The Inviting Shift Podcast
Embrace the authentic, confident you so you can feel good in your skin and have deeper relationships. The Inviting Shift Podcast focuses on how we step through this messy journey of life confidently so we can feel good about how we show up, have more connected relationships and connect to purpose and meaning. Or in short, how we manifest the lives we crave in practical, tangible ways.
The Inviting Shift Podcast
S2 Episode 10:The Art of Self-Love: The Roundtable
Ready to embrace a whole new level of self-love? Join us as we delve into every facet of self-love with our esteemed guests Julie Hunt, Emma Bradford, and Sarah Maurer. Each of them brings a unique perspective to this vast topic, engaging in a profound conversation on the physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental aspects of self-love. From finding tenderness within ourselves to using language to foster self-love, this episode is all about celebrating our individual journeys rather than chasing a specific goal.
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Emma Bradford:
Emma Bradford, with 11 years of experience has been supporting clients worldwide in falling back in love with themselves and life. Artist, NLP Trainer, and Founder of Creating Change: The Art of Connection, Expansion & Celebration an exploratory training to reconnect to the authentic self within through creative means.
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Julie Hunt
Julie is a certified Chopra Global Ayurvedic health and meditation instructor and a Chopra coach. She authored Shout from the Rooftops in Your Stilettos and continues to teach meditation, mindfulness, and manifestation techniques to help you harness the boundless realm of infinite possibilities. You can find her guided meditations and wellness insights on her YouTube channel.
Sarah Maurer
Sarah Maurer is a certified life coach, hypnotist, and breathworker based in Denver, Colorado. She loves creating healing journeys that help people change their lives through deep relaxation, meditation, music, and self-exploration. Her signature program Healing Deep Dive is a six-month experience designed to help clients release old patterns and step into who they really want to be. Catch up with Sarah on Instagram (@missadventurepants), on her podcast Climb Your Mountain, and in her Meetup Denver Breathwork Collective.
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Welcome back, shifters, to another episode of the Inviting Shift podcast. I'm so excited to have you here. This week we have a very, very special episode. We're going to be talking to some of my favorite people about what self-love is, because we have so many different definitions and if you've been paying attention to the episode previous to this, I talk a lot about self-love because that's what we're going to focus on in October and this I just wanted you to have other people's perceptions of what self-love has been in their lives, what it is that they do for self-love, what it looks like, all of those things.
Speaker 1:So, without any further ado, let's just introduce our guests. We have Julie Hunt. Thank you, julie, for being here. We have Emma Bradford, thank you, and Sarah Marr, which I'm really excited about because these are three very, very different perspectives and they do three very different things, and so I want you to learn a little bit more about them so that they know, so that you know, where they're coming from. So, julie, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what it is that you do?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I teach meditation. So I'm a Chopra certified meditation instructor. I evade, I evade instructor and coach and I work with private clients and I have spent the last couple of years being very immersed in the dog world. So I'm sort of blending this meditation, mindfulness and meditation practices that I teach kind of in that Vedic tradition into dog mindfulness. So that's been kind of a fun shift. Thanks for having me. I'm super excited to be here.
Speaker 1:Thanks, Julie and Emma. You want to tell us a little bit about you. You were on a podcast last year with us. Tell us a little bit more about you, in case we didn't watch that one.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I'm Emma, I'm in Spain and I'm from the UK and I'm an NLP trainer. I've been supporting women for the last 11 years in really rewriting the negative self-talk about themselves like that negative chatter that comes up and how we can fall back in love with ourselves and life again. And I do that through creative arts, dance and NLP, mixing it all together and, yeah, I'm really happy to be here.
Speaker 1:Thank you, emma and Sarah. Can you introduce yourself for us?
Speaker 4:My name is Sarah Maher. I am a hypnotist, breath worker and integrative life coach based in Denver, colorado, and I work with. I'm a general integrative life coach but some issues I work with commonly chronic illness, overeating over drinking, anxiety, and I also work quite a bit with athletes. I was a personal trainer before I was all these other things.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Thank you, sarah. So welcome all and thank you so much for participating in this. We wanted to talk about what self-love is, because we already know we don't like the dictionary definition of conceit and vanity and being overly, overly concerned with oneself, I think, is what the dictionary was. It was horrifying, and I talked about what I thought self-love was in the previous episode, but I wanted to get more people's perception, because just because I think is one thing does not mean everybody is going to agree with me. So we're going to start with some basic questions and hopefully the audience will be able to see the expanse of what self-love can look like, just so that we can perhaps see ourselves in at least one of these shoes, right? So, when it comes to self-love, what does that mean to you? And maybe we'll start with Emma.
Speaker 3:Wow, this is a topic that is huge and I love it. I can talk about this for hours and there are so many different layers to this. So I feel that self-love, like we can look at it from the perspective of the physical, like how am I caring for myself physically and how do I love myself in terms of what I'm doing, the actions. Then also there's the emotional, then there's the spiritual, then there's the many different layers to this, and there can be the layer that I most work with, which is the mind, what's going on within the mind, and all the beliefs and how we talk to ourselves. So self-love can be just bringing a little more tenderness. I talked about this on the podcast that I did with you, christina, a while back, and I was talking about the importance of language and how language can be such a wonderful way to bring in a little more tenderness. I love using the term tenderness because it's that gentle, loving presence.
Speaker 3:Sometimes self-love can feel like this giant mountain that we need to climb and get to, and it's not a goal to get to, it's just about how can I be a little more gentle and tender with myself, and one of the phrases I love is the phrase of it's okay, like, how, like, if something happens, if we're caught up in a negative loop story, like saying I'm this, I'm that, I'm stupid, I'm ugly, blah, blah, blah, like we stop, we pause, we notice, we take a deep breath and we say, and that's okay, like just this moment, it's okay.
Speaker 3:Or if we mess up, we make a mistake or there's a bad habit that we have that we notice, and then we want to change it, just in that moment it's okay, it's okay, then we can make changes. But just bring that, that gentleness, that gentleness which I love so much, christina, that every email that you sign off, you bring in that gentleness with the words as well, like bringing that, that gentleness with the human aspect that we have. And yeah, there's so much more, but that's a little bit of what I see self love as.
Speaker 1:Yeah, beautiful Sarah. Can you share more about what you think self love is?
Speaker 4:I would love first of all to miss that about gentleness as a breadwinner that's something that we really focus on a lot in our sessions. Like we're still giving giving gentleness to other people, but really a lot of the time giving it to ourselves, especially when we really need it. So that's beautiful. I just really really love that idea. And then when I was kind of thinking before this show, like what does self love really mean to me? I kind of look at it through the lens of, like, learning to love, validate, cherish and celebrate myself instead of really looking to other people to do it. And I'm kind of a radical on about this.
Speaker 4:I really wish all of us, especially us women, had been sat down in kindergarten and really taught that it's no one else's job to love us in a specific way or to meet our needs, that it really is our job.
Speaker 4:And this is something especially as someone with a chronic illness year now and I kind of go through all these I don't know things where I'm looking for something external and I want people to believe me, support me, remember my limitations, comfort me, and yeah, and then I realized like I don't even do any of these things for myself.
Speaker 4:So how the hell is somebody else going to read my mind and do it better for me than I do. And I found that my relationships with self and others, when I've like kind of released other people from the job of loving me and learning to love myself, are so much more fulfilling. And I think this is sometimes hard, like I've had clients that really felt like kind of moved through almost like a grieving process as they did this and they're kind of like letting go of this idea, for example, that my parents or my partner is going to affirm me for this part of who I am, even though they just aren't really that person or like that. But they also find and I've also found, I think when you kind of detach from meeting people to love you in a certain way, you can receive love from them in the way that they're able to give it, which is so beautiful. So thoughts there.
Speaker 1:I love that a lot. That made a lot of sense to me because I think sometimes when we're serving others like that's what we were taught was to really serve others, right, that was the big thing, especially for, like the Gen X kind of period was like what are you doing for others? But when we get caught up in that, we often I can get resentful about like my needs aren't being filled rather than like filling my own needs and then being able like everything that I get from other people is like a bonus rather than like a needed. You know, like I needed, like air or something. So thank you for sharing. How about you, julie?
Speaker 2:I love this conversation and I want to loop back into your sign off that Emma made reference to be gentle with your humaneness and I think that every time I read that I feel like you're speaking directly to me and I think that deepest sense of self love is just remember my worth.
Speaker 2:I remember who I am, I'm in integrity and authenticity with who I am and I so I think that what is that phrase?
Speaker 2:You're not a human doing your human being, which I think has been said so many times, but really in my being, is just remembering who I am and living in integrity and really listening to myself and to all the same sort of things we've said to. There's this boundary that I like might have, but I say I really want to do something and I say I'll do this for somebody else or I'll serve somebody else, which I really love to do, but my energy is really not there. And then to your point, christina, like feeling that resentment and I think that self love is saying I listen, I hear, intuitively, I know that if I do this I'm not being true to who I am and my energy and my wellness. As you said, emma, the spiritual, mental, physical and self love to me means like taking a step back and honoring whatever the choices for me, so I think it really just comes back to remembering, like the fullness and worthiness of who I am in this humanness.
Speaker 1:The fullness and worthiness of who you are, which I think is like something we haven't been taught to like put on ourselves, right. Like we're taught to like support other people and lift other people and do all of these things for other people, but it's like we haven't really learned what that means to do for ourselves, and I think that that's so important. So what I love is like I have friends who are like, yeah, I love myself. I went for a Manny Petty the other day and I was like, well, that's interesting. Like to me, that's like an act of self care which could be self love, right, they're both related, I think. And yet for me, manny and Petty's just aren't my own, like people touching my feet.
Speaker 1:So that doesn't work for me, right? So I'm wondering what does self love actually look like? Like how, how? It's such a like very intangible question, but I want us to make it a little bit tangible. Like for me, self love looks like embarrassing myself and then going, yep, I'm human, like that's going to happen and I'm going to be loving to myself, even though I may have embarrassed myself or humiliated myself. And so what does that mean for you all and I'll have Julie start with this one. What does self love actually look like? Like if we were watching you in self love, what would that? What would we see?
Speaker 2:You would probably look almost exactly like what Emma mentioned, which is so funny. We do kind of come at different perspectives, but I'm okay. So, in that moment of not feeling like I love myself, the critical voices are starting to come up and I'm starting to hear them and it's almost like me. My beingness is in here, Like it's, and I think this is from Michael Singer. I think that I'm in here and that's out there and I am complete in here.
Speaker 2:And if I can reconnect to that, then everything else kind of falls away. And then of course my mind goes back and forth so like but no, but breathing, I'm in here, I'm okay.
Speaker 1:So reconnecting to that being part of yourself, to remind yourself that all this human stuff is just one part, basically, and that the inner side is is a different part, and staying grounded and I'm really craving that lately so in October that's something I'm really focused on is getting back to that being part. So thank you for sharing that and reminding me. That's important, emma, you want to share.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I love what Julie shared and absolutely it's seeing seeing that deeper core and I mean we're human beings right, got human and being so. There's the two together. Like this, let's embrace the humaneness and we all have our shadow, we all have our habits, we all have like all the things that perhaps some things we like and some things we don't like. There's that humaneness, like we're here in this human experience, yet there's this being also, and when we see the bigger perspective and then we put the two together, then we can have this complete holistic view on what like who we are and what self love is Now getting practical. I was thinking about this today actually because I had it in my mind, all this interviews coming up, and I was preparing my lunch and this is something that I always love to do, like I love to cook, that's a big passion of mine and I just love making the plate look beautiful. I'm also an artist. So, like how things look, I like things to look pretty. So, like when I put food on my plate, I don't just like slop it on there, I want to make it look pretty. I want to put some herbs, I want to put some seeds, I want to put some like some garnish or something, just present it nicely. And to me, that is an act of self love that I'm giving to myself and I just, yeah, it's like little things like that. It doesn't have to be huge grand gestures, it can be these little daily acts.
Speaker 3:And I was thinking about it today and I was thinking it's what it really is. It's about slowing down and bringing this loving presence to all these little things that we do or things that we experience. Like do I slap the cream on when I'm in the bathroom, like quick, quick, quick, rush, rush, rush. Sometimes, if I'm in a rush, I do that, but I, what I'm doing more and more is like trying to be mindful with it. That mindfulness and that slowing down and that presence is like, ah, I have skin, like I have this body, like I can be present with it and allowing myself to receive, receive. There was a great quote by Peter Kelly and she was talking about the difference between self care and self love and she was saying that, like, self care is what we're doing and then self love is allowing ourselves to receive it, to fully receive it, and I love that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so what I'm hearing is it's like a relationship with yourself. So it may be hard to like point out the things, but, like, if, like I remember when we start dating someone and we do all the nice things right, like and even now I've been married for over a decade and I'm still I still do nice little things right, and sure are there grander gestures of love, like for his birthday or, you know, for some big surprise. Sure, and what's most important is that every day we have little acts of love. So, yes, it's great to take ourselves on that spa vacation if that's what we need, and it's also very sweet for us to be able to do the little things for ourselves, like cooking ourselves a good meal.
Speaker 1:And I remember I had a woman on during the summit that was talking about reconnecting to intimacy in our lives and midlife, and she was saying that that she will take herself out on a date right, and when she cooks herself a meal, she'll use the good China, she'll, you know, make the plates pretty, just like Emma was just saying, because we would do that for someone else. And I remember for so many years going when I was single and alone and I would be like, ah, it doesn't seem worth it to cook for myself, because like that's when it's most worth it, like that's self love is being like I can have whatever I want, don't have to worry about anybody else, you know, and what they want, I can just make this for myself. So that, I think, is really, really important. Thanks for sharing, emma. How about you, sarah? What does self love look like in your life?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I love hearing just all these different ideas. I love the one about like making your food beautiful. I am single, so and it's somewhere that, like one way to just really up level, your day was like never to eat a meal, like out of a Tupperware or like food prep container, even if you just reheated it in the microwave, like always put it in a pretty ball and just take a moment to pretty it up, and I'm like this is so game changing. I really really love it. So, yeah, can relate to that one.
Speaker 4:And then I think for me, like kind of like what it looks like a lot of times is just one thing I've really been working on this year, especially kind of working through having a chronic illness. That's energy limiting is energy sovereignty. So for me that looks like making sure that my cup is always full before I try to go and pour into someone else. And I think especially people socialized as women have this idea that we constantly have to be pouring from our cup into others, we constantly have to be giving, we constantly have to be nurturing, supporting, doing all these things. And if we're always like pouring our energy into someone else's cup without like replenishing that energy and taking the time to refill our own cup. We're eventually just going to come to this place where we're pouring from an empty cup and we're still you think about.
Speaker 4:You probably know someone like this. He's just always trying so hard to keep pouring and pouring when their own cup is empty and it's just like a terrible place to look from and there's exhaustion and overwhelm and chronic illness can, I really believe, can be a big part of this. So yeah, for me, self love is just doing whatever I need to do to refill that cup whenever I notice that it's getting low, and even like paying attention to the cup. I think is an excellent first step because for a long time I'm like I'm fine.
Speaker 4:I got lots to do when really I was kind of running on nothing.
Speaker 1:So yeah, and we do. We want to give so much that I think you know, and that's kind of how we were raised, because we want a community right and a community needs to be able to help each other. And yet I think we're missing this really big piece of like. Isn't it better when people are coming from a full glass rather than a half empty glass? Right, like I know I was, I gave my child better parenting when I was happy and full and fulfilled than when I was, you know, constantly pouring myself out. And I think it's a Yon LaVanzant who says, like what's in the cup is mine, anything that overflows I'm happy to give away, but what's in the cup is mine. And I got to keep my cup full and I think that that's so important.
Speaker 1:And I know, with this next question we've talked about some ways that we show ourselves love and I'm just, I want to go a little bit deeper for our audience and like, what are the challenges that we're having right now around self love and how we can go deeper? And I'll go first with this one. I'll be vulnerable first. And one of the things for me is constantly like grounding my day. I wake up and the first thing I want to do is go get to my list. Why? Because, as, as in my life, I was rewarded for productivity right and so getting stuff done. My warrior is my default archetype, like I know this a hundred percent. And so I'm constantly like feel like I have like reins on my warrior, like hold on, slow down, let's not jump into this day. And one of the ways that I can show myself self love is by offering myself space to really ground in my intentions for that day, space to get back into that being space before I just jump into that doing space. And and that's really been my big challenge and my my big challenge for October is to make sure that every morning I'm spending at least half an hour to an hour of just being with myself in some way, rather than jumping into the like um, julie was saying early, rather than jumping into that doing part of me.
Speaker 1:Because that I think for especially midlife women, we grew up in an age where that that was what was most rewarded, at least in my world. Maybe I'll have different perspectives, but that doing part of me was most respected, most rewarded, and nobody ever was like and I had a single mother who she wasn't home at night. She worked two jobs. So it was like nobody ever told me that feeding myself well was an act of self care, self love or, you know, exercising or turning off the TV and reading a book or whatever it looks like.
Speaker 1:For me, nobody ever really stressed that. It was more about like, what's getting done? Did your list get done for the day? So for me, the part of self love that I'm still working on is really getting grounded in myself before it's like halfway through the day, and then I'm like, oh, I guess I should journal or like as an after facts, right, like instead of before. So, sarah, what do you might you be working on? It sounds like, with your long COVID, a little bit of patience and a lot of self love, right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:Oh my gosh. Yeah, I relate to so much of what you say about the human, about, like, the being rewarded for doing and for productivity. So that's been definitely a journey. When you have about like four or five productive hours in the day Instead of 10, and that it has to be the time when you get family done, get worked on, get coaching done, get get all the things done, make your. You brought that up about just being rewarded and kind of breaking free of some of that programming.
Speaker 4:And yeah, I'd say a lot of mine are just kind of like really like going against the old programming that I grew up like as a woman in a family that was kind of enmeshed and also I grew up in a very religious environment, so there is a lot of emphasis on you know, self sacrifice and putting other. You're gonna know how to say no, which sounds so simple. But I'm just like even small things like really like bring up almost like a physical sensation inside of me that are like, oh, we can't do this, this is so mean. And so I've been like really, but just like working against that programming and like really thinking about the ways that singing no is sometimes a gift to the other person and especially to myself and everyone around me. And the thing I've really been working on this year is just kind of making no my default. It kind of I kind of like by default used to say yes every time and someone like wanted me to help with something or participate in something, and now I'm trying by default to say no and only say yes if it delights me. So that's been, that's been really helpful, but not the easiest thing to to like help myself to do.
Speaker 4:And then I talked a little bit just about protecting my energy. My mom has Alzheimer's and she lives near me and it took me a long time to realize it was okay to you know, maybe not visit my mom when I needed to rest or was having like a flare, or rather than like dragging my corpse over there and just making an appearance, that maybe it might be better just to take care of myself, take care of my energy, and then next time I go over there I'll actually be feeling well. And I think that's a big one, especially for parents, for caretakers. Just because you are a caretaker, it doesn't mean that the other person's needs always come first. It's really important that sometimes your needs come first, like these thoughts, so that you have the ability to overflow and give the other people love and care and all the things you want to give.
Speaker 4:And then the last one I've been playing with is stepping into my own authority and that can look like maybe expressing unpopular opinions. One of my coaches, she started this thing. It was actually a social media challenge and she called it the garbage post challenge and I love the idea. You're supposed to post like a hundred times in a month and you know, not worry so much or like a self-edit or like worry that it's good enough. The whole point is just to get something up and get used to that feeling of expressing yourself.
Speaker 4:And so people have done different little challenges for themselves, that kind of riff on this. So one of the ladies in one of our programs, she did the garbage bitch challenge, which I thought was really funny, and she's like I don't think she did a hundred, but she's like I'm going to like 50 times this month just see what's on my mind without self-editing, even if it's like really unpopular or no matter how, it's welcome. So I actually also did that and just found it really interesting, like all the feelings that brought up for me. But I'm like, yeah, it probably is time for me to just start speaking my mind, because editing myself all the time gets gets really exhausting. Hmm, it's a good review.
Speaker 1:Beautiful, great. I love this because it's showing people that like it's not, like we just got to self-love and we're like, we're there, wave our flag, you know, plant the flag right here. Here's the day I got to self-love and like I mean, it's still a journey, I think, for a lot of us to keep going deeper and we'll be, you know, working on it. So, julie, how about you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is a really personal and sensitive topic for me right now because I feel like in the first a lot of years of my life decades I understood it a little bit better and my self-discipline was ridiculously amazing, like I don't understand why there's something about my personality that future pain is worse than like present, like nurturing. So I really spent a lot of my life with really good habits and healthy eating and I kind of like do good things so I can do bad things, lots of yoga so I can have a few cocktails. And I'm finding myself. I found myself at some point in my life saying I wasn't leaning into these practices, I would stop judging myself for them and I would give myself grace and beauty and say when I'm ready. And so in teaching someone to meditate, there's a lot of people like I want to meditate, I want to meditate. Well, that pushing is not going to help you get there. So in the sitting back and receiving, really just saying like you will get there, and maybe it's a curiosity like when can I meditate or when did I do this? And so I really live truly by the philosophy when I'm ready, I will show up, and but my diet has been terrible, for I'm talking years now, like it's been for a long time, and I think there's a lot of reasons I could say and I've continued to give myself grace, and I've continued to give myself grace and I look at it and then I can see that the nutrition that I put in my body historically it's not there and my whole person is being undermined by not having the nutrition and not having the wholeness. And I think really, I started to kind of like lined myself a little bit, like like Julie, it's time, and yeah, I won't do it. And then that like breaks my belief in myself a little bit.
Speaker 2:And so I'm at this space that I'm finally like like I think we should just bootstrap nutrition, like you're going to feel 50% better and be able to do all of the self love practices that I really want for myself, if I can really pull this together. So I think it's time to stop like giving myself grace that I can eat too much ice cream by really, and just forget to eat and not do that. And so the way I did that really is I really surrounded myself with people that I love, and so I heard Sarah say this really beautiful, like I don't want to get things externally, I want this internal love, and I talk a lot about self referral, object referral. So self referral is I'm, you know, I'm happy, I am being in my, my center, ground itself. And that object referral is, oh my gosh, you told me I was pretty and I'm so happy, I feel like I'm me again, you know, and so I, you know I hesitate to get that from, obviously, from somebody else, but to be with the people that hold space for you and can be there and reflect back my beingness and my trueness, it really allowed me to have the strength, I think, to say I can do this and I can see that wholeness and I can see clearly how it's coming through nutrition. And then also speaking to people a few times about it being really vulnerable, especially people who know me know that my nutrition is is really great.
Speaker 2:I used to lead like week long detoxes and cook irovanically and all that. So it's embarrassing to say that it's not good and it's not been good for a long and it's not like a month and it's not like the holidays spent a long time. So I've been struggling and I really have just I think I've used community. I've used that feeling, that sense of like what brings my nourishment back to my beingness and myself. And I'm just realizing right now I really do have to just like do it.
Speaker 2:And I think I've gotten a lot of support with community of, of spaciousness, of community of holding up for me and, and so I really just started and I do feel great and I am able to do my meditation practices and all those other self-love practices, even like not a Mount E Peddy, but I really love massage people like a day spa, right, well, there's the day spa, but then there's like the massage, right, there's like the actual acupuncture, release of like moving toxicity through the body and drinking water and giving yourself like, like you said, emma, so beautifully that that receiving it right, you said that like that presence or that gentle, receiving that instead of the doing it, but I'm able to bring all those things that I really value back into my life really effortlessly.
Speaker 2:So that's my really long answer, maybe because I am stuck with struggling, but I feel really like blessed to be able to share it and go through that and super blessed to really understand the people that have struggled with the discipline, because sometimes I'm like just pull up the bootstraps be great. You know, give yourself grace, and so I'm super blessed in that way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm not so great at the discipline, but what I loved about what you said was about other people. Now I always say to my clients like we're not looking for external validation. If we get confirmation from the outside, that's great, but validation should come from the inside. But what I loved about that is self-love also doesn't have to be lonely, right, like it doesn't mean that we have to go do it on our own, because I think that's the other thing, that the other message that Jen acts got and that's why we work so hard is because, like my mother used to say, can't depend on anyone age. You can only depend on yourself. So you have to figure out how to do it all by yourself.
Speaker 1:But I think that what we're forgetting here is we can still ask for support. We can still ask for help. We can like us giving ourselves love. We might need help with that right, and so we can ask friends or go to a circle or get some support in some way in order to get what we want. Just because we're fulfilling our needs doesn't mean we have to fulfill our needs like completely alone, but we get to decide what that looks like and then we get to do the ask, which I think is really lovely. So thank you for bringing that up, because I don't want people to think like I have to go away and hermit myself for six months while I go love myself, and I don't think that. I don't think that that's always helpful either. I think it's really great if, if we have friends you know who are on a self-love journey and we can actually move through it together is really beautiful as well. So thanks for sharing that. How about you, emma? What are your current self-love struggles?
Speaker 3:Well, there's so many things that I could I wanted to share about all the different wonderful things that Julie and Sarah knew are all sharing. That, yeah, and currently I totally resonate with the discipline that is not my area of I don't find that easy discipline, and especially with technology, that's something that I've really had to be very mindful about, especially using technology for my work. So I've had to find this balance and that's still something I'm navigating, like how I can use these platforms social media and all of that for my work, but then also like have that discipline to stop when I when I need to, and also like being an NLP trainer. I really understand how the mind works and I can see how these apps and technologies, they know human psychology and they make things even harder. So that's what I'm currently working on. And also another big thing and there's been over the last like three, four years it's been quite a big journey. It's really listening to my body, especially when I'm interacting with men, when I'm in conversation with men, when I meet men in different settings workshops.
Speaker 3:My last relationship was emotionally and psychologically abusive and it was a very difficult thing to go through and that was a huge act of self love to step out of that, in that move away from that. And it's been this continuous journey to really listen, like very deeply, like what is my body saying, like what is my intuition saying, like how do I feel when I'm talking to this person or when I'm in presence with this person, when I meet new people. So that's also a current thing that I'm working through, like just really paying attention to that and really listening, because in the past I didn't listen. I was a a total people pleaser, like always putting the others first, and it's. I took some hard lessons to really really wake up to that and and to really notice like what, like how I placed everyone us up on a pedal store but I put myself down and then it was like no, I'm going to change that. And I actually posted recently about talking about this ring that I wear, that I have this ring that I've had for a while, which is a commitment ring to myself. Like someone in the summer asked me like oh, are you married? No, I'm not. Well to myself. Like I have commitment to myself.
Speaker 3:And it's this wonderful reminder and this reminds me of this metaphor that I often use with my students is talking about a puzzle like humanity, like I like to see humanity as this puzzle and and every single piece is one person. And if we forget about ourselves, if we leave ourselves out, if we focus on everyone else, the puzzle's incomplete because our piece is not in there. And if we want this puzzle to be complete, if we want humanity to work together as like one big family and to really live in harmony, like we need to be in there as well, like our piece is important and we matter. So I think that can be a really helpful thing to remember is like have that metaphor of the puzzle and that your piece is important.
Speaker 3:And another thing I wanted to share is is that something that I've been focused on a lot recently in in workshops is that every like we're all so similar, yet everyone is so different as well. We all have our own unconscious filters, we all have our own metaprograms, we all have our own values, we all have our own beliefs. We all have like different past experiences that we've been through. We we're all different souls, like we're in this human experience, yet we all have our mission in in this life and we're all so different and we can look at those differences and find out, like what makes it easier for me, because, yes, there are a million tips and tools out there, there are a million things that are recommended, yet one thing might work better for one person, another thing might work better for another person.
Speaker 3:Because I know for me, like I, I really beat, beat myself up for a long time like thinking that I had to meditate, however, and else meditates like what my mind was saying, like oh, I have to sit cross-legged and do it for a certain number of minutes at the same time every day, like sit in noticed position. Sometimes I do that, but I noticed that I was struggling to do that on a regular basis and I realized that what works for me in my meditation is movement, it's dance and that's what works for me. Like dance, like bringing the mindfulness into the, into the movement. So understanding that was a wonderful way of like tapping into self-love is like really just like getting clear on who am I and what, like what makes me tick and and what helps me, like not looking out there, but like really getting into our like.
Speaker 3:I mean there's the love languages, for example, like I'm sure many people have heard of the five love languages and or, if not, they can google it. Or there's the representational systems in nlp. Like, some people are very in tune with sounds. Some people are very in tune with with kinesthetics, like how, how things feel. Some people are very in tune with what they see, like they're. They're a different representational system. So, like looking at all those little differences and and using that as a, as a gateway to find your personal, like plan or like little ways to show yourself love can can make it a lot easier and it can bring in a lot of fun as well.
Speaker 1:I love that you say that, that we're all so different, because I was having a rough time last week or when we were still in mercury retrograde and and it was one of those wounded child moments where, like everything sucks and everything's bad. I should just pitch in everything right like just light a match, burn it down, and I realized I really needed what the kind of self-love I needed that day was to really allow my inner little girl to play. When somebody said this to me in my circle, I was just like I don't know how to play because I wasn't. That's not how I was raised. There was no playing, there was practicing, there was chores, there was homework, there was schoolwork, but there was like no other little girls around like for me to actually play with. And right now I'm living somewhat isolated in Colorado and that I don't have a lot of local friends because we're newish here. And so I was like what does play look like? And I realized play for my little girl isn't necessarily going and playing with like six other little girls and hopscotch and all that. It's really like.
Speaker 1:She likes to read funny stuff, she likes to paint, she likes to watch colors swirl on the. She likes to paint, as long as I don't put the pressure on creating a masterpiece, right? That's when she likes to play. If I, if I'm like, oh, I have to paint this and I'm going to hang it on the wall, forget it. That's not little girl territory.
Speaker 1:So I love that you're talking about how we're all different, and that leads into our last question, which is what are some ways? If you had a friend coming up to you or a client, whatever that looks like, and they really need some self love, where might you have them start? And I love the questions that you were asking, like you know what? Who am I? What really turns me on? Kind of thing like what really is the thing that I need? But what would you maybe ask or even invite someone to do in order to at least aim in the direction of self love? I know that we can't put them on that journey, but we can give them some tools, right? What does that look like? And, julie, I'll have you go first.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think in teaching Ayurveda I teach comfort and discomfort. I think if we can just be aware, so raise this heightened awareness, am I in discomfort? If I'm in discomfort, I'm not in self love, and so that awareness leads us to what is going to bring me comfort, and that can be really anything and.
Speaker 2:I think a lot of times, if I'm not, if I'm in discomfort and my mind is racing right, a lot of times it's the critical thoughts and the things may or may not be true. So if I know I'm in discomfort, generally for me, I know is in my mind. So I invite you to say what is going on in my mind and then where am I? Where am I? Where am I? Am I okay? Like, and telling yourself I'm in here, I'm okay, and I think we can see a really instant shift from discomfort to comfort by just taking the breaths and just noticing the difference.
Speaker 2:And I know that's like way oversimplified, but I think sometimes we're not giving ourselves self love, but we don't even know it. And so I'm sad, frustrated, mad, angry, many of those emotions, hostile, jealous, one-puts, one's tires. I know that there's some lack of self love and then all the things that we've kind of brought in and what really resonates with you feels really good, like, as you said, I'm not like. Meditation is movement, it's not still for you, and I think every person can find that once they're aware that I'm lacking the self love in this moment, and that's moment by moment. Self love ebbs and flows, I think, for all of us.
Speaker 1:I don't think I've ever seen it that way, as like comfort versus discomfort, and I think that that's so lovely, because one of the questions I often ask my well, first of all, like you were talking about all those emotions hungry, angry, lonely, tired, sick is what I go through from, and I think that's like from Alcoholics Anonymous or something like one of those anonymous as uses hungry, angry, lonely, tired, sick. It's that discomfort, and when we're in that discomfort we're easily in that like wounded child part of us, right, that not enough, that too small, not being able to really empower ourselves. And so I often ask my clients is this okay, you're uncomfortable, but is this unsafe or are you just uncomfortable? And that's a huge difference, because often our body doesn't understand the difference between safety and discomfort. It's just what we don't want. Whatever it is, I don't want it.
Speaker 1:But I think to your point, like just acknowledging that to ourselves sometimes, just that acceptance of going oh yeah, I'm feeling anxious, oh, oh yeah, I'm feeling angry I mean just that acceptance like brings me down 10 levels and it's like whoa, hold on, can I just accept what's going on right now and to like Emma's point, and that's okay, ooh, I'm feeling angry right now, and that's okay, you know. Let me let that be okay, because we can't shift something until we've actually accepted that that's where we are right. So I think all of these beautiful tips are coming together now. I love it. Sarah, do you wanna share with us what your tips might be?
Speaker 4:Really helpful.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 4:I'm like taking notes, I'm really helpful. So what I really love to start with is just kind of asking yourself like, what's the next smallest step? I think a lot of times, when we really start getting into self-love and kind of setting an intention to love ourselves more, we can kind of overwhelm ourselves. So that might look like I'm gonna meditate or do like self-care for an hour in the morning or I'm gonna meal prep all my meals and they're gonna be made of fresh, whole food and like if it's not something we're normally doing, it can be like very overwhelming to our system and then we have a hard time sticking with it and then we kind of beat ourselves up. So I love the idea of setting mini habits, so just like setting a goal of something that's just ridiculously small. So maybe it's as simple as just sitting quietly for 10 minutes in the morning with your coffee, with the sun on your face. Or maybe it's as simple as like eating one piece of fruit each day, or like if, instead of like going to the gym and working out, maybe just doing like a nice walk around your block like 10 minutes each day, just to kind of refresh and refuel. So yeah, next smallest step, small goals, starting small. I think that's a good one. And then another one I love is and I was thinking of this when Christina was talking about this idea that we don't need to go it alone and how important that is.
Speaker 4:One skill I work a lot with clients on is the skill of making requests of other people. This is something where we're, like, not really kind of taught to do. I think we're kind of taught to like either not make requests or not ask for anything, or, if we do, like make demands and stand our ground, neither of which, like, really work real well for us. So the idea behind making a request is just to ask for what you need, with detachment, like without like making lots of space for the other person to say no, making lots of space for the other person to, you know, not making them a bad person if they don't go along with your request, and like asking from that energy, and also asking from the energy that the request, that being worthy of making requests, is the point, and the actual outcome of the request is not the point and not what's important. So, yeah, just getting to a place where you feel comfortable making requests of others, practicing that as a skill I think can be really helpful. And then I love personally I'm a little bit of a rules person, so rules and agreements that I make with myself work really well. So a couple that I've made that really have been helpful are I get to change my mind.
Speaker 4:Whenever someone makes a request of me, I always say let me think about it instead of yes, because my default answer, like I talked about is should be no. But you know, I'm gonna feel into it and see if maybe it delights me and maybe something I wanna say yes to. But I'm not gonna say yes right away. And then if I cancel plans, if I'm not necessarily delighted to go, I allow myself to do that. And then what I really love I got this one from a book my therapist recommended, which is a really had a bunch of awesome tools in it, but it was like the I forget what it was called.
Speaker 4:It was like the 20%, like flake rule or something like that, and it's the idea that 20% of the time you just allow yourself and others to kind of flake and make mistakes and be messy and mess up, because it's gonna happen anyway, but when you make a conscious decision to allow it. It just takes a lot of pressure off yourself and others and just like really kind of feeling into the idea that a 20% mess up rate is incredibly normal, and the book also said that whenever you're going to like a really typical time, feel free to up it to 60%, which is something I do, and I find that it's super helpful. So, yeah, just a few things to play with there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, beautiful, thank you for all those.
Speaker 1:Those are really juicy. I love that. To start with the next rate step Sometimes the next rate step is just sitting down and going how do I love myself more. Now, chat GBT could give you some opportunity, right? I mean, ai is even smart enough that they could give you some tips from now as well, too.
Speaker 1:But I just think it's like it's the world that we live in that we think that it has to be like some giant step, like as if it always reminds me of, like New Year's resolutions, where we're like tomorrow I'm going to exercise for an hour, I'm going to meditate for half an hour, I'm going to journal for half an hour, I'm going to eat all whole foods, and like we go on and on, like as if tomorrow I'm magically going to wake up as a new person, right, and I know that even Julie loves her discipline, but I'm sure that even that could be really really challenging to become a whole new person tomorrow.
Speaker 1:So I love that. Like, even if I can't get myself to meditate, can I get myself to sit in a chair for three minutes, right? Like can I just start with breaking the routine that I do have, right, instead of running straight to my computer in the morning, can I break that and make myself coffee? Can I break that and go outside, even if it's only for 60 seconds, just so that I can start breaking those old patterns and starting with just these tiny, minuscule steps? I love that so much. Thanks, sarah. And then Emma, you want to share with us.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, there's many things, but I guess I would start with, if someone was to come to me, that I would just like find out what their blueprint is like, what helps them, and like what their beliefs, what their representational systems like, what works for them and also I do numerology as well, so like finding out their birth chart and like putting it all together and then there's more information with that. But the very first step would be helping them to understand that it's not something you get to Like. This is a practice, this is a journey, this is an experience. It's like this winding road. It's they'll be up, they'll be down. There'll be moments where we feel really great about ourselves and then everything's going really well, and then there'll be other times where we think, oh, I feel like I'm back to square one again.
Speaker 3:But this is the thing, like I often use this metaphor of like life is like a dance because, like, there'll be a step forward, there'll be a step back, step to the side, step to the side. Is this dance? But the most important thing is like what music are you listening to? External or internal? Like, come back to the original beat. Like, come back here. Like what lights you up in life, like what really like feels you with joy, Like follow that. I'm sure many people have heard of yoga with Adrienne that she has the phrase like find what feels good, like find that and what lights you up, and it becomes a whole lot easier. And if people did want some extra help with that, there are many different modalities out there, many different professionals. How I use NLP, that's one of the things that I use with, and there's a wonderful technique called swish pattern for changing habits, but that's one of many. So, like people need to find what backs for them and this is, I think, the ultimate, most important thing is just coming back here.
Speaker 3:Coming back here and like little steps is that gentle, loving presence.
Speaker 3:It's not about getting to this 100% top of the mountain. I love myself like so much all the time, every single minute of every single day, like no, we're human beings, we've got everything light and shadow in this human experience and let's live a whole hearted life, and a whole hearted life is everything, is everything. A whole hearted life has tears too, like it has everything. So when we let go of that like perfectionism, things become a lot easier and we actually realize that perhaps there are many ways that we love ourselves already. Like sometimes we think that we need to get somewhere and we don't love ourselves, but actually I think the vast majority of people and people listening like they love themselves already Because if they take out the rubbish and they put it in the rubbish bin or they go and buy food, like those are acts of love already. They're loving themselves already. So, like start shifting the perspective this is the biggest thing like shift the perspective and see how you're loving yourself already and realize that there is so much love there already.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's so beautiful. Because I think that we often think like we have to be worthy of a certain level, like if I'm going to take myself to the spa for a massage, I might have to earn it or I might. Maybe I don't think that I'm deserving. But like if we see already that we are yeah, like you said taking out the rubbish or doing the dishes for ourselves or cooking ourselves a great meal, like how is that different than going to get that massage or taking that vacation? Like where is that line of worthiness that we're giving ourselves, that we're, like, we're worthy of eating, but not really well, right or not on the China or not on that whatever, and instead just allowing ourselves to be worthy, I think, and allowing ourselves to be loved in that way Ooh, that's a lot of thoughts to think about around self-love. Thank you, women. I knew that you guys were going to have such really, really beautiful things to say and I really I want to just echo what Emma says, because it's like all over my self-love course. Like this is a practice, this is a practice. This is a practice. This self-love is not like oops, check that one off the list. Like I really wish it was because there are. There have been moments, you know well. There's often most of the time, I'm actually quite good at the self-love, and there are still these times, like I was just talking about, when I was in my wounded child and wanted to play to match right. There are times that we're going to go through that, but I think that that's even more of a challenge to our self-love and telling ourselves like I can love myself through this. I'm going to love myself through this and that's so brilliant. Thank you, women so much for being here today. I know I'm going to get a lot of really great quotes out of this podcast because there's been such lovely things. Thank you, julie and Emma and Sarah. I'm going to put all of your bios below with your connection information, so hopefully people will go follow you If you get this question all the time, like why would you have all these other coaches on?
Speaker 1:Don't you? You know? Don't they teach? Like similar things? And it's like kind of, but not really. And who cares? Like aren't there? Aren't there enough women out there? I mean, even if we all just worked with women, which some of us do not but even if we did, like there's lots of different types of women, as Emma's been telling us about the differences in people, and it's like not everybody who would benefit from Emma is going to benefit from me, and vice versa, and so I just want us all to heal. I want us all to have the self love because I think that we'd have a much better world. Like Emma was saying, we become one community that actually is working together rather than feeling like we're writing. So that's why self love is so important. That's why we'll continue to hear about it this month. So thank you for tuning in and we will talk to you. Audience next week.
