programmed to make sure that it is experiencing love and care and nature through all its habits, the way it cries, etc. And in those precious few years of life, maybe the first five to ten years of life, if Tina experienced that she wasn't loved unconditionally, there are things that she had to do, then that starts creating these grooves in the mind. And the sand in the mind of a child is very soft. So grooves in the sand are easily created habits of thinking, habits of being. And so what is it that Tina might have experienced? She may have experienced put downs from teachers or siblings or parents. She may have experienced some kind of abuse, mental, physical or emotional abuse. There could be some trauma, traumatic experiences that got repressed in the system. So when we go through an experience, if we don't resolve that experience and resolve that emotion then and there as a child, it gets stored in the center of our bodies, which is why we often experience fear here. We often experience guilt and sadness in our throats, chest area, we experience anger in the head, we get headaches. Because that which was never resolved has got stuck in every cell and fiber of our being. And so those particular aspects mean that these things keep seeping up from our unconscious and affecting our day to day adult lives. And sometimes it can be comparisons. So a parent may have compared Tina to other people, her siblings, other people at school, making her feel inadequate inside of herself. And this creates what we call childhood scripts. I'm not good enough. Nobody loves me. I don't deserve love. Because if my parents can't show me love, then who else is going to show me love? People abandon me. Or even if someone says they love me, they don't really because someone may have experienced oscillating love where one minute there's a manifestation of love from a parent and the next minute there's anger and abuse. And this can be a whole spectrum from, you know, mild bullying right through to full on abuse and can be even less than mild bullying. It can just simply be what the parent thought was good for the child at that point in time. And our parents did the best that they could given their resources and their parenting and so on and so on. But there comes a point in life where we choose to break that chain Break that chain within ourselves and break that chain in terms of what we pass on to our generation, our children. So this is our journey into Tina's life. And I'd love for you to share today's Facebook Live on your social media within groups. This content, Today's video is very relevant for Valentine's Day, very relevant for everybody on the planet. Because self love is that most important aspect of our personal development. It's core, it's absolutely crucial. You could be working on yourself in so many different ways, but all paths lead to that deep sense of self love and self acceptance. It determines our happiness, our physical health, so many different things. Even our immune system is affected by how we feel. And studies have shown the two biggest impacts on our depression and anxiety. Number one, ruminating on negative thoughts, which often happens if we feel a sense of lack of love. And secondly, self blame, putting ourselves down, which we often learnt in our childhood. So Tina learns conditional love, that perception of a lack of love or nurture. This can also happen in survivors of parents who've got addictions, for instance. So parents who are alcoholics or drug takers or weren't able to look after their children for whatever reason, that creates a deep childhood wound, a gap inside. And if this happens repeatedly during childhood, the second stage is conditioning, which means learning. The child learns that this is the truth. I definitely am not lovable. I definitely don't deserve love. It doesn't matter what people show me, it's a lie. That's an example. There's so many different patterns, a whole wealth of different patterns that we can inherit or kind of have from our nurture. It could also be copying behavior so we can copy what our parents did or how they behaved. So maybe Tina did that. And once that deep down wound and belief has now been created within Tina, the third step is strategies. Because Tina knows that actually having that sense of my parents don't love me, they're going to abandon me, I'm going to be separated from the tribe that is so core to our survival that Tina has to come up with strategies. And strategies are ways of behaving, ways of thinking, ways of being, our whole personality that can try and claw back that love. So some of those strategies, and for those of you on the gut program, you know that we talk about, some of those strategies are here. So for instance, one of the strategies is to become Leo the Lion. A part of us becomes Leo the Lion that says, if I achieve, then I'm loved. So then high achievers are often insecure because they learned as a child that love is conditional. And only when I perform and I do well at school, university, then I'm shown love. So the achiever part starts bubbling up within us. And we get stressed and try to prove ourselves and compare ourselves to others and keep up with the Joneses, which causes such stress and anxiety. Or the victim, Jess the princess, starts being created within us. These are all little subparts within Tina, living within Tina. And the victim part thinks, look what people do. I'm a victim of life. People are out to get me. No matter what I do, I can't seem to get it right. So we go into that victim role in our relationships as well. And victims often become persecutors. As part of the drama triangle, which we'll talk about another time, we can become the helper. If I really help, and I'm a good little girl or boy, and I help everyone around me and I look after people, then maybe I'm loved. So a little helper part gets created inside us. So all of these strategies get created within Tina the ballerina at a young age. And those parts, those sub personalities, stay at the same developmental age as when they were formed. So we have little children running around in our psyche, determining our thoughts, our behaviors and the way we act. And don't we feel like that sometimes, that we think, gosh, I'm really acting like a child? Why is that? It's because there are these little children, these scattered, isolated little children living within our psyche that haven't experienced that nurture and are looking for it in all our adult relationships. These are what we call ego shells. Because Tina has such a soft heart, she's been hurt as a child. She's vulnerable. So she's sensitive, which often calls it what we call highly sensitive personalities or people. She's easily wounded because there's a soft wound, a soft heart. And so to protect that soft heart, Tina creates these ego shells, which is like a tortoise that develops a shell. So the achiever is a shell. If I perform and become the achiever, show that I'm brilliant and strong, then I can hide that soft wound within me. And even people who seem, on the surface, very strong and powerful, even narcissists or people with narcissistic personality disorder. That is a shell to cover the deep, deep wounding within them. Or even things like borderline personality disorder. These are all strategies to overcome that lack of nurture or that perception of lack of nurture. And how does that affect our adult relationships? And why is this relevant to Valentine's day. It's because Valentine's Day is a fantastic opportunity to celebrate love. Absolutely the romantic kind, but also an opportunity to renew and refresh our relationships through self awareness. So Tina grows up and in her adult relationships, this childhood wounding that she's experienced means that every single person in her life becomes a manifestation of those unresolved emotions. Everyone becomes her mother or father or her pet, you know, a teacher or a sibling that caused this feeling within her in the first place. So we often, you know, the people say we marry our mothers, we marry our fathers. What are they really saying? It's until we resolve those unresolved emotions within us, we're going to keep attracting that kind of partner that perfectly tessellates with our issues, our challenges, that is that which is unresolved within us. It's a perfect tessellation between our unresolved emotions and the people around us. It is manifested. People are a mirror on us to show us that which is not resolved within us. Very, very simple. And when we go through challenges in life, whether it's the end of a relationship, a challenging or abusive relationship, it could be the death of someone close, it could be an illness. These are all like cocoons that we have to go into. So the caterpillar, the old self, has to go into a cocoon. The cocoon being the challenges of life, the big life events that really causes pain and heartache, the dark nights of the soul. So we can then transition to a butterfly. Because the difference between a caterpillar and a butterfly is that a caterpillar didn't have those wings. It was held down by those old belief systems, those old negativities. But the cocoon, which is the big people and situation challenges we face in life, they are designed to wake us up to that which is unconscious within us. So when we experience those challenges in our adult relationships, instead of thinking, oh, there's something wrong, what do I do now? Instead we can celebrate them because it shows us that actually it's not about the other person. They need to change what's wrong with them. It is our own manifestation, our own way of being which allows us to go inwards. Sometimes we're obsessed with the other person. They need to change. Whereas actually it's a mirror on us. Now, of course, if you're in an adult relationship which is abusive, or there is substance abuse, there is violence, that is a different situation, that doesn't mean it's all about you. Then the mirror is, why am I staying in this relationship? Why am I not Seeking help. That's the other mirror. Because sometimes we're so desperate for love as a result of the big wounds within us that we stay in relationships that aren't healthy. Because we don't want to lose that love. Because losing that love will remind us of the pain and trauma from childhood that we never resolved. So Tina the ballerina may grow up with two kinds of strategies overall, which one can be called an anxious strategy. That when she's in a relationship, she's constantly thinking, has he texted me? Does he love me? Analyzing and being hyper vigilant on what the person says, how they act towards her, their behaviors. This hyper vigilance can create such stress in the system, such a roller coaster of life. Which is why relationships can feel like roller coasters. Because they are bringing to the surface, in a magnified way, all those unresolved strategies and ways of being. So we start questioning whether our partner loves us. We have all these fears. We react to things they say and they do. Have you noticed? I remember once I was at someone's house and there was somebody shouting from upstairs and someone shouting from downstairs and a friend of mine said, oh, they must be married. Only your partner could make you that angry. And isn't it amazing how we can be perfectly calm in so many different situations, even at work when there's a lot of stress? But there's one little thing that our partner can say and suddenly it just triggers something so powerful within us. Let's notice that when that reactivity occurs, in that moment, we want to blame and shout and scream and get all the anger out because the other person is clearly to blame. But in that moment, can we open up a window of mindfulness to just take a slow, deep breath in, to accept ourselves and our reaction and just take a pause, press pause and meditate or breathe and allow the emotional intensity to come down and reflect on what is it within me that has caused such a surge of emotion? What wounding within me is unresolved that has created this and that can bring such a sense of harmony and growth and mutual respect into our relationships. So our partners are proxies for our mothers or fathers or other people that may be impacted our sense of a lack of love. Isn't that so fascinating and interesting? And the irony of it is that this is the biggest irony. We look to fill that gap within us from the love of that person or the approval of the boss at work, or the friendliness of a neighbour. We think, yes, look, they've showed me love and appreciation. I've Searched for it all my life. Finally, I can breathe a sigh of relief. I am loved. And guess what? It's like a temporary little hit. Yeah, that's why they call it a fix in addictions. It's a temporary little fix, a temporary salvation that we experience. Which is why when we first get into relationships, we are full of bliss and love. Because finally someone understands me. Finally I can prove to myself I'm loved. Because here's this stranger that I don't know who loves me unconditionally. And it's like temporarily, that wound inside gets a lotion on it. Or the gap is filled and we feel ecstatic. We feel who we truly are in that state of bliss. But then that creates an attachment, a dependency. The biggest irony of relationships is that they both heal us. But in fact create dependencies and addictions. Because then we want more of it and more of it. And when the other person is no longer able to. To satisfy that need within us, then we think, I don't know if this person's right for me, it was so good at the beginning, in the honeymoon period. But now they just don't love me. They're not showing me enough love, enough attention. The challenge was always. It was an unrealistic expectation from the other person. It was a dependency. That's why there's that song, Robert Palmer, Addicted to Love. Actually, maybe that's the one we should have sung today. Because it is like an addiction. And even once that honeymoon period is gone, it can still feel like an addiction. And an unresolved addiction where sometimes we just give up on our highest vision of love. And instead just give up and think, well, I'm never going to feel that. When actually it was always there. We just didn't work on ourselves. Love is always an inside job. As much as on Valentine's Day, someone can wine and dine you. Or you can have this wonderful romantic connection. Ultimately, no one can ever make you feel loved. You make yourself feel loved by loving yourself. That's why at some level, all love is self love. Now, how does that mechanism work? When someone shows us love, they don't inject us with love. They don't get a barrel of oxytocin, the love hormone, and inject us with it, do they? There's no transfer of love, although there is a transfer of energy. There is simply a permission that Tina gives herself to love herself, to feel good about herself, to let go temporarily of those beliefs. So instead, rather than relying on the outside world to do that, we can do that. On our own, love is an inside job, as they say. It's always an inside job. And why is this so important? Because our relationships, whether they be romantic work relationships, personal relationships, family relationships, they are all dependent on a mature sense of self, love. And all of these parts that we've referenced actually growing up to being adults. And Tina the ballerina, for those of you on the Gupta program, or Meaning of Life, you'll know that Tina the ballerina represents the approval seeker. Sometimes in life we become the approval seeker or people pleaser, where each interaction, it's like we want a bit of approval. We want someone to know how great we are and how amazing we are. So we fish for compliments. If we are Leo the lion, the achiever, we work to prove ourselves to ourselves and other people that we can perform. We are good enough. We're richer, we're faster, we're better, we're more intelligent. We, that competitive nature within us is all designed to heal that wound within and something else that we grow up with. This is Sam the fireman is our safety seeker. So if Tina didn't experience safety whilst growing up, didn't feel safe, then there's a little part of that called Sam the fireman. And he's the health and safety executive. So he's always running around going, where's the fire? Where's the fire? Where's the fire? Life is dangerous. Life is a challenge. Things won't work out. It's really unsafe. So we put up these ego shells once again to protect the soft core. And in relationships, that can be anything from anxiety in relationships, as we talked about the anxious types, right. To what we call an avoidance strategy, which is, let me avoid relationships, because by avoiding them, I protect my soft core. So I'll become perfectionist about that person and expect them to be the whole world for me. Or I'll push them away and reject them before they reject me so that I can protect my soft core. These are all a suite of different strategies that the mind comes up with to protect us. These are all protector parts. So what can we do about this? Well, the good news is that we have some tools that we'd like to share with you. They're free tools because we want to let go of this lack of self love and begin to nurture and become our own guardian of our own sense of love. Because it's a triple whammy here for Tina the ballerina in her adult life. First of all, her childhood scripts aren't true. The lies that Gina keeps telling herself, what Lies are potentially you telling yourself, I'm not good enough. I'm not lovable. People don't like me. People are judging me. I'll never find the love that I want. Love doesn't exist. I must push people away. People don't know how to show me love. I'll never be loved. All of these different things, all of these different patterns, yeah, they're not true, they're lies. They were created at a time in a different part of our lives when they potentially did exist, or there was a perception of that. So the first of all, they're lies. And we've grown up, we're an adult now. It's not relevant in our adult lives. Secondly, they create all this negativity. So not only are they lies, but they create mental, emotional and physical stress and affect the cells of our bodies, our whole makeup, our whole way of being. And thirdly, the really interesting thing about this is we manifest those very circumstances in our lives that we wanted to protect ourselves from. Does that make sense? So because we've got this wound inside and we're using these strategies, we start attracting the wrong kind of partner or potentially attracting perception of a lack of love in our lives. The whole world is a manifestation of all those conditionings, those learnings within us that we haven't resolved. People in situations manifest in our lives to bring that to conscious awareness which was lost within us that we just weren't aware of. So there's three, triple whammy. Number one, it's lies, it's not true, it's from a bygone era of our past. Number two, makes us feel bad. And number three, it manifests the very situations we want to avoid. So retraining the brain, retraining the mind out of these childhood responses is the most powerful thing, the most powerful little gem of self development that we can engage in. It will impact on all other aspects of our lives. So there's three tools that we'd like to share with you to overcome these childhood scripts, these software patterns, as it were. Sometimes there's a bug in the system where your computer keeps malfunctioning and keeps having to reboot or keeps crashing. Those are the software bugs in the system that we're experiencing as a result of a lack of self love. So we're going to do a self love meditation in our next Facebook Live. So we're going to end this Facebook Live and start a new one on the same page that you're on right now. And that will be a 20 minute self love meditation. So that's one thing we'd like to do with you. Secondly, we've got some tools we'd like to share. They're free tools on how we can begin to nurture our inner child. It is the inner child, the tina within us, all that we're really talking about. And first tool, I'd like to give you something called the New Groove Technique, literally creating new grooves in the mind, new ways of being. So someone will share that this is from the Meaning of Life Experiment. So. So we'll share that in the comments. And you can find all of these videos and all of these tools in a free app, free not for profit app called the Meaning of Life Experiment. You can download that from play store and iOS. And it's day 15, within the meaning of Life Experiment, there's a video called A New Groove Technique. Then on day 16 of the meaning of Life Experiment, there's a video called Overcoming Insecurity which goes through this whole process and gives you some tools and techniques. And finally, within the Meaning of Life Experiment app, there is a technique called the Inner Child Technique. And I'd love for you to experience.