SSP 034: How To Practice Self-Love

What's going on, guys? Welcome back to another episode of State Shifters podcast. I've got a solo episode today and this is a clip that's come from a YouTube vlog that I've just posted. And just wanted to let you guys know that I'm going to be posting some regular vlogs onto YouTube. And if you haven't checked out the YouTube channel yet, it's State Shifters. If you just put that in YouTube, you can watch the video for this one if you're someone who prefers video. But this is the audio from that video and it's about how to develop self love practices and how to distinguish between, you know, what are coping mechanisms that sometimes we create around these healthy habits and how to then create intentions around these habits so we reverse them into self love. So again, if you haven't go ahead and describe, subscribe to the YouTube channel. It's at State Shifters and you can check out the video with this one as well. So straight into it, enjoy. Jordan Kalish here. And in this video and podcast, I wanted to talk about the importance of developing your own self love practice. Now, you know, self love practices can often be disguised as indulgent practices. And this is something that I've really noticed in conversations I have with people. People think they're developing self love by going to the gym or by going to a yoga class or doing a meditation practice or spending some time, you know, going and having a massage or watching their favorite movie and drinking some wine. There's an important distinction here between what is self love and what is indulgence. Now, the reason why self love is so important is because the self love practice for me is about going within and speaking to the parts of you that need love and need attention. And there's one thing I've noticed for a lot of people, they'll use these healthy habits and they become disguised as coping mechanisms. So one example is the gym. For me, back in the day, I would go to the gym a lot. And when I had my first breakup with my first girlfriend, it was such a painful heartache for me. And I was young at the time, I was about 19. And what I would do was I would go to the gym twice a day because I wanted to just build my physical body to a point where it was distracting me from this inner emotional pain that I was experiencing. And one of my coping mechanisms or my escape from that was working out, building my body to look a certain way so it would mask this pain that I was experiencing so that I could get Approval from others to say, oh wow man you look good. Look at, look at these muscles. But on, on the inside I was never feeling good enough because it was the emotional pain of heartbreak that I was trying to get away from. There was that inner feeling of not being good enough because I just left a relationship that I was trying to mask by working out. So one example of this for others may be if you're going to the gym a lot, if you find yourself using the gym as a way to feel good, observe what happens if you don't go to the gym. If you take two or three days off, how do you feel? What comes up now a lot of the times like, like what happened to me, the gym is a used as a way to make us feel like we're enough. We've got to be doing things all the time, working hard, crushing it. But if we step back and observe where this energy is coming from, where this action or doing is coming from, is this often coming from this inner feeling of I'm not good enough or I need to do things out there to get approval and praise from others because inside I don't feel like I'm enough. Now this could be again disguised. Another coping mechanism is disguised as spending time with your friends. What happens when you're alone? Do you enjoy being alone or do you often seek out things to keep you busy, to keep you distracted from this inner feeling of emotional pain that you're not ready to face or you're not willing to face. So there comes a time when you can take assessment of if there is an underlying feeling of not feeling like you're good enough, feeling like you're trying to mask this pain because spending time alone often brings that out. If there's something underneath the surface that's asking for your attention. If you spend enough time alone or in silence, you start to get a clear idea of what's trying to speak through. So this is my invitation for you to how to distinguish your self love practices from your self indulgent practices. Now don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with going to the gym. There's nothing wrong with having a massage, watching tv, spending time with your friends, being on social media. Because I do all of these things but it's the intention behind them is what determines whether this is a self love practice or whether it's an indulgent practice. Now I'll know if there's a part of me in here inside that's asking for love and attention because I just look at the energy in which I'm approaching these practices. If I'm going to the gym to get away from an inner feeling of an emotional pain or an emotional block, often that's a sign that I'm running from something that needs to be looked at, faced, felt and let go of. So you can use your emotional state as your guidance system to know what practice you need. So if you, for example, feel like you're, you know, always busy, you're always running around, you're always thinking that you have to do things. See people do like keep other people happy, Often the sun, there's a part of you that isn't happy. So if you feel like you're always busy, the self love practice would be to slow down and do less, spend more time with yourself, develop a better relationship with yourself. So if you haven't experienced a meditation practice where you just sit in silence and do nothing, that could be the self love practice for you. And the way you go about doing is you set that intention before you go into it. The intention could be something that you write down, something that you say to yourself. You know, my intention for this meditation is to go in there and speak to the parts of me that need it. My intention is to go in and give love to the parts of me that are asking for my attention. And then in that practice, it's not going to be easy. Because if you're not used to doing this, if you're not used to spending time with these parts of you, they're going to be loud, they're going to be painful, the mind is going to be very noisy and active. So that's your practice where you can sit and observe that. Can you be a space for that? Can you be the loving awareness for this emotional pain to come up, be felt, experienced and let go of. And the reason why we struggle so much is feeling these things. Because we have a pattern of listening to the mind, we have a tendency to follow what the story the mind is telling us. The mind is trying to pull us away from this emotional pain that we're feeling in our body. The mind might say, you don't have time for this, you gotta get out and go to the gym. You gotta do something. You're a failure. If you sit at home, you're a failure. You don't have time to sit at home, meditate, gotta get out and get things done. You gotta hustle, you gotta grind. These are all stories and mind is telling us to get us away from this inner feeling of not being enough. And these inner feelings Surface from past experiences, past traumas, where perhaps we got told, you're not good enough, or no, you're doing it wrong. And it's relaxed, it's left an emotional imprint in us that we felt something we didn't want to feel. And in that moment, the mind created a meaning around that event that said, every time you feel this, you're going to have to go out and do something outside of you to prove to others that you are actually worthy for this love and approval. But in reality, to heal this trauma, to heal this emotional blockage, we need to go back in and give love to these parts of ourselves that didn't get the love back then. In that moment in time when someone said, you're a failure, you suck, you're not good enough, we need to go back and speak to that part of us because in that moment, we didn't know how to process these emotions. But if you're watching this or listening to this, you are in a place where you are aware enough to notice in the body when that comes up, that same block that you felt back then keeps coming up. And if you listen to the pattern in the mind, you keep the. You don't allow the block to come out and release, so you break the pattern by becoming aware of it. Every time you notice this feeling of not being good enough, where do you feel it? In the body. Because in that traumatic event, you felt something in the body, maybe a closing off in the solar plexus, tightness in the heart, constriction in the throat. And then that feeling in the body was created, a trigger in the mind that says, every time I feel this, you know that's a sign I gotta do something, I gotta run from this because this isn't good. I don't want to feel this. But now we're flipping it. Now we're saying, because you're aware and you're watching and listening to this, every time you feel that emotion in the body, that heaviness, the tenseness, the tightness, it's an opportunity to go back and feel it, to go back and love it. To love that old part of you, to give comfort to that old part of you, to even speak to that old part of you and say, I see you, I love you, it's going to be okay. You can feel and let go of this. Because I know I'm always going to be here for you. Because we didn't get that in the past. Whether it be in a relationship, a parent, a friend that didn't give us that. So now we're looking for it, we're seeking it. But we can only heal it when we give it to ourselves. We can only experience true love out there when we experience true love in here. So that's my invitation for you. Create an intention around your practice. Whether it be yoga, meditation, movement, massage, spending time alone, being in nature. Give that if you feel like there's something you're holding on to. Create an intention around. I'm willing to go within and feel and let go of the emotions that are getting in the way of me accessing true love, guidance, joy and peace. When you carve out true self love practices, you'll find you'll be able to release and let go of so much of the past that's blocking you from a future that's really destined for greatness. Clears the past that allows you to experience the present moment in a state of gratitude, love, joy and appreciation. It frees you, creates inner freedom. So go out, create those intentions and if you need some more guidance around them, feel free to reach out to me on Instagram at State shifters. Drop me a message and I'll definitely give you some ways that you can really start to tailor your self love practices to suit whatever blocks you're holding onto. So thank you for watching, thank you for listening.