How To Love Yourself | The Mindset Mentor Podcast

Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. Today we're going to be talking about how to love yourself more. Oh, doesn't that sound great? Now that sounds corny and weird and oh, I'm going to love myself more, but really it's quite simple. More than anything else, I'm going to talk about how to love yourself more, but I'm also going to talk about why people don't love themselves. And this is a thing that I've gone really deep into looking at. And why wouldn't someone love themselves in the first place? And so really what it comes down to is wanting to love yourself more is not really about loving yourself. What it comes down to is accepting yourself. Because love is basically present when you decide to accept yourself. When you stop hating yourself and you stop not accepting yourself, love just happens to be there. It's not really about love, it's really about the acceptance. The barrier to self love is self acceptance, you know, so if you can accept yourself fully, it makes it so much easier to love yourself. Because behind the self judgment, behind the critic that you have is love. And the doorway to go through there is by accepting yourself. You know, you don't see a baby or a child that's a toddler and they have self love issues, right? I've never seen a two year old or a baby that just has self. Oh, I'm dealing with self love issues, which means somehow it's learned somewhere in their life. So if you were thinking of, you know, if you have self love issues or you have an inner critic or you're really hard on yourself, that was learned, that was not something that you were born with. And so why is it so hard to accept ourselves really? Because we've been socialized, right? There's many different ways that we're socialized. I like to call it, if you've been listening to podcasts long enough, domesticated the same way that you have like a domesticated cat. We are domesticated people. We're basically domesticated children that are a little bit older is what we are right now. Right? And so it's understandable. Parents are under pressure to socialize you to make you fit in so that you can grow up and have a quote unquote great life and fit in with society. And also parents have to socialize you and domesticate you because kids are nuts, right? So it's also a safety thing, you know, you ever seen a kid that's just like, I'm gonna jump off this two story wall and you're like, no, you're not. Like there's a lot of stuff that really has to happen where a child needs to kind of fit in. And I don't know, and I've thought about this for years and years and years. I don't know if there's a way around it. For those of you guys that are parents, I don't know if there's a way around it. There's gonna be some sort of constructs and pressure to be socialized. And there's also going to be, even if you were the perfect parent, a child is still going to go through some sort of trauma. Whether it's society, whether it's a teacher, whether it's bullying, whether it's their friends that are just a crappy little teenage kids. I don't know, it's like it's, everyone's going to get punched in the face at some point in time by life and that's just their path that they're on. And so when you look at a child and you know how they come into this world, child doesn't really fit in with the constructs, right? I remember about a year ago, eight months ago probably, I was out to dinner with my business partner, his wife, his kids, and just out of nowhere his three year old just decides he wants to scream at the top of his lungs inside of a restaurant, at a nice dinner. And it's like that doesn't really fit in with what we've been taught, which is, nice restaurant, quiet, keep to yourself. And he just, not for any reason, wasn't crying, wasn't, he just wanted to scream, just let it all out and he has to be shushed, right? So that's like a, hey, no, don't do that. You can't do that. Hey, you can't do that. Like how many times do we hear as a kid, you can't do that. No, don't do that. Good boys and girls don't do that. Children are meant to be seen and not heard. We hear this over and over again, right? It's just like all of these little teeny tiny things add up to us thinking that there's something wrong with us, right? So the, you know, a lot of times parents, we had this as children, but also sometimes you might do this as well. A parent a lot of times will emotionally reward or punish a child based off of how they act. So this is really important for you to understand yourself, but it's also really important if you have children or want to have children. One of the things that parents do is they will emotionally reward or punish a child based off of how they act. Oh, if you're a good little boy or girl, you're going to get my love. If you're a bad little boy or girl, I will remove my love. Which is like the scariest thing in the world for a child. Right. There's usually not a whole lot of reasoning for this process either. So there's not like, you know, the parent sitting down and saying, honey, I'm gonna remove my love from you because you did xyz, Right? There's no reasoning for this process. And so a child doesn't really understand a lot of times what they did wrong. The amount of times. And this is, you know, just a byproduct of what I do and the profession that I'm in. I hear a lot of stories from people who talk about, you know, their parents, they did something wrong, the child, they did something wrong, and they were reprimanded and they have no idea what they did wrong. And so what that ends up building up in somebody is I can't trust myself. I don't know what I'm doing. I have no idea what's going on. It makes it really hard to be able to trust themself, accept themself, love themselves later on down the road. So a lot of times parents will use an emotional reward or punishment based off of how the child acts. If you're good, I'm gonna give you my love. If you're bad, I'm gonna remove it. And there's no reasoning for this process. Child doesn't understand really what's going on and, and realize what they really realize more than anything else as a child will realize is that they a lot of times are their truest self. They'll scream when they want to, they'll run, they'll be loud, they'll throw tantrums, all of this stuff. And at some point in time, this kind of happens, I think, for everybody. A child realizes that certain ways that is natural to them, like they are in their natural state, not acceptable. So think about this for a second. We learn that our natural state, screaming, running around, having fun, laughing. We learn two years old, three years old, four years old, that that is not acceptable. And so what happens is we start to break trust with ourself. We can't trust ourselves. Oh my gosh, my parents are telling me that this is wrong. Well, they're adults, they're older. They must know better than I am. So there must be something wrong with me. And we start to think, there must be something wrong with me. There must be something wrong with me. And the average child is reprimanded eight times more than they're praised. Think about this for a second. Parents think about this. The average child is reprimanded eight times more than they're praised. And so a child is not consciously thinking this, but subconsciously it's going in their mind. They're thinking, I'm not good enough the way I am. The way I am. My mom does not love me the way I am. My father doesn't love me. There must be something wrong with me. Because they're reprimanded eight times more than they're praised. And naturally, when somebody reprimands their child, the child feels like the love is being taken from them, which is emotionally the worst thing that can happen to a child. So eight times more child thinks they don't know, I don't know what I'm doing, I'm not smart enough, my mom doesn't love me, I can't trust myself. These are all subconscious thoughts. These are now just conscious thoughts coming into their head eight times more. They're thinking that they can't trust themselves. They're not good, they're not a good little boy. The way that they are versus I'm loved, I'm accepted. And so the child, what do they do? Subconsciously? They realize they have to change themself. They realize they have to change themselves. They have to let go of certain aspects of themselves based on what their parents tell them, the way that they see their parents, them fitting in with their parents, the way that they see they were supposed to fit in with society, the they way that, the way they interact with their brothers and sisters, what teachers tell them to do and say. And so a child, in order to fit in in this society that we live in, has to change itself. And in the changing of itself, they think there's something wrong with them, which is why so many people have problems with self love. All a child cares about. I'm gonna make it as simple as possible. I've done a lot of early childhood development research. All of this stuff is does my mom love me, does my dad love me? That's it. It's going through their subconscious all the time. If you're the type of person who reprimands your child by basically removing love from them, guarantee you it's gonna come down the road later on down the road where they're not gonna love themself. Right? So if you're the person who's also thinking to yourself, man, my parents were like this. My parents removed love from me. My parents reprimanded me a lot. My parents said shut up. Kids are supposed to be seen, not heard. You hear if you're thinking to yourself, oh man, I heard this when I was younger. And now you're struggling with self love issues and you're struggling to accept yourself. That's the reason why is because we have basically it's been ingrained in us accidentally. Nobody did this on purpose. It's not like anybody is an asshole and trying to do this to children on purpose. It's just kind of the way that things work in society and the way that children are raised is we think to ourself, I'm not good enough, I don't know what I'm doing, I don't trust myself. I need to change myself in order for my parents to love me. That's always going through a child's mind. And so you know, when I'm having fun and I'm running around in public, my mom yells at me. So therefore this aspect of myself is wrong, right? How many times have you seen somebody, maybe you've done this with your children on accident. Maybe you've seen somebody do this where a kid is just in like full all out expression of who they are, running around screaming, laughing, having the best time, but the parent wants them to be quiet and they yell at them to be quiet. What that child is not consciously thinking but thinking in their mind is I am not acceptable the way that I truly am. I must change myself to be acceptable to get my parents love. That's really what it breaks down to. I'm not accepted as I naturally am. If I am acting the way I'm acting is not right, therefore I must be wrong. And so we learn at a very young age the socialization process that we're not good enough as we are and we must be a certain way in order to get our parents love, in order to get society's love, in order to fit in or to be quiet. And if that certain way is not me, the result is I feel unworthiness because of socialization. And so your personality is built, this is really important people to kind of really get in your personality a lot of times and obviously I'm over generalizing, but from what I've seen of a lot of people, not every single person's this way, but a lot of people, your personality is built on repressing who you truly are. Think about that one for a second. Your personality has been built upon repressing who you truly are. Somehow I am bad. And I need to look to my parents to see if I'm right, to see if I have their validation. I need my parents validation. And when we get older, we're always seeking our parents validation, right? Do you love me? Do you love me? You know, if I get good grades, if I'm number one and beat everybody else up, if I'm, you know, beat everybody, not beat everybody else up, beat every, every other child in grades, if I, you know, look good enough in front of the class, if I end up winning the spelling bee, if I am the best in baseball, you know, and we start thinking to ourselves, this is the way that we have to get our parents love. This way I have to get society's love. And then, you know, as you get older, it's like, do I look sexy enough? And then do I? Did I get enough likes on Instagram? If I make a lot of money, people will, you know, if I make a lot of money, will you finally accept me? Will you love me? Because I can't love myself? Will you accept me for who I and because I can't fully accept myself? And we're trying to do or become something that we feel will get us accepted. And so the issue is that we can validate ourselves based off of who we are and not need anybody else's approval. So really what it comes down to is when people are like, I struggle with self love. I'm like, you don't actually struggle with self love. You struggle to accept who you truly are. Because at some point in time, you learned who you truly are is not acceptable. And so what it comes back to is you need to learn how to accept yourself. It's not our looks, our money, our cars, our jobs, our bodies, or social media followings. It's not. Never will be. Right? And so what you're trying to do is you're trying to get other people's approval of yourself so that you can finally approve yourself. But you can't look to other people to approve you. In order for you to finally prove yourself, you just have to appreciate who you currently are. If you're short, if you're fat, if you're skinny, if you're broke as hell, whatever it is, you have to learn to accept yourself first before you make any changes. Acceptance first. No judging. You look at yourself in the mirror and you're like, yeah, Yep, okay, yeah, you're a little Bit chunky, you're a little bit short. We can work with this. But I know the soul that's behind there, and I appreciate you for who you are. You know, it's just like, you don't go into a forest and see a bunch of trees and you're like, oh, that one's fat. Oh, that one's tall. That one's skinny. That one's got broken branches. Ew. You know, you don't judge trees, but we judge ourselves, and then we judge others. This one's better, this one's worse. This one's better, this one's worse. And we do that out of our own insecurities, is because the reason why we judge other people is because we don't. It is an insecurity that we have because we don't fully accept ourselves. And so sometimes when we look at someone and we have to judge them, the reason why we're judging them is so that we can feel like we're above them. Like, if we push them down, then I'm above them. Really, what it comes down to, there's no one that you're competing with, Right? Allow yourself to be a human being, flaws, everything, and then learn to accept who you are. Not by achieving, not by buying things, not by the makeup, not by the fucking Instagram filter that you're using. Learn to accept yourself behind all of that stuff. Rediscover yourself. Rediscover your inner child. Like, what do you love to do? Do more of that. Like, one of the things I think that people should do as you become an adult is start to rediscover who you were as a child. You know, you've been socialized, you've been told to go on this path, and you've been on this path for a while. And let's be real, this path that we go on in life can be really freaking stressful and struggling, and it's like trying to fit a round peg into a square hole, right? Like, what if. Okay, yeah, you've made a little bit of money, you've had some success. Maybe you've got a little bit of, you know, cushion and money right now. Who were you as a child? What did you love to do? Can you go back and rediscover that? Can you just find what it was that you used to love to do? What would that look like for you? What would it look like for you to decide to start to go back, see what that little child loved, start doing it more and start accepting yourself? Because really, what it comes down to is no matter how crazy you are, no matter how ugly you are, no matter how fat you are, no matter how twisted and demented your comedic style is, you have to just learn to accept yourself. Because love is this thing that is omnipresent when you just decide to get out of your own way. The thing that's keeping you from self love is that you're just not accepting yourself. When you start to accept yourself and you accept all the flaws of everything, love is just the thing that is there. There's nothing that you need to do, there's nothing that you need to prove. There's nothing you need to be changed in order to be loved. You just have to learn to accept yourself more and you'll find it much quicker. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories and tag me Obdial Junior R O B D I A L J R. You know, there's people out there who have never who follow you never heard of this podcast before. So if you would share it, they might be able to find it, they might be able to listen to it and it might change your life as well. So if you do that, I would greatly appreciate it. And with that, I'm going to leave the same way leave you every single episode. Make it your mission. Make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.