Why You’ll Never Love Yourself Until You Hear This from Lilly Singh & Tyrese Gibson!

Good morning, Believe Nation! I asked Lily from Toronto Dance Salsa to join me on this video, and today we're going to learn about how to love yourself.

One of the most important things I've learned in my life is the importance of loving yourself. When I do motivational speeches or even tell myself, "Love yourself," and "You should love yourself," I'm aware it comes across very cliché. Even I tell myself, I'm like, "Okay, I sound like a Tumblr quote." But really, if you actually think about it, a lot of us don't love ourself, and it's the most important thing we should do on a daily basis because nobody knows our needs as well as we do. No one knows our thoughts, our honest, genuine thoughts and fears as well as we do. People who are always like, "I need to be in a relationship," and "I can't be alone," and they feel uncomfortable being alone, it's probably because they don't love themself and they don't know how to be comfortable being alone and being with themselves. You can't be part of a 2 if you're not a complete 1. And I think it's so important to be comfortable with yourself, know your strengths, weaknesses, talk to yourself and be friends with yourself. I literally talk to myself. I'm super, super lame. I love all the people in my life, don't get me wrong, but I just feel like if you don't love yourself, none of your other relationships can work because the relationship you have with yourself is most important. It's like a huge reflection on how other people treat you. If people treat themselves poorly, that's an indication to other people like, "Oh, she treats herself poorly, now I can also treat her poorly." How we treat ourselves is a projection projection to other people. Okay, I love myself and I know how I should be treated, and I should be treated well, and therefore I will not accept not being treated well by everyone else.

I love me, so the day that you decide to stop loving me, I'm not gonna love myself any less. I believe in me. If you stop believing in me, I'm not gonna believe in myself any less. If you believe that I'm irrelevant, that no one is checking for me, and that I don't mean anything to the world, because you think or believe that about me, it doesn't believe— it doesn't mean that I'm gonna believe it about myself. See, the day that you start living your life according to everybody else's opinion is the beginning of the end. Most of y'all— and it's fucked up, I see it every day, all day— most of you guys don't actually know your self-worth. You don't know your self-value. So you're like a vulnerable little child and you're shaking. And it's like, everybody loves me this week, so I love me this week. Next week it drops. So now you're running around insecure, feeling self-conscious and not loving yourself, sad and depressed based on the feedback, the responses, and the energy that the rest of the world is giving you. I wrote about this in my new book, which is coming. It's called Black Rose. It hasn't been released yet, but it's coming. I talk about the fact that fame is an addiction. Fame is one of the most unspoken addictions out there. So many celebrities and entertainers, athletes and public figures, they base their self-worth on their relevancy based on everybody in the world checking for them. And as soon as people stop checking for them, then they stop checking for theyself. Y'all don't love me no more. I'm not selling records. I'm not number one in the box office no more. I'm not making as much money as I used to make. Oh shit, ain't nobody checking for me. So guess what? I'm not checking for myself. No one sees the value in me anymore, so I don't see the value in me anymore. Every time I go on Twitter, Facebook, they say I'm irrelevant. So I'm irrelevant to myself now. I ain't shit because you think that I ain't shit. No one loves me because you said no one loves me. I don't love me. The day that you allow the opinions of the outside world to dictate the way you feel about yourself, it is the beginning of the end of you living a blessed and self-loving, secure life. I can tell y'all right now that it is not the car that I drive or any of the jewelry that I own or the size of my house that defines my self-worth. I'm hot. I'm hot. I'm hot when you don't think I'm hot. I'm amazing when you don't think I'm amazing. I love me even if you stop loving me. You can say the nastiest, meanest, evilest shit that you could ever conjure up. It will never change the way I feel about myself. I'm telling you, that's the way I live my life. That's how I feel about me. Most of y'all are on Twitter. You're desperate for likes. You're desperate for the egotistical feeding frenzy. Feed my ego. Feed, feed, feed. Like me, like me. Because I don't like me. I'm telling y'all right now, the day that you allow the opinions of everybody on the outside world to define your day-to-day, month-to-month, and year-to-year, it's the beginning of the end. Love yourself. Believe in yourself. Love yourself. Believe in yourself, independent of the validation of the world. Have opinions and feelings about yourself, independent of the feedback. Why you gotta have somebody calling you beautiful every day in order for you to feel beautiful? Do you believe that you're beautiful, or do you only believe you're beautiful when other people say that you're beautiful? I'm just asking. Self-love is the cure to self-hate. If you make it to the end of this video, I want you to write, self-love is the cure to self-hate. These are the type of qualities that I'm going and have been instilling in my daughter. There is no man that you could ever meet, Shayla, that can make you feel more amazing than what you're supposed to feel about yourself. Nobody wants to be alone, but if you show up empty, as an empty shell, and you're expecting this man to fulfill you and fill you up with all of the love that doesn't exist, you're gonna be fucked up. Because as soon as he leaves, you're depleted, you're empty, and you have nothing left for yourself again. Never rely or depend on anybody to fulfill your heart. And if you don't believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you better get to know him, because that's also a part of the process of self-love. You are supposed to love yourself independent of any feedback, comments, likes, shares, and any of all of this other social media shit. Some of y'all are social media whores. What does that mean? I, I, I, I, I, I, I ain't until people on my timeline tell me that I'm the shit. I love me independent of anything that anybody could ever say. Has nothing to do with being arrogant or egotistical. It's just a matter of knowing and being aware of self-worth. I love you. If you make it to the end of this video, I want you to write, self-love is the cure to self-hate. Self-love is the cure to self-hate. And I hope you share this video because I want this video to spread all over the world. Send it to WorldStarHipHop. Send it to all of the blogs and the websites. Self-love is the cure to self-hate. Shaman Tyrese, spreading love always. Share, share, share. Click that share button. Spread love. Love circle. I love you always.

Now, I know that you've heard me say many times, or you've read, or listened on the tapes, that loving yourself is the most powerful thing we can do. Then everything flows. Everything flows beautifully. Now I'm not talking about vanity or arrogance, because that is not love. That's always fear. I'm talking about just really respecting and appreciating this incredible, magnificent being that we are. You know, little babies know how to love themselves. You were born in pure love. All of you. There's not one little baby alive that I know of that ever criticizes its body or ever says, "My hips are too big." Have you ever heard a baby say that? They're just thrilled and delighted that they have a body. They rejoice in it and they love themselves. They love their toes. They love everything about themselves. They absolutely adore— they Express their feelings. You know, when a baby is happy, you know it. When a baby is angry, the whole neighborhood knows it. They're never scared to let people know how they feel. They live in the moment, and they're filled with courage, and they're wonderful. And we were all like that. Gotta remember that you were filled with courage, and you were full of love, and you adored yourself when you were very little. And then what happens is we start to grow up and we start to listen to people that were frightened or critical or resentful or guilty. And many of us grew up with people like that. You know, if you grew up in a family where there was criticism was the norm, then you're going to grow up to be a critical person. You're going to look at everything in life as with criticism, and you probably criticize yourself and other people, and you won't enjoy life nearly as much as you could. If you grew up in a family where you were not allowed to express anger, then either you're a person who is terrified of anger, or you swallow it down all the time and you let it sit in your body. If you were raised in a family where everybody was manipulated by guilt, then you're probably going to do the same thing. You're probably a person who runs around saying, "I'm sorry" all the time. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. And you can never ask for anything outright because you always want to manipulate somebody. But these are old family patterns, and it's very easy to blame our parents, and it's very easy to blame our childhood or our environment. But the problem with that is that it keeps us stuck. We don't get to be free. We get to stay in our victim thing, and that's no good for anybody. Then we just get to keep having our problems. But remember, you're in charge now. Doesn't matter what your parents said, doesn't matter what anybody else did, doesn't matter what you learned. What really matters is what you are choosing to think and say now, because you're the only person that thinks in your mind, and you choose your thoughts. Now, I can tell you lots of lots of wonderful things, but if you don't choose to listen to them, then they're not going to work at all. So you are always in charge, and you're creating your world and your life. Now, I have known that one of the most powerful affirmations you can use is, I love and approve of myself. I love and approve of myself. And when you first say that, it's amazing what can come up and come to the surface. Lots of times when we begin to say that, all the negative messages come to the surface. And it's marvelous because that gives us an opportunity to know what's been in the way. You see, if you don't hear your negative messages, you don't know what's in your way. So when you start to do an affirmation like, "I love and approve of myself," You want to really pay attention to what the negative messages are because they're the ones that are in the way. And when you find a negative message, if you could write it down, it's wonderful because you want to think, I found a treasure. This is something that's really in my way and really creating a problem. Remember, we get to choose the way we think, and we can choose to change the the way we think. It's always our choice. Now what I'd like you to do right now is take out those little mirrors that you have. I know everybody has a little mirror. Okay, good. Now let's see if you can look in your eyes without primping. See if you can manage to do that. I want you to look in your eyes and I want you to say, "I love you. I love and approve of you exactly as you are." Okay, now just begin to notice what you're feeling. Don't judge it, just notice. What are the feelings that are coming up? Are they feelings of joy? Do you feel, you feel wonderful about yourself? Are they feelings of criticism or negativity? Don't judge them, just notice what's coming up. Acknowledge the negative message. Just acknowledge it, and you can always say, "Thank you for sharing," and realize that the The negative messages that are coming up now are very much the things that are in the way of you loving yourself. Okay, what I want to do right now is let's do just a little bit of sharing. Okay, I want to know what sort of messages are coming up from you. Hmm, yes. Fear. Who would be upset if you really loved yourself? Me? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It always goes back farther. Who would be upset if you really loved yourself?

My parents.

Your parents? Which one? Both of them? Yeah. Okay, probably mostly. What was the family message? Um, always judgmental, always, um, aha. Okay, so you came from a critical, judgmental, resentful family, right? Okay, fine. So you're a wonderful And fearful. Oh boy, you really got it all. Okay, it just means that you have a little more to work on. You know, I really think that some of us are very young souls and we come here and it's like going to kindergarten. Life is really very simple. And some of us are much older souls and we pick tougher tests and it's more like going to graduate school. But you know, you can do it. It's just that you've chosen perhaps a little more difficult things to overcome. But see, it's my belief that the main thing that we really come here to work on is loving ourselves in spite of what they say and in spite of what they do. And that's what we really need to do. So okay, you've got things, you've got criticism, you've got judgment, you've got criticism, you've got fear, probably a little guilt in there too. Okay, then you I like to always think of that we can go beyond our parents' limitations. You know, they had a limited way of looking at life, and you were a very good little child, so you learned what they taught you. See, a lot of us think that we're bad and we're not good enough and we're no good, but actually we're ideal, wonderful, loving little children, and we learn exactly what our parents teach us. Not always what they tell us to do, but we learn from them and we learn exactly what they do and we grow up doing the same thing.

Loving yourself, how to do it, is all about investing in your happiness. Whatever makes you happy, make time for it. Don't take life so seriously. Because where you feel most free is where you find your greatest power. You begin to love yourself. The passion arises within you once again. Many people do not love themselves because they do not love what they are doing.

If you don't like yourself, then ask yourself the following question: do you really not like yourself, or do you not like an aspect of yourself? Big difference, right? Is it you, all of you, that you don't like, or just an aspect? I bet it's just an aspect. So if that's the case, first of all, realize how much You're focusing on it, right? And I want you to take that camera that you have right now, and you're totally zoomed in on this one imperfection that you have. You're totally zoomed in on it. I want you to zoom out and see yourself and your whole life and the whole history that you have of your life and where you're going. See all of that and put that imperfection, that one imperfection, into context, right? It's still there. I'm not denying it might not be there. Maybe you have some crooked teeth, or you have a big nose, or you have a fat ass, or whatever. Or maybe you have some, you know, character flaws in you— not physical problems, but character flaws— and you don't like yourself for those reasons. Okay, let's admit that that's there. Let's say that it's true, it's there. Well, that's, that's one aspect of a much bigger picture. So first of all, realize that that's the case, and if that is the case, then also realize this point is that you have a choice of what you focus on. You've got this, uh, you've got this like laser beam in your mind, which is your focus, right? Your awareness. And this laser beam, it's, it's consciously guided by you. Not all the time, but you can guide it. And so if you're always hating on yourself, then what you're doing is you're taking your imperfections and you're always like shining a magnifying glass over it. So that's what's happening. You're shining this magnifying glass on your imperfections. Sometimes all you do is you just stare at them all day. Right? And that's why you feel so bad about yourself sometimes, because you stare at those imperfections ceaselessly. Well, if you've got an imperfection, there's— you only got two choices. Either you're gonna fix it, either you can change it, or you can't. Now go out there and try to change it if you can. I mean, that's what I'm all about. I'm giving you a lot of advice and stuff with all my videos about, you know, how to put your life into place actually make it really good, objectively good. But if you can't change it, maybe like your physical appearance, you can't— you feel like you can't change it, or you don't really want to go that far, then that's fine. You can then learn to accept it in the sense that you're going to shift your focus away. You're going to kind of accept it and not look at it anymore. Stop looking at it, because it's the constant looking at it and the re-looking and the re-looking and the re-looking that is— that's really killing you. You're going to start to focus on other areas of your life that are great. And what you're going to realize when you make that shift is you're going to realize that, well, that little imperfection, it's not that important anymore. And then maybe a couple years down the road, you will actually laugh. You will laugh because you'll laugh and say, how could I have possibly been so concerned about that? It's so insignificant now because I've got all this other awesome stuff flourishing in my life. I'm reading a book called Super You, and it talks about your origin story. Your origin story is your, your most weakness, right? Every superhero has one. Batman lost his parents when he was a young kid, but because of that, it gave him great strength. So remember where you come from. Remember who you are. There's 7 billion people on this planet, and out of all those people, you are unique and you're very special. And the more you recognize that, the more self-love you're going to have for yourself.

So what do you think?

So I think there are two important things when it comes to loving myself. The first thing is really, really knowing who I am. So if I'm really, really self-aware, I know myself inside out, I know what my weaknesses are as well as where my strengths are, then that way I could always lean into the strength. And if you know yourself extremely well, then you could actually go into really deep and love yourself unconditionally, because I believe that if you don't know yourself wholeheartedly, you cannot love yourself fully. And then the second thing is the negative self-talk. You know, saying that I'm ugly, I'm stupid, all that kind of stuff needs to end because you will not talk to someone you love a lot that way. So stop the negative talk and the self-criticism.

I love it.

I think for me, I think I've always loved myself. I think when I kind of took it up an extra level, extra notch, is when I really found the work that I loved and felt like I was doing important stuff. And so I'd encourage you guys, whatever work you're doing, make sure you're doing it for yourself. Even the, the relationship that you're in, make sure you're doing it for yourself as well as for the other people around you. And I think when I started to have the courage and confidence to stand up for myself, when somebody didn't believe in my idea, where I wanted to start this business, or I wanted to make this video, or I wanted to chase that opportunity, and somebody said, that's really stupid, and I stood up to them and said, you know what, I'm gonna do it anyway. That started to make me have more confidence and more love for myself. I think you can only do that when you really love the work or the project that you are trying to get into. So the more I've done that, the more the muscle's built up, and now the more confidence I have, the more I love myself. I think the other thing, if I had a second point, would be create an environment that is loving for yourself. If you don't love yourself right now, chances are, you know, your parents love themselves, your friends don't love themselves, and so tied into the negative self-talk is what are the, what are the resources that you have around you? What videos are you watching? What books are you reading? What music are you listening to? Who are your friends? The more that you can surround yourself and create a more loving environment for yourself, the more likely that's gonna now be your new reality instead of sticking to that self-hate and negative talk. So thank you guys so much for watching.

We made this video because Faizan asked us if there's any videos or topics you want Evan to cover, Just leave in the comments below.

I'd also love to know what you thought of this video. What was your favorite point? Is there anything that you want to add about how to love yourself? Leave it down in the comments below and we will join in the discussion. So thank you guys so much for watching. We believe in you. We hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is.

Much love.

We'll see you soon.