Love Thy Self

Hi guys. My name is Donnie Rouse and you are listening to the podcast One Life. Can you look in the mirror and honestly say the words, I love you? I did that a while back and I couldn't. When you have these issues of self worth, how do you correct them? I found that the answer comes in two parts. It comes first in the awareness and second, loving thyself. A couple weeks back, I was helping my father on a job site and we were replacing a unit. While he was wiring the unit, I was standing up and I went to look outside and I caught my reflection in the glass. My eyes caught my eyes of the reflection and I heard the words, you're ugly. Normally, this would send me through this loop, but this time something different happened. I gave this perplexed look as I was looking in the glass and I said, why would I think that? Questions started swirling around in my head. Memories started coming up and I remember my childhood. I think most of the things that we experience can be traced back to those childhood, when we stopped or not when we stopped, when we didn't question the things that were happening around us and we took beliefs, things people said as truth. So I went back to my childhood and one of the things it reminded me of or that came to mind was when my brother used to call me ugly whenever we would be fighting and the first word he would come out is ugly. And he would try to chop me down physically in the sense of my looks. And the funny thing with anyone who, like, if you're in middle school, high school, when people try to chop you down, it has nothing to do with you, but everything to do with the person who's judging. Now, I don't blame him for anything because most of the time, one, we're not even conscious of the thoughts or the repercussions of the things we say. We're just hurt or something, aggravated or angry that we're trying to cause damage to the person who is on that receiving end. So that was the awareness. So now that you know, now that you're aware, how do you reverse that habit? Easy. Simply love thyself. Then the next question, how does one love thyself? About three, maybe five years back, there's a two year, two years missing somewhere in there. I went to an event at the Stanford Sheridan Hotel. I was meeting a friend who was visiting from Switzerland. She was in night. She was in town for a couple nights and she called me up and said, hey, let's come down. Why don't we meet for a drink? I went down to meet her and she was at the bar with a couple friends listening to their conversation. I heard one of the friends describe her self love practice. She was saying that she would look in the mirror for 10 minutes at a time per day, 10 minutes per day. And each day she would pick out three, five new things that she loved about herself. And then this practice would go on indefinitely until she fell in love with herself. So upon hearing this, I was like, you know what, that sounds really interesting. I think I'm going to try that myself. Knowing that I had feelings of self worth at that time. So I went back and for the next week, every day I would look in the mirror and I started practicing the self worth. I looked for five things and initially it was difficult. I think the first time I probably was at the nine minute mark of that 10 minutes before I could pick out something that I loved about myself. But then slowly from asking that question, well, what could I love about myself? What could I love about myself? What could I love about myself? My focus started to change. So I went to some of the more easier things to pick out. I started picking out my lips. I have full lips, which may be a long, long time ago, I might not have picked those out, but I do love my lips. I picked this little, there's a little dent or dimple in the center of my, the tip of my nose that I was born with that was unique to me. So I really liked that too. Picked out my eyes. I had these beautiful green, hazel green eyes. People used to tell me when I was younger, God bless you, with those eyes. Wherever I went, people would always come up to me. So I picked out the eyes. And then as the time went on, I noticed the things that I started to pick up or the things I started to love about myself were often the things that I despise or I didn't like about myself. So now I started seeing all these things. I started seeing all these different characteristics as being unique and lovable to me. Interesting, huh? And what is profound was the effect that this had on the outside. So not only was I loving myself, but I was looking at other people now and loving them before. I would look at people and I'd be very judgmental. And anytime anyone's judgmental, they are harder on themselves, right? There's this mental chatter and they know what's going on there and they'll try to overcompensate on the external. At least I did to make up for what's going on in their minds. So as I Observed my mind. I noticed that I started being kinder. I started looking for things to love, looking for things to appreciate in other people. Crazy. So I did the practice. And you're probably asking, all right, well, then how did it come back? Why was it like, two weeks ago, you looked it in the glass and you repeated. You said, wow, you're ugly. Because I didn't make it a habit, like so many things that we do. I started doing the practice and abandoned it after a week and a half because I started to see benefits from it. So I left it a week and a half. And then what happened? My mind reverted back. See, neural pathways are a lot like water. They follow the path of least resistance. So if you imagine a stream kind of slowly, or a water slowly dribbling down, making a new path in the dirt, if that water flow stops at any point, that channel is going to just wipe away. But if that flow continues, it's going to get deeper, deeper and deeper until it becomes a river. And that's what we have to do. So, in closing, how does one love thyself? As I mentioned before, first thing you need to do is you need to have awareness. And I think that's probably one of the easiest things to do. Because if you can't look in the mirror and say the words I loved you to yourself, then there is something wrong. There. There is something wrong. But once you have that, you don't really need to focus on what's going on, what's wrong. Why don't you love yourself? That's not the place you have to put your focus. Your focus should instead go on creating the habit of finding love. Finding beauty in yourself, finding beauty in others. If you just did that one thing and you made a habit, every person you meet, look at them, find one thing that you love about them, two things you love. You want to get really ambitious, do five. And do the same for yourself. Do that long enough and you will train your brain to look for something different. You'll train your brain to look for beauty, and you'll train your brain to love yourself. Guys, thank you so, so much for tuning in. This is a relatively short, but I think a very powerful episode. I hope you enjoy it and I would love to hear your thoughts. Your own experiences on this you can share with me on my Instagram. The Instagram is donnydony. R A U S Again, D O N N Y R A U S and if you like this podcast, please join the One Life podcast with Donnie Rouse Facebook group. Likely there's some talk about maybe changing the name of the group. It might be called Coffee with Donnie because I'm doing live streams there and I always have a cup of coffee in hand. So these kind of tidbits to make you think about your day differently. This way we can start to correct and bring our lives to a place that we're happy about, we're proud about, and one where we have the emotions we want. That is it, guys. Take care. Talk to you soon. This podcast is brought to you by Rous Coffee. I believe that coffee is one of the most powerful rituals in our day and that it has the power to shape our day for better or for worse. More than that, it's a moment to just be. It's about taking time for ourselves to stop the busyness of life and to make time for what's important to us. If this resonates with you, I encourage you to Try Rous Coffee Company at www.rouse r a u s coffee C-O-F-F-E-E.com Use the discount code OneLife, all capitals one word to get 10% off your first order. Remember, life is short and is what we make of it. So remember to take a moment and enjoy. Now.