Love Yourself More (Sort Of)

Okay, let's talk about some really good advice that we all know we do follow, which is to love ourselves a little bit more. You're so hard on yourselves and it's easy to do, right? We have a bad day, we beat ourselves up, and then we feel bad the next day. So we beat ourselves up more because we feel bad. Then we beat ourselves up more because we know we shouldn't feel bad because we're better people than we really give ourselves. Credit card and all of a sudden we're miserable. And a lot of people, their reality is that they don't care for themselves. And it shows up in so many ways. It shows up from how they choose to eat. It shows up from how they choose to express or not express themselves. It shows up in what they choose to do as a career. It shows up in how they really feel each and every day. And a lot of it comes from that inside. They just haven't allowed themselves to be themselves. They haven't learned to give themselves credit. They haven't learned to love themselves. So I'd love to talk about that topic with you here. And when I talk about, you know, love your, I always like to say love yourself sort of meaning there's a lot of people who have a very high mind about themselves. You know, they almost have too much self esteem or too much pride or such a level of narcissism that they're almost, I mean, they're tilting towards that sociopathic level too, you know, and it's like, whoa, they're so confident in themselves and yet they're bad at everything, you know, so that's not what I'm going to be talking about. I think we should love ourselves spiritually, you know, have a deep caring for the blessing and the gift that we have been charged with. And that's life. You know, loving yourself is having reverence ultimately for life. It's not just about I feel good about myself, I feel good about myself. It's a deep gratitude for the life that you have, which is hard because you see a lot of people who have a better life than you. I do. We all do. There's lots of other people who appear to have better lives on externally than we do. Maybe they have fancier cars or bigger houses or more money, or maybe they just have better relationships or they look outwardly, you know, more amazing. Their amazing six pack abs on their Instagram is like wowing you, right? It's easy to start comparing yourself to other people and then feel down about yourself. But we have to Remove other people from the equation about how we feel about ourselves. We even have to remove, at some point, sometimes our own stupid thoughts, our own bad actions, our own poor habits. And we have to start with the fact that whether you call it the universe, luck, chance, God, evolution, spirit, whatever you call it, you've been blessed with breath that you are alive. Right now, the odds of that is so extraordinarily rare that I really believe loving ourselves starts from a place of reverence for life. So when people say love yourself, I go, yeah, you know what? First love life be honoring of the fact that you are alive. Love yourself because you've been granted life. You've been given this gift of life. There must be a reason or a purpose or a mission behind that. At least that's what I believe. I believe in God. I believe in the fact that the odds of us all being here is pretty rare. That may not be your belief, and that's totally cool, but what I really do hope is that you have a reverence for your life, an appreciation, a deep gratitude, a sense of enjoyment or enthusiasm that you're alive. That's where loving yourself has to start from outside of self, outside of others, right? Starting from that place, everything can turn for you in positive directions. So when I talk about loving yourself, I have three takeaways for you today with that context. My first takeaway is, if you really want to love yourself, have a vision for yourself and be congruent with that person. That's how you really love yourself. A lot of people hate themselves because they have a vision for who they really want to be, and they're never acting like that. They see themselves as an honest person, but they're lying all the time. So they hate themselves. They see themselves as a healthy person, but they choose junk food three meals a day, and then they feel bad about themselves. And I usually say, you know what? I don't think we need to hype up that person. I think that person should feel negative about their behaviors. And I know that sounds very judgmentally, but I don't think it's always good advice to run around and say everyone should feel good about themselves for 100% of the things they do, because we lose standard setting in life. You know, there's a lot of us who don't want to feel the guilt of doing a bad job, but sometimes feeling that guilt allows us to do a better job. You know, sometimes we don't want to feel bad for the behaviors that we did that hurt someone's feelings. But, you know, What? Sometimes feeling bad about what you did that was wrong can set you back on the right path. So I say, have a vision. Who do you want to be? And what I've tried to do in my own life so that I care about myself and I respect myself is say, okay, how do I want to be as a person in the world? Like, what do I want to stand for? And then I say, how do I want to treat other people? And then I say, what would I have to grow into to serve at the next level? And then I aim my behaviors, my habits, and my thought patterns each and every single day to be that person, to treat people like that, and to ultimately become that person I'm aspiring to be. We're never, ever going to be perfect. But if we can sense we're progressing towards a higher ideal of ourselves, like, if we can feel like, yeah, I am becoming better at what I do, kinder to other people, more like the best version of myself, then we'll love ourselves. We'll feel a deep gratitude and a sense of connection with ourselves because we're being congruent with the best of ourselves. You want to love yourself? Be congruent with the best of yourself. And don't get arrested because I hear a plea. I don't know if you can hear the police car going by, but welcome to downtown Portland, Oregon. So love yourself. Be congruent with the best of yourself. It gets so much easier. Number two, give yourself credit. And I know you always hear me talking about this in so many of my YouTube shows, and that's because people are so hard on themselves. Give yourself credit for the small steps you took this week. But in general, give yourself credit if you have a caring heart and you're still nice to people. Oh, my God. Give yourself credit if you have a passion, but it hasn't been paying off the way you hoped it to, but you still believe in it and you're still working diligently. Give yourself some credit if you know you've been mistreated and someone was a jerk to you, but you still have love in your heart and you still believe in the power of a beautiful relationship for yourself. Give yourself credit. Sometimes the way to love ourselves is to recognize the extraordinary power we have and the strength within that still believes, you know, it's why when I sit down with people who've been through such extraordinary things around the world, you know, my work is a motivational speaker and a trainer in high performance. I've dealt with the most difficult situations, people who were literally in their last days of life, people who've been disabled, paralyzed, lost jobs, lost spouses, lost kids. I mean, at this stage of my life, in my 40s, having been doing this at the top levels for over a decade, I feel like I've seen most of it. Some difficult situations and some major hardships. And when people describe those hardships and difficulties and you know, just strings of bad luck, the ones who I know will make it are the ones who can describe it and still have a belief that things are going to get better, who still believe in themselves, believe in their God, believe in their family, believe in their faith, believe in their goal, believe in their heart, believe in others. That those people, there's still a kernel of belief there. And that thing never dimmed. And even if it dimmed for a little bit, it came back stronger because they knew that the struggle would lead to progress, that the struggle would lead to strength, that the struggle caused the transformation for them to grow to that next level level. And I'll tell you if you still have belief in your heart after all the hardships you've had in your life, I'll tell you it's so much easier to believe in yourself and to love yourself because you'll give yourself credit. But if you won't give yourself credit, man, ain't nobody going to be able to do it for you. There's no external person or reward, accomplishment, bank balance, new job, fancy car, new place to live that's going to help you love yourself. Because wherever you go, there you are. So you got to learn to give yourself credit and still believe. And then it's easier to care for yourself. And then last thing, it's such a simple habit. You need to start noticing when you do good things again. You know, you held the door open for the person. That's okay. Allow yourself notice. Like, you know what, five people walked by. No one held up the door. I held the door. You know what, no one usually tips here, I tip. You know what, no one usually listens here, I listen. You know, no one usually says thank you. I say thank you. It's noticing the little things that you do, you know, and notice also the things that you don't do and give yourself a little bit of self respect for it, right? When I'm in a car with somebody and I see somebody get like they're driving and they get cut off and they don't flip the bird to the other person, they don't swear, they don't beat the dash, they don't cuss, they don't lose their cool. And I'm like, I respect that. You know, there's a lot of things you do that are amazing, but there's also a lot of things that you've chosen as a good person not to do that you should give yourself some credit for too. Notice that you didn't scream when you coulda. Notice that you didn't quit when you coulda. Notice that you weren't an ass when it's so easy, when you. You're surrounded by all these other people who are like that, but you didn't go there. Notice when everyone else is negative, you kept a positive edge. Notice when everybody quit, you pushed harder. Notice when everybody else is bullying you spoke up. You know, there are things that you do and there are things that you choose not to do that make you a good person. And often we only notice the big accomplishments. I want you to notice those small choices you don't make that make you a good person. I want you to notice the small choices you do make that also confirm the best of who you are. Because if you can do that, then you can start to love yourself more fully. We'll never ever gonna love every aspect about every part of our lives and everything we do. And that's good because sometimes when we don't feel good about something, it helps us adjust behavior, it helps us adjust mindset, it helps us be better for somebody the next day. Sometimes a bad job or some guilt helps us be better tomorrow. So I don't think we always have to. TRA la la. Everything's perfect. I'm perfect. That's not what the goal is, but the goal is to more deeply connect with the best of ourselves. More deeply believe in the best of ourselves, more deeply desire to show the world the best of ourselves. And if we do those things, we'll start to love ourselves more too. 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