🔴 LIVE Workshop: Love for yourself is a beginning of a life-long romance | Kristina Mänd-Lakhiani

Hello. Hello everyone. Welcome. We are waiting to people to join. Please write in the chat. Meanwhile we are waiting. Where are you joining us from? What time of the day is it today for you? Okay, I can see people. Okay, I can see just Zagreb right now. Please introduce yourselves in the chat. Right where you join, joining us from? Okay. Amsterdam. Okay, it's going on. Portugal. Riga. Canada is the U. S From Hungary. From Norway. Evening. Good evening. Eleanor from Glasgow, beautiful from New York City. Australia. Oh my God. What time is it for you in Australia? Japan, Denmark, London, Israel, Chicago. Beautiful from India. From Belarus. Georgia. Hello everyone. Welcome. So we are waiting for people to join and welcome to mindvalley's Love Week 2023. Please show your love in the chat. We hope that this love week was beautiful for you. Today's workshop topic is love for yourself is the beginning of a lifelong romance. And we are having today our beautiful host, Christina Mandla Kiani. Let me introduce you to Christina. For those of you who are new to Mindvalley, Christina is actually the co founder of mindvalley. She's entrepreneur, she's international speaker, artist and philanthropist. Christina is also the author of four Mindvalley online programs. Actually the fourth one is just about to come out and her line programs have touched the lives of tens of thousands of students and they contain knowledge of her 20 years in personal growth industry. So you can imagine how much interesting things are there in the on in Christina's programs. But Christina is also the author and her book Becoming Flossem is coming out in June. So I am putting all the links on Christina in the chat. So today we will have one hour with Christina to talk to talk about self love. Also we will have the Q and A session at the end of the of this call. So please do put your questions in the Q and A box. Don't forget to upvote for the best questions because the most upvoted questions will be answered at the end. And please welcome Christina. Christina, the stage is yours.

Hello. Hey Marta. And thank you for your very kind introduction. It's kind of odd to be in this system but being a guest because for those of you who are with Mindvalley for a while maybe you know that I do honest conversations also on zoom and very similar to that. But I'm usually the host and somebody else is the guest so it's very exciting. But thank you Marta for this kind introduction. Thank you everybody who joined us and who stood still joining. I have to confess if you do not know me then you you wouldn't Know that I, my eyesight is not so good as to read the comments as your chat is going on. And also my mind is a little bit one track so I won't be able to get distracted into chat. So my request to you because this is online and I can't see your faces, I can't even see Marta anymore. And our team do react to what is going on. If you, if you relate or if you like what you are hearing or maybe even if you disagree, disagree, but do react in the chat with emojis because emojis I can register. And if you have any questions, then leave them in Q and A and then Marta is going to monitor that everything gets answered. And people who want to join the chat later at the end of the hour, I think Marta will give you that chance as well. So thank you for the first emojis coming in. That's good. Thank you. So you know, when I suggested to my team that I'm going to talk about self love and actually I gave this somewhat humorous title for this talk, Love for yourself is the beginning of a lifelong romance. I heard the very common comment that I hear all the time that, you know, it's, it's kind of odd. People don't somehow we kind of, we know that self love is important, but we don't value it seriously enough. So, you know, I do teach about self love. I have courses about self love. I have written a book about self love. And while my marketing team keeps telling me that I have to say it in a more pragmatic way, I keep, maybe because I'm just an obstinate human being, I keep saying that, you know, self love is important. So, you know, in, in the 20 years in personal growth and transformation, what I've noticed is that a lot of the times when people talk about the things which are essential to our life, whether it's our well being, self love, happiness, we say, oh, this is a soft skill and we dismiss it. And I hear that reaction all the time. You know, being in this industry, I know you can't sell self love very well. People just think that it is unimportant, which is such a bizarre thing in my opinion that, you know, why, why, why do we dismiss it? And I would claim that self love is one of those self soft skills which is really, really hard to master. So yes, it's a soft skill, but very few people actually mastered it. And to substantiate my point, I have to give you this number. You know that 85% of all adults and other adolescents, adults and young adults, 85% have low self esteem. And yes, granted, self esteem and self love are not exactly the same thing, but they have very much the same kind of roots and very much the same kind of mechanism behind them. So 85% of people in essence think that they're not worthy, they're not good enough, and yet we say self love is a soft skill. So of course I've questioned that thing and I want to, you know what, before we go into the topic, I want to ask you a question and I want you to actually write the answer in the chat. Think of all the things that you have prioritized in the recently prioritized over your self love. And here I'll give you some examples. You have too much to do at work and you are sacrificing certain, you know, certain self care routines. Although self care is not self love or for example, rather than getting into complicated discussion, you would not express your needs or your feelings or your values. So I want you to answer that question and if you can please write in the chat your answers. What were the, in the, in the recent times, what were the things that you prioritized over your own self love? Recording in progress Is it work? Is it peace of mind? You know, not rocking the boat? The thing is that we very often say, I don't have time for that, it's unimportant. You know, as an entrepreneur, I know how it works. Economic crisis is looming, I don't know, we don't have enough customers, something like that. We very often think these questions are so pressing, they're so much more important than my own well being. And you can replace self love with well being, happiness, whatever it is that we call soft skill, which I insist, still insist is incredibly hard to master. And thank you for your answers, by the way. Overworking. Well, you know what, thank you for all your answers. And if, if Marta is keeping track on that, I'm going to give freedom to Marta to switch on her mic and maybe her camera and once in a button and just say, you see, people are saying this thing. So we, we habitually feel that we don't have time for self love. In fact, you know, there's two reasons why I think we don't take this topic seriously. One of them is that we think we don't have time for that. I have more pressing problems. My kids are not listening to me. I have too much work to do. I'm too scared. You know, I don't want to rock the boat. I'M afraid the, the very common, the very common excuses. I have responsibilities. For example, I. I do the work that I don't love because I have responsibilities. I have bills to pay. So, you know, while, while we dismiss this topic, it is probably one of the main causes which. Why. Why humanity is suffering because 85% of adults feel that they're not good enough. Another reason why I think so, reason number one, why we deprioritize self love is that we don't have time for that habitually. Reason number two is because we don't understand what it is. We really don't know what self love really is. We don't. We don't know how it feels. How does it feel to love yourself? How does it feel to love yourself in a healthy way? Where's the boundary between self love and self obsession? You know, in the contemporary world where we think that the whole world is obsessed with showing their, you know, their best facade, we think that we have an excess of self love. In my opinion, these are all distortions of self love which are coming from, from one very simple reason. We do not understand the phenomena. We don't know what it is. We don't have a definition for this. So these are just the two reasons. I'm not going to go deeper into the reasons right now. I do want to talk about some of the distortions of self love with you, but actually what I want to tell you is that by the end of this workshop all these pieces are going to fall into one big picture. Why self esteem is pretty much a marker by contemporary society suffering with self love. What can you do? Why do we misunderstand that? Do we misunderstand it? And you know that that title of my, of my talk today is a quote from Oscar Wilde. I think he was a incredibly wise person and also very humorous. So I do believe that by the end of this workshop the question of what does it mean to love me? Is going to be so much easier. But first, let's start with distortion. So as I said, we don't understand the phenomenon of self love. I believe there are a few distortions. We think that self obsess or being egocentric or selfish. This is an excess of self love. When there is too much self love, we think that we very often. Another distortion is that we think that if we love ourselves too much, we'll be complacent, indulgent, we won't grow that for the growth you need a little bit of discomfort and pain. Otherwise you will not want to change one More distortion would be a little bit tricky. And I want to start with this one. It is. We very often confuse self care with self love. And I want to start with this distortion. And after that I want to do a little experiment with you because we'll go deeper. We very often confuse self care with self love. And if I were to ask you how do you express love for yourself? Quite naturally most people would say, in fact, you know what, how to express love for yourself. How do you, how do you take care of yourself, take care of this relationship? So very often what people do is that they take time for themselves, which is good. But very often our understanding of self love is a little bit skin deep. It's, it's, you know, it's self care rituals now to drive the point. You know, self care is actually about survival and self care is definitely a sign that you have a healthy relationship with yourself because you care of yourself about yourself. But this causality only goes one way. If you love yourself, you're very likely going to take care of yourself. But if you take care of yourself, it's not a marker of you loving yourself. It's not a guarantee at all. And a very simple example would be. So this is my phone, you know, I charge this device, not, not out of love towards this piece of machinery. I charge it because if I don't it will die. And of course I'm not going to talk about love for a piece of machinery. But I want you to understand that self care is about self survival and self love is about thriving. And this is one of the big distortions. Because you see, we humans, we like tangible things and self care is tangible. It's ritualistic. You can do a certain thing. You can meditate, you can take a bath, you can go shopping, you can take a piece of chocolate, whatever it is. I'm not judging people for how they take care of themselves or not take care of themselves, how they please themselves. But it's ritualistic and we understand that. And when something is ritualistic, it's so easy to do that if I want to do more, if I want to do more of self love, I'll do more self care. Obviously that means I love myself. It's easy to put more time in, it's easy to put more effort in. But self love is a relationship, it is not a ritual, it's a relationship. And relationship is something different. Here I'll bring you another example just to understand. If those of you who have children, it will be easy for you to relate. If you don't have children. I'm sure you can still picture it. When a child is born, a child needs care. We need to feed the child, dress the child, give the child shelter, education. But a child will grow into a happy human being only if a child has love. And love cannot be replaced with self care rituals or with the maintenance rituals, with the rituals of caring about the child. So a stereotypical picture would be a wealthy child who has everything the child might need physically in the material world, except the love of their parents. And that's what we very often do when we confuse self love with self care. We deal with the things which are tangible and easy to understand. Hoping that this is going to improve my relationship with myself. But there is no guarantee. Because taking care of myself doesn't mean that I know how to love myself. Imagine if you were to fail on the ritual of self care. What would you tell yourself if you were stressed and you indulged that, I don't know, tub of ice cream or too much alcohol, how would you, how would you treat yourself? So I leave you with that bizarre thing. What I want to come back to is this one. Let me, let me just check with my notes because I don't want to miss anything. You know what I want to talk about the number one rule in personal growth and transformation. Having been here for 20 years, I. I want to share that the number one rule in our sphere is that if you want to improve anything in your life, you have to work on that. If you want to improve your relationship with your body, you have to work on that. If you want to improve your relationship with your lover, you usually have to work on your relationship. And if you want to improve your relationship with children, you have to work on those relationships with money, you have to work on that relationship. And I'm deliberately focusing on relationships. Although it's true about anything. If you want to improve, I do not know, your spiritual life, you have to work on that field. Or your financial well being, you have to work on that field. But relationships, all the relationships, for them to be healthy, need care and attention. Yet when it comes to relationship with ourselves, because first of all, we deprioritize it. We never have time for that. Second, we misunderstand it. We actually leave it without care. Not deliberately, but just because it's so confusing. So my question to you again, and I want you to use the chat again and I'm looking at it even if I don't can't read all the answers. How would you, you know, how would you term your relationship with yourself? You know, like in Facebook, it's I'm single, I'm in a relationship. It's complicated. How would you term your relationship with yourself? Are you, you know, is it healthy? Are you good? Is it on and off? Is it rocky? Is it yoyo? Think about that. How stable, how healthy is your relationship with yourself? My, I think the, the, the idea that I want to impress on you is that your relationship with yourself, joke aside, is the most important relationship that you can nurture. And the question I want you to ask yourself, when was the last time you nurtured your relationship with yourself? And I'm not talking about self care rituals, but the actual relationship. When was the last time you had a deep, soulful conversation with yourself, especially when you needed it, especially when you were overwhelmed, especially when you were stressed. So I know that mindvalley crowd is very, very aware and very attuned to all these things. So most likely the situation here is much healthier than the situation outside, outside this room. If you, if we were to talk to just people on the street. So what I want to. Yes, Marta, maybe let me help you.

Chris, to read a few comments here because it's really very interesting what people are writing. Some people are writing that their relationships with themselves are complicated. Some are writing the newly loving relationships and working on it beautifully unfolding a mystery. Some are writing so maybe those who are having a mystery will have some kind of interesting. Will open some interesting things today, some saying a permanent something they are improving. So like a lot of things are going on. Please go on and Christina will read this chat later as well. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Yeah, I'm so sorry that I can't catch up with the chat because I, my train of thought is going this way. But thank you Marta for joining and you're welcome to do that again. So you see your relationship with this yourself is super important. I'm sure that previous speakers actually I'm not sure but I believe that some of the previous speakers, especially those who were talking about relationship with the outside world would have hinted to you that your relationship with the outside world is very often your left is very often. Sorry is very often a reflection of your relationship with yourself. And very often in our industry when you talk about how can I find a soulmate or someone to love it all starts with you, with, with you sorting out your, you know, your mess with yourself. So you see these reasons all while kind of tangible and understandable that yes, self love is important. But the problem of Our neglected relationship with ourselves goes much deeper than that. And here I want to geek out with you a little bit because I have a very geeky background. I want to take a step back and talk about such phenomenon as reticular activating system of your brain. It is really a very magnificent region of your brain, and I'm simplifying right now, but reticular activating system of your brain, it regulates what you notice. It's not a mystery that we are surprised. We're surrounded on a daily basis, but by a lot of signals. And for us to function, we need to focus on certain things. So that's what our reticular activating system of our brain does to us. It allows us to focus on certain things. So I want to make a little experiment with you right now. It's an inclined class exercise. I know it's not as interactive as in. In a live group, but still, I want you right now to look around you. Just look around you and notice everything which is yellow around you. So if I were to look around my house, you probably see the yellow tulips behind me and I see some yellow paper on. So just look around and notice everything which is yellow around you. And by the way, if you have done that exercise on RIS, or reticular activating system, you can still do it over and over again and you'll still get the same results. So I assume that you have noticed everything yellow. Now what I want you to do is I want you to close your eyes. I want you to close your eyes and be honest, really close your eyes. And I want you to recall everything in your environment which was blue. So take a moment to think of all the things that you noticed in your environment which were blue. I'm going to give you another moment because if you rack your brains, maybe you will remember something. If you're actually in a familiar environment, probably remember things not because you observe them right now, but because you remember. Now I want you to open your eyes and look around and notice everything which is blue in your environment. And notice if there is anything you didn't see because you were focusing on a yellow. It's a very simple exercise, but that's exactly how our brain works. And why I wanted to do this exercise is because it actually is. Is probably one of the most remarkable parts about the anatomy of our beliefs. So the conclusion of that exercise is that your goal defines your perception. Whatever you focus on, that's what you're going to notice. And that's pure psychology. Your goal defines Your perception. If your goal was to notice yellow things, that's what your perception was focused on. And naturally, the things which are a little bit different color or a little bit different, they might have been just without attention. Of course, different people have different capabilities of noticing minor details, but most of us, most of us notice things that we focus on. Why is it the major, the core component of the anatomy of our beliefs? It is because if you believe in something, because this is your goal, it defines your perception. What you believe in, you're going to notice. That's how beliefs are being formed and that's how they are reinforced. You believe that aging brings wrinkles and gray hair. You will notice that all around you. You believe that aging doesn't mean that you have to change your lifestyle. That's what you're going to notice. That's in everyday life. So first, and this is an important component, I want you to just keep it there. First, your goal defines your perception. Now, the second aspect to the perception that I want to talk about is that you actually train the world how to perceive you. You're teaching the world how the world is going to take you, how the world is going to receive you. So a very simple example, and probably, probably women relate a little bit more to that, but who knows? A very simple example. If you're a woman, and maybe you have done that, maybe you have worn very sexy underwear underneath your official clothes and nobody can see it, but you know that you're a real vixen underneath there and you feel very different. Nobody can see it, but you perceive yourself differently, and that's how you carry yourself and that's how the world takes you. Or a slightly, maybe more pragmatic example would be, you know, in 20 years in personal growth, I've seen so many people go on stage and I've worked with a lot of authors off stage and on stage I've looked, I've worked with people who are in front of the camera and people who, who are in the same people in regular conversation. And I've noticed one very strange lack of correlation. Very often a very smart, deep teacher, if they are unsure, uncertain, or not confident enough, will not come across on stage as very smart and deep teacher. Well, it's not just my observation. Research says, says that your success depends 50% on your competency and 50% on your confidence. Half of your success is determined by your confidence because you teach the world how they're going to perceive you. So, you know, cute, sexy underwear and speaking gigs aside, I want to do Another exercise with you. I want to do another exercise with you. And that exercise, I like to do it in class, I mean in live class. So I'll have to do a little alteration to this exercise so that we can, we. We can actually do it. It's called self talk exercise. And I swiped it off Dove commercial. And if you have done that, please do it again. So what I want you to do right now, it's going to be a little bit meditative, but it's not a meditation, it's an exercise. So before we go into the second this exercise, I want to ask you to take a sheet of paper and something to write on. Or you can, you can use your phone if, if it's easier, or you can open, if you're on your computer, you can open just any text, text editing software to type in there. So get ready to write something. And I hope you're ready. So what I want you to do right now is, is close your eyes, take a deep breath. It's not a meditation, it's an exercise. Take a deep. So the question was 50% competence, 50% confidence, but that's aside. So take a deep breath, and as you exhale, relax. And I want you to bring to your memory an episode from your recent past that, where you felt very intense emotion. And you might probably, maybe you did something which you were not very proud of. So think of some episode where you maybe lashed out on someone, or maybe you feel somewhere deep inside you should have been a little. You should have behaved differently, or maybe, maybe you failed at something. I like to. As an example, I like to bring, you know, I learned to ride a bike at 43. And, and in the beginning, when I was trying to ride, I would. I would start falling over and I would tell myself, why? Why can't you just learn it? It's so easy. Why Everybody can. You can't so something like that where you were not performing at your best. So I want you to bring this episode to your memory, and I want you to imagine yourself reliving this episode again. Imagine yourself in that very place where it's happening. Maybe it's an argument with your colleague, maybe your boss scolded you. Imagine yourself in that place. You can visualize that place. If you're. If visualizing is not your fortage, then hear the conversation. Feel the conversation. Feel the emotions. Feel the emotions. And you're allowed to bring these emotions back. And what do you feel? Do you feel frustrated, helpless, ashamed, guilty? Whatever it is, bring up this emotion. And now I Want you to reimagine. What are you telling yourself? What is your self dialogue? Are you asking yourself, what's wrong with you? A lot of people do that. Are you asking yourself, why can't you. Why. Why do you do that again? It's always like this with you. Or maybe you're even harder on yourself. Maybe you say, you're such a failure, such a loser. Why can't you get yourself together? What's wrong with you? So react. Reimagine that self talk again. What are you telling yourself in that situation where you did not perform at your best? Take another deep breath and as you exhale, relax and open your eyes. And I want you to take a moment and write down that self talk on a sheet of paper or your tablet or the computer. Just write down that self talk. So somebody says, fear of others being disappointed in me. Maybe. Maybe you. How do. How do you say it to yourself? Why do you keep disappointing people? Oh, they're so disappointed. Why did you have to do that? Write the self talk. What do you say to yourself? And I'm going to give you about a minute to do that. It's. It doesn't have to be a long essay. You can actually. You can actually expand on that self talk. Maybe you didn't have such an elaborate self talk at that moment, but if you were thinking about that situation over and over again, what were you telling yourself? Yeah. Thank you. Thank you guys. Who leaving your. Your comments in the chat. I look silly. Yeah. I could have ignored knowing. Yeah, I'm embarrassed. My poor wife. So another 10 seconds. So now I'm going to do a little twist. There's no need to read it out right now. I want to do a little twist so you can. You can take a pause for writing. So what I do in my live classes, I usually ask people to find a partner and exchange the notes. But right now, since we are, I. I can't tell if you are alone listening to this workshop or if you are with someone. What I want you to do right now is to rewrite this text. But before you rewrite this text, what I want you to think about. I want you to think about a person in your life that you love the most. I would say the most effortlessly. It's probably someone like your child, your parent, your sibling, your lover, but someone who it is very easy to love. Someone that you love effortlessly and unconditionally. Think of that person. And of course, I know I gave you a little bit of a spoiler because I never did this Exercise this way. And the spoiler is that I want you to rewrite that self talk, replacing yourself with that person. So in my case, when I was upset with myself not getting riding the bike, it's so easy. What's wrong with you? Why are you failing again? I would rewrite it. Let's say if I were to replace myself with Hayden, my son, I would write, Hayden, what's wrong with you? Why can't you learn that? Everybody knows how to do that. How. Why can't you? It's like you've been doing that for a long time. What's. What's going on again? You're. You're failing again. So rewrite that self talk, but replace you with the person who you find the easiest, the most effortless to love unconditionally. So I'll give you a minute to do that. Oh, so the repeat the task is rewrite your self talk that you just wrote. Rewrite it, replacing yourself with the name of the person that you find the easiest to love. It may be your child, your sibling, your lover, someone that you love unconditionally, and you don't need to put any effort to love them. So if you were to say yes, writing exactly the same text, exactly the same, only replace you with that person. So if you were telling yourself, why are you letting them down again? Why can't you get your shit together? So you are to write it Hayden, or in my case, it would be Hayden. Why do you keep letting them down? Why can't you get your yourself together? Yeah, so if I, I don't have a lot of time. And unfortunately, although you. Thank you guys for actually leaving your comments in the chat, unfortunately it's not the same kind of interaction as in the same room. So I'm not going to linger on that exercise much longer. But if you want to take it further, another twist to the exercise that you might want to experiment with. It's going to be very illuminating for you, is take a diary with you for a day and write down your self talk as you go through the day. When you wake up in the morning and look in the mirror, what do you say to yourself? You know that 80% of women don't like what they see in the mirror. Very often when we look at ourselves, we start criticizing. Write it down. Write down your self talk throughout the day. And if you want to get a real kick, then in the evening, ask that very person whom you love the most to read it out to you, back to you. Or if you want to get really Painful, then you can read your own self talk to the person that you love as if you're talking to them now while I'm doing this exercise. We are very often unaware how mean we are to ourselves. We think that we love ourselves because that's an assumption and it's such a natural thing to do. We very often misunderstand self love. But when we look deeper into the essence of things, we discover that we're really mean to ourselves. I deliberately, as a point of reference, I deliberately ask you to think of someone that you love effortlessly, Someone that you love effortlessly. Would you ever be this mean to that person? So how can you say that you love yourself if you allow yourself to be this mean to yourself? So normally I would go into a little bit of meditation to, to digest that whole thing, but I'm going to leave you with that because I want you to actually ponder on, on. On that aspect of your relationship with yourself. And what I want you to understand is that the perception of you that you're teaching the world is exactly this self talk. It's not your aspiration. Your self talk is the perception that you teach the world. Your self talk is that sexy underwear that nobody can see that you know that you have on. It's that confidence which is 50% of your, of your success. That's your self talk, not your as aspiration, not your picture of perfection that you aspire for. That's just a goal, that's just a lighthouse that you go for. And then if you also think of the first exercise that we did about reticular activating system, your goal defines your perception. So if you're mean to yourself, unfortunately that's your goal. And your perception is going to pick up in the environment all the signs that you're a failure, that you're letting people down, that you're disappointing, that you're, I don't know, fat, ugly and old. Whatever nasty things we tell ourselves, even sometimes in passing without even believing in them. But we keep imprinting that onto our reticular activating system and onto the world. So here I want to give you a little bit of an example because since we are talking about perception and the perception and the perfectionism. I said perception that you're training. And by the way, thank you, Pauline. But perception that we are training. You know what? I will make a break. I will make a break because I want to go a little further and I hope we have enough time. Marta, do you think, do you think we could bring up some people if somebody feels like they would like to share how they felt about this exercise. Maybe just three people, because I. I want to be mindful of the time and I still want to cover a few topics. Of course, of course.

So those who would like to share, please raise your hand. You have here on the panel in zoom the option to raise your hand. And I will just bring some people just randomly. Okay, I can see some hands here. Let's start with Wendy. Wendy, I will bring you up. Okay, Wendy has disappeared. Okay, here you are. I will bring you up, Wendy, and yeah, I will promote you to panelists and you will be able to ask your question. Please make sure that you have your camera on and your microphone on. You'll be able to do this in a few minutes or in a few seconds.

Hey, Wendy. Hi.

Hi.

So I'm trying to cover. I'm still in my pajamas. So anyways, so you want me to. I'll listen and then I'll do what you say.

So. I know. I just wanted to ask if anybody wants to share, how did they feel about the self talk that they wrote down when it was turned towards the person that they love the most.

Coming from them?

Okay. Or if you were to say that to them.

Okay. If I was to say it to them, I would say, you're okay. Yes, you have been. You could have been quiet, but then you would have felt worse afterwards. And I guess you still need a little more work on that area.

Is that what you told yourself? Is that how you.

No, that's not what I told myself. What I told my.

Yeah, okay.

I said, you stupid bitch. What is it that you're allowing this other person. I called her a bitch too. Sorry for the words. But she's saying. And I'm saying, stay calm, don't overreact. You're, you know, on a public forum, you know, in one of the classes on mindvalley. And then I'm saying, what the hell is she doing? Okay, Wendy, breathe, breathe, calm. Don't bite her head off. And you shouldn't have let her get to you and trigger you like that.

So I'm. I'm sorry to do a little bit of an experiment and I hope you, you're okay with that. What's the name of the person that you love the most?

My husband or my children or my grandchildren.

Can you give me a name?

Okay. Josly.

Sorry. He's my husband.

Yes. Take off the e and then. You got it. No, yeah. Jocelyn. Okay, we'll call him jj. That's easier.

Yeah.

Now, now if you Were to. If you were to put him into your self talk. Jj, you stupid. Why can't you shut up?

Yeah, that doesn't sit with me.

Exactly. But you say that about yourself, right?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, no, it's, it's true. I real. That's why I typed on this was totally awesome. And I'm going to do this more often.

Thank you.

Because it's very mind opening.

Thank you so much. So that's what I encourage you guys to do. Give it. If you can't, if you can't read it out to your loved one, just replacing yourself with their name. Not Christina, you stupid idiot, but Hayden, you stupid idiot, then if you can't do that because it's intense, you can ask. Well, in your case, jj, in my case, Hayden, Hayden, can you read this to me please and see how they, how they feel about it?

Yeah. I know for sure that anybody that I would love would say I'm not saying this.

Yes.

Yeah, I know that for a fact. So you're absolutely correct.

So thank you. Thank you, Wendy, for joining me. And I'm going to thank you and I'm sorry, I'm going to trace back my request to bring up three people because I'm very conscious of interest of time so we, we can do a longer session. If, if I finish up everything on time, we can do a longer session afterwards. And if anybody wants to share their feelings then you will have a chance for that. So what I wanted to say is that how you teach the world to perceive you is based on your self talk and not on your aspirations. Not on the. Not on that Persona of perfect you that we are all aspiring for and being in this industry. I know that everybody who comes here, whether consciously, openly or subconsciously, they have that picture of what it means to be the better version of me. That picture of perfection. I'm a perfectionist. I've been perfectionist all my life. I get it. Most of us are perfectionists by the way. And perfectionism is, by the way, one more distortion of self Love. Perfectionism is not about loving you very often. It's. It's the. The source, the cause of the darkness, us. It's the source of those things that we can't obsess, accept about ourselves. And I'll give you a very simple analogy to, to make it vivid. So when people fall in love with someone else, a romantic love, after all, it's a love week. So when you fall in love with someone else, usually we have a list of things that make someone a Perfect partner for us. So those people who go for sessions like we've had probably you guys have a, an actual list that you've written down. I want my partner to be so selenium so. But most of us, those who don't have the actual list, we at least have some kind of idea. Oh, these qualities make this person a perfect partner for me. So when we see a person who ticks all the boxes, we naturally start feeling attachment towards them. And then biology kicks in and helps us with a little bit of, you know, chemicals in our body and we fall in love. We are animals. So when we fall in love with a person we notice all the, all the ticks, everything that's right about the person. And when something is wrong, usually in the very early stages when we are still a little bit intoxicated with our own feelings, we ignore the red flags. And that's what the stage of being enamored, being in love is about. We, it's actually we, we can't blame ourselves. It's how nature made us to make sure that we actually made they actually, nature actually made us be blind towards the object of our in loveness. It also made us to be, you know, poisoned by our own, by our own hormones so that we, we actually fall in love with that person. Now of course, after we fall in love and probably commit, hopefully commit after a certain time, I think science says it's about two months to two years depending on the feeling of the initial. Initial. The streng of an initial feeling. The, the nature takes a step back and lets us be and stops drugging us and the in loveness changes to another phase of knowing the person. So you stop ignoring the red flags and noticing only the green checks and you start seeing the person for what they are, the real person. And here comes the first trial. Are you going to love the person the way they are imperfect? Why are you going to be disillusioned and separate and go look for a better partner? So that's how it happens in relationships, in romantic relationships for us. But very similar thing happens to us in our relationship with ourselves. We have the picture of perfection. And this is that list of what makes me a perfect person. And every time I tick the box I'm fine. But when there is red flag, I don't know what to do with that because I haven't been taught to love myself imperfectly. Are you ready to love yourself before you're perfect? That's a question I want to ask you. Are you ready to love yourself before you are the best version of yourself, truly love yourself. And I know it's very tempting to say yes, but. But that's not how we were being brought up. You see, when children grow up, well, we are very often well meaning parents. And I know I've done that too. It's just programmed into us over generations. But very often part of bringing up children is negotiating our love so the child behaves, or let's say the child performs well in school, brings really good marks or sometimes, you know, the child comes and he go, he or she gets an award and we tell them, oh my God, I'm so proud of you, I love you so much. We give them so much love and they feel that behaving well gives me love and attention. Now if the child does something that we don't like, doesn't listen to us, doesn't listen to our advice, breaks something is naughty, then very often, well meaning parents, because it's hard sometimes to convey your feelings, they take away the love. Oh, you misbehaved, Mommy is not happy. And I've done that too too. And teachers do that to us, parents do that to us, siblings do that to us, friends do that to us. We learn to deal love like currency. If you behave well, you'll get love. If you don't behave, you won't get love. And that doesn't mean we don't love the person, but we make a show of taking love back. So naturally when we grow up, we learn that love has to be earned. And that's the biggest, I'm sorry for my language that you can ever believe. You do not have to earn love, you do not have to deserve love, especially your own. You don't have to do anything to be worthy of your own love. And when we were doing the exercise, I said, can you imagine that the person that you love the most would say something like that to you? Or could you say that to the person that you love the most? Well, the truth is, well, I don't know actually the truth, but my belief is that the only person whose love you can reasonably expect in the whole world is yourself. Nobody has to love you, nobody has this obligation but you. You're the only person whose love you can reasonably expect. So that's why I think that we, we misunderstand the concept of self love. We dismiss it, we consider it unimportant. But if you think of the way our brain works, the way our beliefs are being formed, the way our relationship, the world is being formed, doesn't that become very clear? That self love is an incredibly important piece of the puzzle. If you want to be successful, happy, if you want to have a meaningful life, if you want to be of any help to anyone, you have to learn to love yourself because that's the basis for everything. So as I said, there are a few. So the two reasons why we, we dismiss of love. One is we don't have time for that, we think it's unimportant. And the second thing is that we don't understand it. There are so many distortions of self love. And I did want to talk about the first distortion which is mixing up self love with self care in the very beginning because I wanted to get it out of the way. And I want you to understand that very often when we, when we can't get it, what does it mean to love me? We resort to self care because this is easy. I don't know how to forgive myself, but I can give myself a good time. I don't know how to, how to be okay with my imperfections, but I can at least give myself a chocolate. Well, chocolate is my big vice. So that's, that's why I think it is incredibly important to understand that self care is not self love. What else? Self love is not. Self love is not. Or excess of self love is not selfishness. And I did mention that in the very beginning that we live in a lot in a world which likes to, you know, in an exhibition as well, if you go on social media, all you see is a lot of show off. And we think because people are craving for attention, like me, comment me, you know, look at me, be pleased with me. We like to please other people even if we don't care. We think that we live in a world which is self obsessed. But in reality all these things, egocentrism, self obsession, selfishness, these are not the self love. These are the absence of self love. It's because you don't have enough for yourself. It's because you're so desperate you can't give yourself what you should be able to give yourself. You're going to look for it on the outside. If I can't love myself, can you love me? Me? Can you look at me? Can you like me? And if you like me, then maybe I'll think that I'm worthy. So think of it this way. If love. Actually I've almost finished my water. But if love is water and you are the vessel, if your vessel is full with your own love, you can't pour anything from outside. It's because your vessel is empty like mine right now. That's when you start sucking up love from your environment. So again, you see, we are afraid of too much self love. We say, but what, where's the boundary? How am I going to know that I'm not just being selfish? That's how you will know. You know, if you need something from that outside, that means you don't have enough inside. That's a red flag. That's a moment for you to take time for a deep conversation with yourself, to sit down and ask yourself, what's going on, Christina? Why what? Why am I depriving myself of my love? Why am I slamming the brakes? Why do I think I'm not worthy? So, you know, the last, the last. Thank you. Thank you so much for your comments. And the last distortion that I want to talk about, guys, is the distortion that bothers people the most, especially the pragmatic people. And one of my favorite things things is to talk to people who are not yet in personal growth and transformation because I come from a very skeptical background. I really get kicks from talking to people who tell me, oh, self love, who cares? I have business to run. You know, my clients are going away. The economic crisis is happening. I know. I've been in business for 20 years. I've done business in Russia. I don't do it anymore. But I've survived not just economic crisis, I've survived war. I know, I know that. And that's an excuse. That's an excuse. That's what I tell you. Because a lot of people think that you need to be critical if you want to grow. And that's the paradigm in which we have been all brought up. You need to be critical if you want to grow. If you're not self critical, you're not going to grow. It's a very interesting paradigm because first of all, it's based on the idea that people are lazy and stupid because if you don't let them be, they're just going to lie in bed and do nothing. That's a very, very horrible belief. And by the way, do you remember reticular activating system? If that's what you believe and that's what you're going to notice now, you see, I was, as I said, I was a perfectionist and I was a straight A student in school. In fact, I was such a good student that I got a medal from the president of Estonia for being the best student in my school. At the end of my school, I mean the whole school, high school, so I, I know what it means to, to put a lot of work and effort and work and study hard. And I understand this paradigm because that's how I was brought up. When my parents went to school, my parents were told what I was bad at so that I can put more effort into that. Because if you work on the things that you're bad at, that's when you are going to be successful. That's the paradigm that we live in. It's called the red market technique. You know, if you do, let's say if you do an essay and you teach your marks all the bad places and then you have to focus on not making these mistakes again. This is just a paradigm that we as a society for centuries have decided to believe in. And naturally we see the proof of that paradigm. Another paradigm is called the green market technique. Imagine if you do the essay and your teacher marks all the places where you have been genius and asks you to focus more on these things. If my parents came to school and my teacher told them not that oh, she should do more of the things that she hates and she's not good at, but what if Christina did more of the things that she's really good at, that she really loves and that really has meaning. Can you imagine how your life would be if you spent more time doing things that truly matter, that you love and that you are good at? And it's a different paradigm. And I know it's scary, it is scary because we haven't seen the we again reticular activating system. We see the proof of the paradigm that we live in. So another example of why self criticism. Because you know, there are two paradigms how you can grow. If you don't mind, I'll share one more story about myself. So I was born in Soviet Union and Soviet Union was super strong on sports. And the way Soviet Union produced Olympic athletes was that they picked little children from kindergarten and they put them in the things called Olympic reserves. It was, was literally a mincing machine. When I was four years old, the Olympic reserves came to my kindergarten and picked me up for gymnastics. And the first, this is the first memory of my life because it was so traumatic. I was crying my eyes out and begging my mom never to take me back to that mincing machine. The first training that I had, they put me on a split without asking any questions. I remember a lot of physical pain the whole time, a lot of physical pain, screaming. And I begged my mom never to bring me back. So you see, as a four year old, the, the Funny thing is that the next year they actually came back and picked me up for figure skating. But my mom had known better by then and I, until this day, I have very bad relationship with sports. But at four years old and five years old, it was established that apparently I have something that makes me sporty. I had potential. I had potential. But the paradigm of red marker, the paradigm of punishment, of fear, of force, has made waste material of me. So while our society, movies, popular culture, books, everything romanticizes that paradigm of punishment, force, pain, and we see examples of that, we never hear about the waste material. By the way, I still love sports, but I have such painful relationships, relationship with sports. I have to force myself. But when I get it, I'm really good at that. We never talk about waste material. The other paradigm, the paradigm of green marker or the paradigm of encouragement, also creates success. But it doesn't create as much waste material. It doesn't create waste material because it doesn't break people. It makes you, it. It lets you focus on the things that you're good at. Now one more argument, because I know this is the biggest argument. Why people refuse to change their worldview about self, love, happiness, about fulfillment, why they still insist that we have to live in the old world is that we truly believe that if, if I love myself, I'm going to be complacent. So one of mindvalley's teachers, Marisa Peer, and if you know Marisa Peer, you can leave a heart for her or whatever, whatever. I love Marissa. So Marissa was once recording quests with us with mindvalley. And one of our video teams said, you know, Marissa's message is you are enough. So one of our videographers said, Marissa, but if I keep telling myself I'm enough, am I not going to lie in bed all day telling myself I'm enough? I don't need to do anything. What's there more to want? So what Marissa said, she said, you know what? You're lying in bed and doing nothing. Not because you think you're enough. It's because you are afraid that you're not enough. You're afraid to go and challenge yourself. You're afraid if you go and challenge yourself and you fail, you will not be able to love yourself. You will not be able to think that you're enough. So what I want to impress on you that self love, self compassion are a doorway to true courage, are a doorway to you having that courage to go out and challenge yourself, truly challenge yourself. Because you know that you cannot mess up no Matter how bad you fail, you still deserve your own self love. So I probably I'm going to end on that because the time is coming to an end. And one distortion I didn't really unpack, it's perfectionism. So. So rather than unpacking that distortion, all I want to say is that, you know, what world doesn't need your perfection. What world needs is the real you. And I'll finish it with a story from my mom. My mom used to work in an orphanage here in Estonia. And in Estonia being, you know, western country, fairly affluent, kids who end up in an orphanage are usually children who come from the worst families, the most unfortunate families. So a lot of the kids in my mom's orphanage, they came from families where parents were drug addicts or alcoholics or dad would have killed a mom. And my mom once came home from work and she said, you know, I can't understand that. They have the most complicated, the most messed up parents in the world, but they love them. And the only thing these children want is to have their parents back. They don't care how messed up they are. All they want is their parents to be back. Just to have their parents. So what I'm trying to impress on you is that no matter what it looks on the outside, on the facade, no matter what you say to the world, no matter how well you care of yourself, are you present there for yourself, are you your best cheerleader, are your best friend. Because you're the only person whose love you can reasonably expect, demand and want. So thank you guys for this time. I am very grateful to you for your chat comments. But now I think if we have time, and we have time, I try to finish on time. I will be very glad to take some questions.

Thank you so much, Christina. I can see that the chat is going wild, right?

Oh, by the way, by the way, I'll use the chance. I have written a book, Becoming Flawsome, which is about that. You can pre order that. And I know being a co founder of Mind Valley, I'm using this chance. Please do pre order my book if you liked what I was talking about. I do cover some of these topics but I go much deeper. So thanks Marta. Back to you don't television. I am putting the links in the.

Chat so you can actually see the book also as the link to the book as well. So let's jump to the questions. I have a few picked up for you, Christina. So to do it fast. So the first question is with social media being so important today in people's lives. How can you help others realize that they should not compare themselves to others in their lives?

Oh my God. You just touched about the topic which I will not be able to answer very briefly. Well, well, the thing for you to understand my answer, you have to understand my philosophy in life. And my philosophy in life is that don't try to fix other people. Don't try to fix other people. And very often when we, you know, there is such a concept as causing good to others and I know it might come a little bit counterintuitive because I'm a co founder of Mind Valley, I'm an author, I'm a writer, I've written a book yet with all that I think that we shouldn't force people into transformation. And again in my book there's a whole chapter about that, about nonviolent, about letting people have their own journeys. And it like I don't want to go deeper into that because I will speak for another one hour if I want to unpack that thing. But what I want to tell you that, you know, don't fix other people if you want to. Your, your relationship with the world is a reflection of your relationship with yourself. So if you learn to be kind to yourself, it's much easier to be kind to other people. If you learn to be tolerant of your quirk, quirks, it's much easier to be tolerant of other people's quirks. So if something bugs you, if you see someone on social media going crazy, no matter how well you wish them, ask yourself first, why is it bugging me? Why is it triggering me? Because it's, it's always good to, to reflect back and see why, why are you touched by that? Now if the question is about your child, then this is a different story because very often what, and, and still with children I also have the same rule. But I, I, I take a little disclaimer because we are responsible for children until they are 18 at least, we are not responsible for their happiness. By the way, another teacher from Mindvalley, Shefali Sabari, talks about that beautifully. Dr. Shefali, in fact. So you can't be responsible for your child's happiness, but you can of course help your child to grow up in a safe environment and also in a healthy environment. Environment. Now here my answer would be a little bit annoying. You can tell your child whatever you like. You can teach them however you like, they will still emulate you. So if that question was because you're worried that your child is comparing themselves to the people on social Media. Then again, pick up the mirror, look at yourself and ask yourself, when did I teach my child to care about the facades of other people? I know that this question comes through you, so if I haven't answered it fully, you're welcome to write a follow up question. Marta, back to you.

Thank you. And one more question, Christina to you. Anya is asking what comes up is how much women put self care aside for care for others, especially children. And if they're working and they're having family to take care about, what will be the best advice for them to take to move forward and to love themselves first.

So I will come back to the first distortion of self love. Self care is a symptom of self love, but it is not a cause of self love. Self care is about surviving. Self love is about thriving. So self care rituals are important but they're not going to make you love yourself. Sometimes we are in periods of time where we have to, we have to step aside from our familiar rituals. Can you keep your love going? So a very like silly analogy would be, you know, if you take a really long flight, you know, Asia to, to Europe, it's 12 hour flight and you don't have a chance to take a shower and maybe you stink and normally in that time you would brush your teeth and imagine you're traveling with your child, right? You, you. The love is not about how well taken care you are. The love is about how can you still love and accept yourself when you are messy, when you're overwhelmed, when you're stressed, when you haven't had time for self care. Now I know practically it's not going to help mothers. So to help mothers I'll give you a different, more down to earth example. The more down to earth reply. I think that beauty rituals are overrated. All you need for self care is literally a shower, brushing your teeth and, and using a bathroom. And that if, if you have, you're very pressed on time for hygienic reasons, all you need is literally five minutes. If you want to meditate, you don't need to do it sitting. You can meditate while you're walking, while you're walking the stairs, while you are eating, you can put things aside and use it as a meditation. You don't need the time to love yourself. So a practical example, look at my manicure, I don't have any and it's really hard to force me into a hairdresser. It's overrated. It's overrated. Put on sexy underwear, you'll feel much sexier than compared to when you have, you know, sometimes we overdo ourselves to the point when we start doubting, do I really look good? Do I look desperate? So another, since I have been a mother of small children doing 10,000 things, another thing which might help you, it's from a different category. It's not about self love. Engage your children in your chores. Ask them to help you. Ask them as a human being, you know, if you don't have time for everything, ask them to, to help you as much as they can. If they're very small, they won't be of much of help, but they'll get used to that. It will be a service to them because first of all they won't be just flatmates and you won't be just their maid. They will be engaged. Second, they will actually probably love you more for, for being, being more connected with them. You will meaningfully connect. And third, probably the most important is that you will help them to develop their executive functioning. So beauty rituals are overrated. You know, hygienic rituals don't need a lot of time. Self love is not about time. It's about your relationship and engage your kids as much as you can. That's my first answer.

Thank you, Christina. I will be reading the questions and when you feel that we have to stop, you will stop me. Okay, so the next one is from Cora and she's asking what daily practice would you recommend for in for increased self love.

So yes, that's, you know, that's, that's why I said that self love is the soft kill skill which is the hardest to master because it really is about maintaining that relationship. It's like with, you know, like with your romantic partner. Of course they suggest romantic dates and certain rituals and you know, don't go to sleep when you like fighting or whatever. That's not my forte. But you also understand that that relationship still essentially depends on, on your feelings, on your respect to this other person. So these are the things which don't depend on rituals. Now if you did the two rituals that I do recommend though, one of them is journaling. Journaling with a focus on emotional life, life and your self talk. So in the evening, if you can spend 10 minutes, just write down how your day went, what you felt, you know, especially, especially the emotionally charged situations. Journaling really helps to process all those emotions. It crystallizes your experience. It actually gives you words to vague feelings. You might have had a stressful day. But when you start writing down, you realize you'll actually use different Words. And it was just a stressful day. I was irritated, I was pissed. I was, you know, I was. My sense of justice was maybe in uproar. The thing is that it crystallizes your experiences which brings more clarity to what's going on. So the second practice is introspection. So introspection, prince. Journaling are the two practices. And underneath all of that has to be awareness. Awareness is a fundamental skill for anything in personal growth and transformation. So I'm not a. And spending time on awareness. You have to be aware for any of that to work. But the two rituals is introspection and journaling. Introspection is when you just look inside and you think, okay, what do I feel? How do I feel? Am I happy? You know, just, just ask yourself, how am I doing? And journaling, journaling. You know, psychologists say that journaling helps you process intense emotions. It's actually also going to improve your well being and your emotional, emotional, emotional health. So these two practices, but again, they're not guaranteed that your relationship with self will improve, but it's a good start. Your relationship. For your relationship with self to improve, you have, you have to have three skills. And I have a chance to talk about my book. I talk about my, about those three skills in my book. One of them is self honesty and it's not as simple as it looks, by the way. The other one is kindness or compassion towards yourself. And the last one is courage. So that's, that's on the path to self love. But journaling and introspection are a good place to start.

Thank you, Christina. And I have to ask this question because I am seeing that it was repeated even twice here. It's just so difficult to differentiate between self love and being selfish. Can you please talk a little bit about this?

Not at all. Not at all. I mean, yeah, it's, it requires practice. Selfishness is. Well, when you, you kind of, you know, imagine it like this. If you suck love, care and attention from outside, it's probably selfish. If you can tell yourself in the moment when you are doubting, am I being selfish? You can tell yourself, okay, you know, can I give what I need to myself without asking it from outside world, then that's self love. And I know where it comes from. You think that, you know, if you ask your children to make their own breakfast while you are taking a shower, is that being selfish or is that self care? I'll have to tell you one unpleasant news. There are no absolutes in life and personal growth as well. So the same answer or the same solution might not be useful in two different circumstances. So ultimately the answer is within you. If you feel that you need to take time for yourself because, because, because if you don't, you're going to suffer, then probably it's not selfish. But who am I to tell you if the long shower is what you need or if that's just because you can't be bothered? Very often you, you would feel we're just not used to talking to ourselves. But very often you would feel that if, if you doubt am I being selfish? Then maybe you are. You are. Maybe you are. We don't ask ourselves questions unless there is a deep inside there is an answer for that question. Now if you feel that, that you are overworked, you're overwhelmed, then no, taking time for yourself isn't selfish. But again, you have to be the judge. I'm not the judge, but I would say that asking your kids to help is not selfish. Because if you are, if you are like a sane mother, like my kids, it's. For example, when we had lockdown, I used to live in Malaysia and I had a lot of help in the house. But when we lived in the lockdown, you know, kids were going to school at home and I was doing my, my work and sometimes I have to do things like that. So I, I remember it was a few years back, I had to do an interview and the kids wanted pancakes. And I said, guys, I'm sorry, I have to do the interview. I'm come, I'll come back and we'll do the pancakes. But meanwhile, could you look for a recipe in, in Google? So when I was done with the interview, I came back and they were already like, you know, smashing eggs and doing pancakes. I'm like, what are you guys doing? They said pancakes, you were busy. This is not selfish. And if I needed this time to calm down my nerves because I've been stressed, it's also not selfish because your well being matters. Now any sane mother would come and help the kids if they have difficulties. I usually have to clean the kitchen after them. So you're engaged, you do things together, but you are also optimizing your relationship in a way. So it's, it's, it. The, the line is there. And the simple answer is that don't ask for from outside what you can give to yourself. But a more complex answer is that you have to consult with your heart every single time. And yes, sometimes sleeping in is not selfish, but you have to be certain of that. You have to ask yourself do you? Is that what I absolutely need right now? Again, we are touching. We're very. On the surface level, we are touching a topic which is so deep. Again, in my book, I talk about the martyrdom complex, about how we live in a paradigm where we think that our holy duty is to sacrifice our own happiness. But very often this happiness is a very vain sacrifice. And we could talk for an hour about that. Remember what I said about my mom and, and her wards in an orphanage? Very often what your loved one wants is not perfection. It's not a clean house, is not a tasty dinner, is not your beautiful face, but just your happy presence with them.

Thank you. Thank you, Christina. And maybe we'll take two or one even more questions. So I have a question from Obi here. The challenge with self love is that I am with myself and all the time and so I see all my weaknesses. How can I push past that?

That's, that's actually a good place because you have already made a step into that. Usually before we are ready to acknowledge our weaknesses, unless we are completely mean with ourselves, we have to, we have to learn to be clear and honest with ourselves, you know, so that we can actually see this. You know, this, this is me. Not that aspirational version that I pretend that I am, but this is actually me. Now. I, in my, in my teachings, I like to call those what you called weaknesses. I like to call them dragons because sometimes it's weaknesses, sometimes it's our past traumas. It's some kind of patterns that we run on. We all have those parts of ourselves which don't fit the picture of perfection. And because we don't know how to deal with them, what we do is that we sweep them under the rug or we push them into the darkest corner. Because that's just the way our psyche is built. If we face the reality which we don't enjoy, which hurts us, we usually start distorting our perception of that reality so that that reality is more palatable. So it's really hard to truly clearly see the things which you called weaknesses or I called dragons. I prefer dragons because weaknesses have this connotation of, of something inherently really bad. Dragons are tricky things. They can be pets or they can be pests. So we all have dragons. All of us have dragons. And some of us are just, just naggy and self critical. And that has nothing to do with their honesty with themselves and with them knowing their dragons. Knowing a dragon is when you actually recognize that this is my intrinsic basic part. And very often People ask me, how do I know what is being me and what is bad habit? There is a difference, you know, bad habits you can eradicate. If you smoke, you can give up smoking. I watch myself on video a lot. I very often notice bad habits in my speech, in the way I, you know, my posture. These are bad habits. These are retrainable. But then there are parts of me which are inherent. So I said, I'm a perfectionist. And I'm. I'm using as an example a very simple weakness menace or a dragon. It's. We usually don't judge perfectionists because most of us are. But let's say I'm a perfectionist. I've been perfectionist all my life. And perfectionism can be debilitating. It can actually prevent you from, first of all, from accomplishing tasks to from taking tasks, from challenging yourself, from competing. I'm very bad sport. I don't like competing because I'm perfectionist. So of course it is a weakness fitness if you take it this way. Now, at some point I heard this phrase, I'm recovering perfectionist. And I wasn't enamored with this phrase. And I called myself an recovering perfectionist until I realized that I cannot recover from being me. You see, there are bad habits and there are intrinsic qualities about yourself. So for someone, perfectionist may be a bad habit. In my case, it's my inherent intrinsic, intrinsic quality which just makes me, me, me. I can't eradicate it. I can't train myself out of it. I can't, you know, I can't slay this dragon. And slaying this dragon is actually going to create more troubles. So what you do with your weaknesses is that you look them in the eye, you acknowledge that they are there, and you ask, you acknowledge that they're there. You actually, you actually find gratitude in your heart. Because whatever you are, whatever qualities that you maybe don't want to accept about yourself or your past or your traumas, they have made you what you are right now. They have brought you to this point. Can you feel the gratitude for that? And then look at that dragon in the eye and say, I have space for you in my heart. Can we be friends? Can I befriend you? Can I tame you? So rather than eradicating my perfectionist, I just accept that I have it and I learned to live with it. Can I turn my curse, curse into my blessing? Because there are positive things about perfectionism. You know, I have a high bar. I am, I am ambitious because of that. So can I Can I live with that weakness with that dragon? That's the question. Not how can I get rid of that. Can. How can I be at peace with that? But that's high pilotage of self love. And again, that would require a little longer to, to go deeper. But that's a short answer to that and to, to, you know, to leave it at not a soft, soft weakness. Like perfectionist, I have other weaknesses. I'm very lazy. Naturally. I know my marketers are going to slay me for saying that, but that's true. You know, I'm always in my head. Something that in our industry people hate. They're like, get back into your body. No, I'm in my head. It's a weakness, but it's also my strength. It's also what makes me me. It also what gives me my unique value. I was born in Soviet Union. I have a weird accent. Some people have left the room because they can't stand my accent. But that history has made me what I am. Can I turn it. Can I turn this curse into my blessing? That's a question I do not know if I've answered or gone on a rant again.

Thank you Christina. Thank you so so much for this. How did you like guys, the workshop? I believe that we have to finish soon. But please write in the chat what was your biggest takeaway that you had from this workshop. We would like to read your answers. And while we are writing, we also would like to say if you like this workshop and you would like to dive deeper into Christina's programs and programs of other mindvalley authors. We have some small or big, quite.

Big gift for you.

It's a Valentine's gift. We have the special discount for those of you who are not mindvalley members. So we can can purchase Mindville membership with a special discount. We are putting the link in the chat. I will put it right now. So yes please, you can go. You can explore other programs that Christina has. And I believe that Chris, you have the programs on self love as well, right?

So I'll have to explain that part. So as a co founder of Mind Valley, please join membership. It's really worth it. And you know this, this is the last workshop. So I believe that the link, the special discount is not going to last very long. So do that now. When it comes to my programs, I have two of my older programs on membership. There are a lot of programs by amazing authors. The authors that I just mentioned, Shefali, Marissa, the other authors who were speaking in these workshops, they're all there. Their programs are there. My programs, it's two of my older programs, Seven Days to Happiness and. And Live by Own Rules. I have two newer programs. One of them is not out, but they. The program on Self Love, it only comes as a bonus with my book. So it's not on membership. So I just had to say that.

Thank you. Thank you so much, Christina, for staying with us today. So once again, the links are in the chat. You will all get the email with the recording of this call at the end, like after this call in 48 hours approximately. So wait for that.

That.

Thank you, Chris, for your time. Thank you for answering all these questions. Was super helpful, even for me. And I can see that for a lot of people there were a lot of insights. Thank you and happy Love Week, everyone.

By the way, before we finish, I want to thank you guys. I want to thank Marta. I want to thank everyone who joined and who took part so actively. Thank you guys for taking the time and actually coming and participating. And I, I also want to thank people that you guys don't see. There's a whole team here, there, and I don't know actually who else is there because it's the team name. But everybody who was there, if you guys can leave a heart for them in the chat because they have been doing that for all these days and for some of them it's middle of the night. So. Yeah. And. And for everyone who is not right now here, but who has made this whole event happen because that's the last workshop. And yes, thank you guys for that. Huds. See you soon.

Thank you, everyone. Bye.

Record Sam.