169: What is Self-Love Really with Sahara Rose

Namaste, it's Sahara Rose. And welcome back to the Highest Self Podcast, a place where we discuss what makes you your soul's highest evolvement. And before we get started, check out these brands that make Highest Self Podcast possible. This episode is brought to you by four Sigmatic. Four Sigmatic is an incredible mushroom elixir company. I proudly drink their elixirs every single day. My favorite is their chai mix. It is insanely delicious. I quit chocolate cold turkey. And what helped me was drinking this chai mix every day. And best of all, they use stevia to sweeten it. And there's no sugars like the chai lattes you'll find at Starbucks or wherever else. And the mushrooms are really good for balancing your hormones, helping heal adrenal fatigue, healing your body on an adaptogenic level. So adaptogens really kind of relate to what your body needs. So if you are high stress will bring you down. If you need more energy, it will bring you up. And that's what's so amazing about Adaptogen is they adapt to your body. And mushrooms, medicinal mushrooms, have a lot of adaptogenic properties. So you can head over to their website for Sigmatic.com F O U R S I G M S a t I c.com Sahara I have a little shop up there with my favorite four Sigmatic products, so you can try it out. And you can also get 15% off any four sigmatic product using the code Sahara. There is so much talk about self love. There are people who are self love coaches, books that are about self love programs. And it's a beautiful thing. It's amazing that 2018 will forever be marked down as the year that we started to really celebrate self love. But I think that most of us still don't quite understand yet what it means. And we often confuse self love for the acts that we believe are related to self love. And that's not the actual point. So let me explain. So most of us, when we think, what's self love? A rose petaled bath comes to mind, or a face mask, or a massage, or crystals all over our bodies or something like that. Something that happens to be very Instagramable. And those things are all great. I'm all about baths, I'm all about doing face masks. I'm all about taking care of your physical body. But that's not what actual self love is. You can be in that bath with orange slices that you cut up in there and magnolia flowers that you picked from your own Hawaiian tree and still be sitting in that bath, hating yourself and that self hatred does not always come in the voice of you're stupid, you're dumb, you're fat, you're ugly. But it can come in a more subtle voice. Oh well, once you drop those 10 pounds, then you'll be able to wear that outfit that you really want to buy. Oh well, once you're in a relationship, then you're going to find the type of friends that you want to be friends with. Oh, once you hit this certain achievement, you're a best selling author, or you have this type of income, or you have this many Instagram followers and then you'll be worthy of the life that you want. So we're sitting in that bath telling ourselves that we are not enough as we are. And I don't care how many essential oils you put in that bath, it's not what is going to heal you. When I really sunk in on what self love is, what came to me is that self love just the abandonment of shame? Self love is just the abandonment of shame. When you are no longer shameful of your appearance, your family life, your intellect, your income, you naturally love yourself. You see, it's our shame about who we are that is holding us back from true self love. Because self love is just self acceptance. So when we are constantly repeating the narrative in our minds that what success looks like is this, this one created Persona, and for some of us maybe it's our bodies. You know, once my thighs are skinnier, then I'm going to really love my body. Once my love handles disappear, once my acne goes away, once my hair gets more thick. A lot of us, especially for women, it's about the physical appearance. But have you ever met women who are just strikingly, quote unquote, perfect in every way? Like they look like exactly what society tells us to look like and had a conversation with them. Are they the most self loving, confident people in the world? No. In fact, most of the time they are the least because their entire life has been identified around their physical appearance and they've constantly been scrutinized about it. Oh, you need to drop five pounds if you want to be in this show. Oh, your lips are too thin, you need lip injections. Oh, you're looking is no longer in anymore. Now it's about that look that they actually are the most uncomfortable in their skin of all. So here we are thinking that you have to look a certain way to be confident, when the people who look that way are some of the least confident people in the world. So we are cultivating a practice of quote unquote self love that is taking us to a direction that is faulty. Even if you do that workout and get the after results that you've been seeing on Instagram, you're still not going to be happy. Happiness comes from acceptance and acceptance comes at this very moment. I recently came across Vaadum teas while looking for a super high quality loose leaf tea online and I was blown away by their array of 10 different Chais alone. And you know I love chai. I ordered it and arrived in the cutest packaging. Literally felt like a Christmas gift to myself and the tea was the freshest and most flavorful I've ever had and that's when I knew I had to contact them. Well, turns out Vaadum is one of the only tea company that procures directly from plantations and tea growers within hours of harvest. While most companies spend months in that transition time, they package garden fresh in India and ship it all around the world. They've eliminated the middleman. So you're getting the freshest quality tea straight from the farmer. They're fair trade, pesticide free and pay the farmers a higher wage for their produce. They also educate the tea growers children which is really special to me so you can try them out. Definitely get their Chai sampler so freaking good by heading over to vadamteas.com v a h-a m teas t a s.com again vadimteas v a h-a m t e a s.com and using coupon code SAHARA for 20% off. Oprah just listed it as one of her favorite things so I take Oprah's word for it. Are you interested in having a career focused on health and wellness? Well if so, then the universe is calling you to become a holistic health coach. I am offering this incredible deal a discount of $1500 off my Alma mater Institute for Integrative Nutrition, which is the world's largest nutrition school with guest teachers such as Deepak Chopra, Chris Carr, Dr. Hyman, Dr. Andrew Whale and so many others. It is split between six months of health coaching programs teaching you hundreds of nutritional theories including Ayurveda as well as six months of business coaching. And as an additional bonus, I am offering a webinar where I will teach you how to use social media to create a thriving career as a health coach. On top of that, I have created a private Facebook community just for the highest self podcast listeners who are becoming health coaches to connect with each other, meet up with each other and support one another on this journey. So if you're interested, send an email over to self sahara s a h a r aatfeelfresh.com with subject iin again saharaetfieldfresh.com with subject iin and I will personally send you back the email that will allow you to get a $1,500 off discount as well as my business coaching webinar and the private Facebook group. I'm so excited for you to begin your journey as a health coach. So you know when you're just out there like slaying your dharma and you're really craving an Ayurveda approved snack that is balancing for your current dosha, but there ain't nothing available at the store. I feel you. And this is why I'm obsessed with the brand new Ojas Bites. These spiced date and grain bites come in vata, pitta and kapha flavors with spices to balance each dosha. I love the Vata bite when I'm writing and craving creating, the pita bite when I'm handling things like a boss, and the coffee bite when I'm trying to get all warm and cozy. In fact, they're so good my fiance, who isn't even into Ayurvedic stuff, ate my whole box. So you can get your own by heading over to ojustudio.com and entering code Sahara for free shipping off your first order. Again, Ojas O J-A S studio.com and and enter code Sahara for free shipping on your first order. Now a lot of us, we feel shame about our family lives. Maybe you have a parent who was a drug addict or they went through a divorce and they were known as the parents who were fighting or there was sexual trauma in your life. And for us, the shame comes around opening up about our families that we don't have that picture perfect suburban family with the white picket fence and the dad who's a lawyer and the mom who's a stay at home mom who comes to every bake sale and a brother who's on the lacrosse team. And not everything is perfect. We don't live in the Stepford Wives community. So because of that we have shame. Shame that no one will want to marry me if they know about my family life. People won't want to be my friend. I didn't grow up with as much money as other people. So we hold onto that shame. And this is shame around something that absolutely cannot change. You cannot change your past, nor were you meant to. So you can do all the Face masks. But that's not going to change the fact that what you need to do is to come to terms that your family life was the greatest gift that you could have been given, no matter how traumatic it may have been. Because it has taught you the exact lessons that you needed to get to where you are right now. And we all know people who've had perfect family lives. And guess what? A lot of them are still miserable. A lot of the children of these socialites, they depend on drugs. A lot of them want to just feel something. They feel like nothing interesting has happened to me in my life. So they create trauma. So there's no one that just had a perfect life. You're going to search the rest of your life looking for this person. You'll never find them. So having shame that you did not have a quote unquote, normal childhood, which is actually the norm, is pretty much ignoring the truth that you already know the truth that no one has a perfect life. So you're holding yourself up to a standard that doesn't exist. And a lot of us have shame around our intellect. Maybe you didn't go to college, maybe you didn't finish high school. Maybe your vocabulary is not as full as other people. Maybe your grammar isn't perfect. You need Grammarly, who knows? But guess what? It doesn't freaking matter. Because the people who are running this world are clearly not the people with the most intellect. And we've moved past the paradigm that you need a PhD to open your mouth and say anything about any subject that's gone. All you need to speak about something is your experience and a voice. That's the only qualification that you need. Your desire to help makes you enough. So no, you don't need to get your master's in it or get your doctorate in it. You can do those things and that's great. But having shame over the fact that you don't have as much education or intellect or vocabulary as someone else is ignoring the fact that most people in the world do not have those things and they're living beautiful lives. And others of us have shame around our income. Oh, people won't want to hang out with me because I'm too poor. I can't do the type of things that other people want to do. I can't go out and get dinner with people. I can barely afford my bills. So then we create this narrative, I'm poor, I'm worthless, I'm broke. And that just propagates this reality for us. All it's doing is affirming to the universe. I'm broke, I'm broke, I'm broke. And opportunities for abundance will never present themselves. And guess what? Anyone who's created wealth has had to experience not having wealth. Most people who are millionaires and billionaires are self made. In fact, oftentimes when you were given money from someone else, that can actually act as a handicap for you because you don't have that same drive as that person who experienced scarcity that actually works in your favor. If you've always had all of your needs met, you've never had to struggle and you know you always will, well, you're probably not going to bust your ass for a period of time to get shit done. So the fact that right now you are in scarcity is the perfect opportunity for abundance. And instead of repeating a paradigm of victimhood, I'm broke, I'm poor. Instead say yes, I'm gifted. This incredible opportunity to create anything it is that I want. P.S. everyone who has what I want, abundance has had to go through this too. And now it's my turn. There's nothing to be ashamed about. You're just in the beginning stages of your memoir. Imagine if all these people out there who have brilliant memoirs said, oh my God, well, the beginning part of this memoir is too shitty so we might as well not continue. There would be no Martin Luther King, there would be no Andrew Carnegie, there would be no Warren Buffett know anything. Everyone had to begin somewhere and this is just the story that you were born with. And now you have the pencil in your hands and you can change it and erase it and create it however you want moving forward. It's up to you. So having shame about our circumstances literally doesn't make sense. And I believe that self love comes to thinking about what that thing is you have shame about and realizing what a gift it is. I don't believe that self love just comes from massages and face masks and whatever else social media is telling us to do these days. These things are great. These things can be acts of self love. These things can create the space that you need to cultivate self love, but they in themselves will not bring you self love because self love is just a result of being proud of yourself. And being proud of yourself is just a result of being who you are. So if you just accept who you are and you start to work with what you got and you start to create what you want, self love is just a natural occurrence. So instead of searching for self love like it's some zebra out there that we have to go find. Let's realize that self love is something that we have total control over and we can begin today. I hope that you enjoyed this episode and if you loved this episode, I would love to share with you the first half of my unreleased book, Eat Right for your Mind Body Type, which is different from my book Eat Feel Fresh. It is my unreleased, never to be released book because it is now part of my Eat Right for your Mind Body Type program. I would love to send it to you absolutely free. All you got to do is leave me a review in the itunes store, take a screenshot and email it over to me@saharaetfeelfresh.com Again, take a screenshot of the review and email it to me@saharaetfeelfresh.com and I will send you the first half of my unreleased book, Eat Right for your Mind Body Type. Namaste Ra.