Self love and what does that mean? – Emotional Weight Series

Hello welcome to finding myself through obesity we are on episode 11 and today we are talking about SELF LOVE what does self-love really mean?  This is one of the things that I have really been diving deep into for at least the last year.  I knew that I needed to learn how to love myself. I needed to learn how to embrace this big body but I really didn’t know how to do that until I found this work that my mentor Angel has been teaching me.  I wanted to share something that I noticed about the education of self-love. 

A lot of time people will think that self-love is physically doing things for yourself. For example… having a bubble bath or getting your nails done…. getting your hair done… buying clothes for yourself… things that are on the outside of you.  A lot of times people think that is what self-love is.  I have seen people say that self love is standing up for yourself or getting toxic people out of your life and I know all those things are very important but for me I feel like there is a missing piece of self-love that is deeper.  A piece that goes into our thoughts and all the stories that we’ve been telling ourselves.  All the lies that we’ve been telling ourselves for so long.  I think the most important part of self-love is really getting deep into your brain and figuring out what are your belief systems?  Asking yourself if they are serving you.  Asking yourself what you want to change in your life as far as how you are showing up for yourself.  I am thinking it is good to first think about self love…. more emotionally and spiritually than anything physical.

That’s what I’ve noticed on my journey.  One quote that I just saw from Byron Katie is..

“If you want to find the love of your life…. look in the mirror!”

 I just did a post about it on social media cuz I felt like that was such a big aha moment for me because I was always looking outside of me to find love.  Constantly looking outside of me to find people who would love me. And when I was with people who loved me then I felt like I loved myself or accepted myself but it’s not a real true self-love.   So when you break it down and then you think about finding the Love of your life by looking in the mirror, all it means is that you are the only one that you can control. You are the only one that you really need love from.   If you can have your own unconditional self-love then it doesn’t matter what else you get from other people because you already know who you are.  You already love and respect the person that you are.  Other people loving you, I think, is like the cherry on top.  Once you can have that unconditional love for yourself your love expands and you’re able to love others even 

more.

I’ve always felt like I had a gift to love other people. I easily love people. I am a people person and it’s easy for me to love you and to look at the good in you.   I’m grateful for that gift but I haven’t had that same grace and compassion for myself.  Another quote that I really like is 

“It’s not your job to like me… it’s mine.”

 It’s crazy how much time I’ve wasted trying to get the love and approval from everyone else. I honestly didn’t know any other way and when I went into this 12 week class with Angel and all of these amazing ladies…. a lot of us would say, “Why didn’t we learn this so many years ago?” or we see some of the young girls that are in our class and we are so grateful that they are learning how to have that unconditional love for yourself at such a young age.  

One of the really important things that I’ve been taught is that we don’t have to do anything to be worthy. A lot of us have this core belief underneath that we are afraid we’re not going to be enough or we’re not going to be loved or we are going to be alone.  And we think that we have to do certain things in order to earn those things from other people.  It’s just a lie! A FLAT OUT LIE!  When I think about it… my body being 300 lb versus my body at 150 lb…. I am still the same person. I still have the same value. I still have the same spirit. I still have the same name.  My value does not change with the size of my body.  I think the first step would be to align with truth and that is exactly what I’m doing in this podcast. I am unloading all of the darkness that I have been hiding.  I’ve been hiding it from the light. I wanted to put the good things out there but not the bad things about myself.   I was hiding not only all the things from everyone else but myself mostly.  Just like I’ve been telling you… I feel like that is why my body was getting heavier. It was protecting me because I could not reveal who I really was.   I didn’t want to look at it.  Now that I’m able to look at it, reveal it and be honest about it then I can start belonging to me.  I can start taking responsibility for myself.  Then life can start changing. Then I can start building something better for myself but it’s going to be aligned with truth.  It is going to be aligned with what I want and not aligned with pleasing people or aligned with what other people want for me or what others want from me.

Questions you can ask yourself is:

What are the belief systems that are keeping me from peace joy and creativity?

If you will look at Byron Katie and her work she has free worksheets that you can go through your life and figure out the areas in your life that you’re not happy with. Go through them and see what your thoughts are about them. Figure out what is truth. Byron asks you to do the work with the thoughts that you come up with my asking yourself four questions.

First question to ask yourself: Is it true? Is your thought true?

Second question: Can you absolutely know that it’s true?

Third question: How do you react when you believe that thought?

Fourth question: Who would I be without this thought?

You can go through that and see how you show up believing that thought. This process helps you just be more aware of what is actually true, versus what your story is telling you is true. Is it your story? What you’ve been told? So many thoughts we have are thoughts that we thought were true but aren’t.

The most important relationship is the minds relationship with itself. The only relationship you have is the relationship with your own thoughts. There are a lot of things out there in the world about self-love. I would encourage you to stop doing all the external things and start really listening to your thoughts and listening to the things that you are feeling discord in your life. Pay attention to the things that you’re not happy with or satisfied with. Through discovery and observation you can find out what your thoughts are. Our thoughts turn in to our belief systems. Really dig into those and ask those four questions. See what you come up with. You might be able to have some freedom from a lot of pain that you have been carrying because of the belief systems that you have held onto that have helped you survive something that maybe isn’t serving you anymore.

It is an amazing feeling to be able to look at myself in the mirror and be able to feel love and compassion for myself and not judge myself. I still have to catch myself sometimes when I look at pictures but I’m having more compassion for me and I’m really grateful for that. I couldn’t look at myself with self-compassion and love until I was willing to look at the truth and take responsibility for the life that I have created for myself. I had to take responsibility for what I have done and what my part is. I had to stop being a victim. And it seems scary but it is very freeing. I have a lot of stuff still coming up for me. There are a lot of changes that are going to be happening in my family and I will be talking about that more as we go on. I still have a lot of things to learn.

I am so grateful for my mentor Angel. She is mentoring me every week and I am thinking about putting part of our mentoring sessions on my podcast so that you can see the process of healing. How she does her SOUL ALIGNING Mentoring sessions. She is good at really figuring out how to unpack all these things so you can see the process of coming to the truth and seeing yourself in the light and also seeing yourself in those dark corners too. We all have them.

I started to read the book “The Dark Side of the Light Chasers”. I’m excited to see what I learn while reading that book because in her book she’s doing the same thing that I’m doing on my journey and on my podcast. In her book she is also shedding light to the dark places in her life. That is what helped her find freedom from her addiction to drugs and alcohol.

I have one more episode of the emotional weight series and then we will be going on to something new. I have no idea what I will be sharing but I do know that it will be true and it will be my experience. Hopefully it will be inspiring to you and will inspire you to look at your dark sides and to expose the truth. I feel like we all need to realize that we are all imperfect human beings. We’re all having this Human Experience together. None of us are perfect and that’s the beauty of our lives. We are here to learn and grow and if we could get our thoughts wrapped around truth then we will be able to see the world with more loving, compassionate eyes. That’s what I’m most excited for.

Thank you for being here. I had one of my high school friends reach out to me send me a text about my podcast. It meant so much to me that she would take the time to text me in and thanked me for sharing the all this experience of mine. It makes it worth it when I know that it’s making a difference to someone else, so thank you to my friend.It would mean so much to me if you would give this podcast a review. It would help other people who are struggling with obesity to be able to find my podcast and hopefully bring them the awareness that have the ability to uncover their secrets and uncover their emotional weight, get healthy and a live a life full of joy, creativity and happiness.

Thanks for being here with me again and we will see you next week.