You're Wrong About Self Love | The Mindset Mentor Podcast

Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there and you love this podcast, please give us a rating and review. However you listen to us, the more positive rating reviews we get, the more that those platforms show this podcast to people who have never heard of it before, which allows us to grow and allows us to impact more lives. So if you do that, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it. Today we're going to talk about self love, and we're gonna talk about what it is. We're also gonna talk about what it is not. And I'm gonna be honest with you, it's going to surprise you what self love is. Because most people, when they think of the word self love, they think I need to love myself more. And they think I need to, you know what, self love. I need to speak better to myself. I need to tell myself that I look good in these jeans. I've been doing so well. I need to tell myself that I'm an amazing mother. I need to tell myself how great I'm doing, how proud of myself I am. And I need to tell myself that I am such a good person. And although I've screwed up, I forgive myself. And while all of those are self love and they are beautiful, so I'm not saying those are not self love. That is not all of self love. There's a whole other side of self love that most people don't actually know about. That's what we're going to dive into today is, you know, there's a self love which is like, I need to give myself a beautiful mental verbal hug. And that's what self love is. And that is a piece of self love. But I think that that is a smaller piece of self love than what I'm about to teach you today. And all of that is true. But I'll teach you the other side as well. But first, let's talk about what is, what is not self love. Because a lot of people think self love is something like having a glass of wine after a long day. That is not self love. That is the opposite, full opposite of self love. Self love is not having a glass of wine after a long day. Self love is not eating fast food because you're hungry and you don't want to get hangry. Self love is not skipping the gym because you've been working so hard lately. You've been so consistent at the gym, you can skip today. That's not self love. Self love is not having a cigarette because you had a stressful day and you quote unquote, deserve it or because your boss stressed you out or because your coworker stressed you out. Any of those things. None of those things that I mentioned are self love. But I think a lot of people think, oh, you know what, I'm going to take a self self love day and I'm going to have, you know, get my hair done and get my nails done and then I'm going to have a glass of wine and then I'm going to watch some Netflix and I'm going to have some ice cream. That's, that's not self love. Sure, taking care of yourself and going get your hairs on your nails and that's fine. But having a glass of wine and having ice cream and all of that stuff because maybe you've had a hard week, that's not self love. They're the opposite of self loving. And some of you might be like triggered. You might be like, shit, no, there's no way. This guy's gotta be wrong. But follow along with me. Cause I'll actually tell you why. Because a glass of wine, for instance, which you know, hey, I've been known to have a glass of wine after a long stressful day as well. But I came to this realization over time what it is actually doing. So let's say that you had a long day. The boss, ah, he was a dick. You know, he triggered you so many times. Your co workers, they're just a bunch of little shits, you know, like it's, it was one of those days, boss pisses you off, co workers piss you off, and you like, I just want to get home and I want to have a glass of wine. Okay, let's talk about that for a second. Because a glass of wine is actually, if you're dealing with stress, if you're dealing with stuff going on at work, a glass of wine is actually a form of numbing. You are numbing your feelings. You are numbing your emotions. Now let me take a step back. There's nothing wrong with a glass of wine. And I'm saying this, there's nothing wrong with a glass of wine. I love my wine. There's nothing wrong with ice cream. I think ice cream's amazing as well. But you have to be very aware of how you're using it and why you're using it. Right? Most adults were never taught how to self soothe. So what do I mean by that? If you see a child that's crying, let's say a newborn that's crying, the way that they are soothed is by their parents. And so their parents will pick them up and they will soothe them to calm them down. One of the things that I am 100% positive of with how many people I've worked with across what are we at 16 years now? And all of the things that I've seen is that most people are still as full on adults not aware how to self soothe, how to calm down their nervous system. And so what happens is because they were never taught, because their parents never taught it to them, because their parents, parents never taught it to them, because it's never been a thing where people teach about because of the fact that they are not taught how to self soothe, they search for some external substance to help them soothe. I've done it before. Have you ever done that before? You search for something external to soothe you? Because we don't actually know how to soothe ourselves. 100% true. This happens all of the time. I see it over and over and over again. So although a glass of wine, although it may be, it might be amazing, is the easy way, if we're using it as basically an adult pacifier, right? That's, that's kind of what we use them for sometimes. Now, friends come over and you have a glass of wine, a couple glass of wine, that's fine. That's not this. I'm not talking about the same thing. I'm not trying to demonize wine. I'm not trying because there is no right or wrong in this. But what I'm trying to help you understand is that that is not helping you improve. It's the easy way out. There's no growth from. Think about this. I have a stressful day, I'm triggered. I come home and I drink a glass of wine. That is the easy way. There is no growth from that. Why is that? Because I will wake up tomorrow exactly the same person as I was today. I learned nothing from the stressful day. I did not grow and I did not personally learn to soothe my nervous system as an adult. And so this is why you can see adults that don't know how to control their emotions, they don't know how to control themselves when it comes down to, you know, their stress. They don't know how to control themselves with their anxiety, with their anger, with their emotions, with their sadness. They don't know how to control it. So it gets to a fever Pitch sometimes and then it explodes in some sort of way. Whether that's anger, yelling, a fight, crying, emotions, extreme stress. All of those things is because we're never actually taught to self soothe. So instead of a glass of wine, what would be better? Well, it's not as sexy. I'm going to be honest with you. What I'm about to tell you is not as sexy like a glass of wine. Ooh, that's sexy. Sit down, have a glass of wine, hang out, it feels good and you're soothed quite quickly. What I'm going to tell you is not sexy, but it does eventually in the long run make you able to self soothe and less triggered. So instead of a glass of wine, what would be better? You have a bunch of energy, a bunch of stress coming up. It's, there's stress, there's stress in your body, there's extra cortisol in your body. One thing you could do is you could go for a run, can get out that extra energy so that the energy doesn't sit inside of your body. There's one really interesting thing that happens and not enough people talk about it. If you watch animals, for instance, on like the plains in Africa, right, a lion decides to go after a gazelle and the lion goes after the gazelle and the gazelle gets away quite easily and quite quickly. Well, what happens is in order for the gazelle to take off, it's full on adrenaline, it's full on cortisol rushing through their body. And they get, if it gets away pretty easily, there's still a ton of cortisol and stress hormones inside of its body. And so what it does is most animals have a way to self soothe. They have a way to get rid of that cortisol. So one of the things that animals will do is they'll do this shake, they'll shake really hard as a way to actually start to get rid of the cortisol more. My dog, for instance, when he gets really stressed out, he does these really stressful yawns. It's built into him. And as adults, we don't know how to self soothe ourselves. It's not built into us the same way. So maybe you go for an extra run to get rid of all that cortisol inside of your body. If that's something that you want to do. Go for a long walk, maybe do a 20 minute guided meditation to learn how to go from a stressful state to a calm and calm and centered state. Maybe you decide to do journaling and ask yourself why Was it what I went through that was triggering? Now these are not sexy. They are harder. A glass of wine is sexy. It's easy, but it doesn't change anything and you don't learn anything from it. You have not grown at all from that process of having the glass of wine or whatever it is that you go to, to quote, unquote, soothe yourself. So that alone is what I want you to understand is not self love. It's not going to this thing to make you feel better. What is self love? That's what I want to dive into and really start to talk about you guys. I see self love as, yes, the way that you speak to yourself. Yes, the way that you're going to act when you're alone by yourself. The things that you say inside of your head, of course, the journaling, all of those things are self love. But the way that I see it is, number one, it's being kind to yourself. Yes, of course. But number two, sometimes it is tough love. Sometimes it is really tough love. When you love someone, like you have a really great friend, for instance, like your best friend. Your job is not to just all of the time listen to them vent. That is a part of it. You can allow them to vent. But sometimes being a best friend, being a good friend means calling somebody out on their bullshit. It's a little bit of tough love sometimes. I was having this conversation with a friend of mine the other day and they were talking about a friend of a friend who's going through a bunch of stuff and going through stuff with their relationship and with all of these things. And the friend of mine said, I don't think it's my place to tell her what I see. And I said, maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But if you don't talk to her openly about it, who is going to openly talk to her about it? Like who's the person who's openly going to discuss and allow her to have that space? Sometimes being a best friend means giving tough love. It means calling somebody out on what's going on in their life. And sometimes it means with self love, calling out yourself when you're not doing what you need to be doing. Sometimes I see self love as the energy of like a tough uncle. Like if you have a tough uncle or someone in your family where you highly respect them, you know that they love the hell out of you. And you know that whatever they tell you, they're telling you from a great place, he loves you, but he's not going to put up with your bs, right? He's going to call you out, he's going to say, hey, you said you're going to do this. Now you're not doing this. What's going on with it? And he's doing it because he wants to help you get back on track. He loves you and wants the best for you and he wants you to live up to your potential, right? And you never question it because you know he does love the hell out of you. That's the best energy that I see sometimes for self love. If you could bring that energy to yourself, your. Your tough uncle's not gonna be like, hey, you suck. Get your shit together. Why haven't you gone to the gym? But a lot of people talk to themselves that way when they haven't gone to the gym. So instead, what's he gonna do? He's gonna say, hey, you said you were going to do this. Now you can continue on this path if you don't. If you want to, you could continue to live your life and have XYZ happen and to not go to the gym when it was one of your things or to not take care of yourself the way that you said you were going to. You can continue on that path if you want to. But I know you're better than that. I know you deserve more and I'm going to hold you accountable to making sure that you do it. That is a form of love coming from your uncle, isn't it? Well, you can take that and also use that exact same energy for yourself. Not talking down yourself, not yelling at yourself, not guilting, shaming yourself, but holding yourself to a level of, hey, this is something that I need to do. So self love can look like talking to yourself positively and saying, I love you and you look great and I'm proud of you. Of course it's those things, but it's also self love is going to the gym when you don't want to because you said you were going to do it. Self love is waking up early and getting in your morning routine so that you can fill your cup and feel better about yourself and meditate and do your journaling and your reading and have time to yourself so that you can grow and be a better person. Going into your day, it's not sleeping in, it's getting up because you said you're going to. Self love can be reading when it's easier just to scroll on your phone. Self love can be meditating after a really long, stressful day. Self love is saying no to the glass of wine. Saying no is saying no to the ice cream. Saying no to going out with your friends when you know that you should be preparing for a really big test that's coming around the corner, Whatever it is. What I've come to find is self love is having the discipline to do the things that make you better. Self love. One of the aspects of self love is having the discipline to do the things that make you better. Right? You don't need discipline to do the easy things. You don't need discipline to have a glass of wine. You don't need discipline to eat the ice cream. You don't need discipline to sleep. Like, I've never heard somebody be like, oh my gosh, I'm just, I need to have so much discipline just to sit and watch Netflix today. No, it's easy. We always tend to go for the easy route. It's easy. Like, think about how easy it is just to go to Netflix. You just move your thumb for a second and it's on. Think about how easy it is to to pour a glass of wine. Think about how easy it is to get the ice cream out of the fridge. All of those things are easy. You don't need discipline, AKA self love. Because I think people think of discipline the wrong way. They think, you discipline a dog when he does something wrong. You discipline your child whenever they hit each other, whatever it might be. Discipline is a form of self love. You need discipline to do the things that are harder but better for you. You don't need discipline for the easy things. That's very easy. You don't need discipline to watch Netflix. You don't need discipline to have the wine. You only need discipline of the ice cream. You only discipline to sleep in. It takes discipline to say no sometimes. It takes discipline to wake up sometimes. But both of those are a form of self love. Discipline is a form of self love. Self love is a discipline to do the things that make you better. And so you've got to start looking at it and saying, you know what? I'm not going to work out because I don't like my body. I. I'm going to work out because I love myself. I want more energy. I want to take better care of myself. And I've put my body through some shit over the years and I should at least love my body for what it's done for me. That's self love. Sometimes discipline is going, you know What? I'm episode 12 of this show. I've just been watching it and watching and watching and watching and watching it and I should go to bed because I want to wake up early in my morning routine. That's a form of self love. That's also a form of discipline. And so self love is the talking great to yourself, but it's also the discipline to do the things that make you better. And that's important for you to remember next time when you're up against the resistance of should I do this, Should I not do this, Is it good for me? Is it going to make me better? If the answer to both of those is yes, do it, that's a form of self love is being tough on yourself to do the things when. Especially when you don't want to do them. 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 in at robdialjr. R O B D I A L J R I love looking through all of the tags that I always get every single day. Seeing you guys on run, seeing you at the gym, seeing you listening to it in the car with your kids, all of that stuff. So whether you want to take a screenshot of your phone and put it up there or take a screenshot or a picture video of whatever it is that you're doing and tag me in it, Robdal Jr. I'll greatly appreciate. So I can see. It's just good to see you guys faces sometimes as well because I'm just talking to a microphone and three cameras surrounding me in a room. And with that I'm gonna leave it the same way leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.