I had the pleasure of being a guest on Desiree Argentina's podcast called The Wellness Project with Des. She is a mental health therapist and a holistic wellness coach. She and I talked about why I believe the #1 priority needs to be the relationship that we have with ourselves.
I realized that how we show up for others mirrors how we show up for ourselves. The more compassion we cultivate inward, the more we can extend outward. Desiree and I have a thoughtful dialogue around common barriers to self-love like societal messaging and childhood conditioning. We also dig into the mental, emotional, and physical ramifications of disconnecting from ourselves.
With insights from Kristin Neff's book, Self-Compassion, we offer tangible strategies for turning down the volume on negative self-talk and igniting a curiosity about our own behavior.
If you want to learn more about Desiree and the work she's doing in the world, you can connect with her here.
Compassionate financial mentor and guide to female entrepreneurs so that they have peace of mind and fun with their money in order to live life now and in the future.
I had the pleasure of being a guest on Desiree Argentina's podcast called The Wellness Project with Des. She is a mental health therapist and a holistic wellness coach. She and I talked about why I believe the #1 priority needs to be the relationship that we have with ourselves.
I realized that how we show up for others mirrors how we show up for ourselves. The more compassion we cultivate inward, the more we can extend outward. Desiree and I have a thoughtful dialogue around common barriers to self-love like societal messaging and childhood conditioning. We also dig into the mental, emotional, and physical ramifications of disconnecting from ourselves.
With insights from Kristin Neff's book, Self-Compassion, we offer tangible strategies for turning down the volume on negative self-talk and igniting a curiosity about our own behavior.
If you want to learn more about Desiree and the work she's doing in the world, you can connect with her here.
Compassionate financial mentor and guide to female entrepreneurs so that they have peace of mind and fun with their money in order to live life now and in the future.
New to Human Design? You can receive your Human Design chart here
As always, thanks for listening.
From my soul to yours. Erin
Erin:
You're listening to Generate a Life Well-Lived podcast. I'm your friend and confidant, erin Gray. I created this podcast to have a place where I could express and vulnerably share my insights with you regarding money, self-development, parenting and travel. I hope you enjoy the journey where I share everything I know and am continuing to learn along the way, as I honor my heart's desires while inspiring and encouraging you to do the same. Hey, hey, how are you?
Erin:
I thought I would do something different today. I've been on several podcasts recently and obviously I listened to the podcast that I'm on because I love the conversations that I've had and I love hearing like I learned from myself and the conversations that we had, and so I had the idea that I would actually, if you wanna call it, repurpose a podcast that I was recently on. It's called the Wellness Project with Des, and she is a mental health therapist and also a holistic wellness coach, and I asked her. I said, hey, I have an idea. I would like to reshare with my audience the conversation that we had because I thought it was really good. It was all about why I believe that our relationship with ourselves should be.
Erin:
I know I'm saying should, right, I'm totally against all the shoulds, and I also am a huge advocate on why I think it now I'm all in my head should be the number one, our number one priority, because I think so many of us look outside of ourselves and we think what are the things that we need to do to help change the world and make it a better place?
Erin:
And I've always believed like it starts with us, it starts within.
Erin:
And there's this quote that I love by Howard Thurman, and I may not do it exactly correct, but basically it's about don't ask the world what the world needs, ask what makes you come alive and then do more of that. I mean, I believe that everything starts within us, right, whether it is a relationship with ourselves, with business, with money, with our spouse, with our children, with our parents, with our friends. Like everything is an external representation of what we are feeling and believing on a consistent basis, right? Like what vibration are we in? And I think that the more of us that can love ourselves, that can show and model self-compassion and self-love for the rest of the world, then that is what gets modeled for others. Let me know what you think. I'm always trying and experimenting with different things. Tell me, if you liked it that I shared an interview that I was on, if that resonated with you. So, without any further introduction, this is the conversation with me and Desiree about why I believe that our number one priority is with ourselves.
Desiree:
Erin, thank you so much for being with me here today. I'm so excited, so glad. Thank you for having me. Yeah, I think this is gonna be a really great conversation, so I'd love it if you could start out by just introducing yourself, telling us who you are, how you got to where you are today, sharing your story with us.
Erin:
I probably, years ago, would probably be labeled with the overachiever, overworker, all of the things.
Erin:
I have a degree in finance and I worked for my family's business for 10 plus years and I just got to a point where I kind of had checked all of the boxes that everyone tells you to check in your life and I really was unfulfilled and dissatisfied and frustrated a lot of the times and I thought that something was wrong with me, because if you've had all of this and you've done all of this and right, why aren't you happy?
Erin:
And so that was probably back in 2019 and I sought out it's never a straight line, right Like I came upon someone and I found someone and then led me down the path to coaching and I ended up in 2021 taking some time off. I had never taken time off before, like to the point of where I scheduled my child's birth around payroll and work and all of the things. And so I'm coming back off of the heels of what started as like a three month, though I'll just take some time off because I never have like really allowing myself to be off and so coming back off of like two years of being off and really allowing myself to play and to enjoy life and kind of figure out like, how do I want to serve in the world, how do I wanna help? And so here we are and I think that for the overworker it was really scary, right, like, who are you? You know your identity is tied up in who are you if you're not working? And so working through all of that to be where I am now.
Desiree:
Oh yeah, that's amazing. I feel like that's so many people are going to resonate with what you're saying, because that's such a struggle for so many people. That kind of I hear that all the time Like I've checked all the boxes but I feel so empty. I feel unfulfilled, like what else is there after this? What else is there to life and my life, and how do I bring purpose to the world? What is my purpose? So I'm really glad that you're sharing this, and so something that we're talking about today that ties into that is we're talking about our relationship with ourselves, this kind of self-love, lack of self-love. So I know this is something that you talk about a lot and something that you have said is that our number one priority is our relationship with ourselves. And why do you believe that it's the number one priority?
Erin:
Because I think it affects everything that we do, right, it's how we show up.
Erin:
We can only show up for others to the level this is my belief, obviously so with the caveat of take what resonates and leave the rest.
Erin:
But for me, what I have found is that you can only show up for others at the level that you can do for yourself.
Erin:
Right, your receiving muscle of what you can receive from others is only to the level of what you can receive for yourself. So, how much you love yourself, how much you're there for yourself, we are taught to look outside of ourselves and to have everyone meet our needs and we don't even know how to meet our own needs and to love ourselves and to be kind and consider and compassionate and graceful with our own selves. And so when you are on this journey right, it's what I have found is like the more that I really leaned into because, along with the overworking and I was really hard on myself but the more that I became compassionate, the more that I loved myself, that I tuned in and I gave myself so much grace, like it's almost like a melting or a softness, and that also translated for people around me, right, like I was able to be more compassionate with others, and so in my family and friends and humanities.
Desiree:
I totally agree with that. So a lot of people do struggle with self love. A lot of people do struggle with this relationship with themselves. So how are you seeing, how do you believe that our lives are impacted when we don't have a good relationship with ourselves?
Erin:
I think that it affects every area, right. Like I think we want to compartmentalize, like the mental or the physical, or the health, or the spiritual, but like we are an entire, you know, body, spiritual, mental, it's all in one, right. And so I'm a big Dr Joe fan, joe D'Spenza, and if you watch certain YouTube videos around, like how we speak to water or how we speak to plants and we're all energy, right. So when we speak not so lovingly to these things, how they're actual, at a cellular level, right, how it changes, and that is the same way that we are right, and so our health gets affected by that and it doesn't feel good to speak like that to ourselves, right. And I want to say that there is no right or wrong. Like speaking lovingly to yourself isn't the right way to do it and not speaking lovingly is the wrong way, right. Like it just feels better in your body to speak lovingly and to love yourself and to have compassion.
Erin:
I think for some of us we are afraid to be kind and compassionate to ourselves because we feel like, oh, we're going to let ourselves off the hook or, you know, we're not going to be able to achieve our goals if we do that, and what I would say to those people that might think that is try it for six months and see what happens. Right, like you can always go back. You know how you've been able to achieve things, you know, by beating yourself up the other way. And try it this way and see what it feels like, and it's not going to like happen overnight. Right, like, it's a practice.
Erin:
It's just like going to the gym. You don't wake up one day and be like, okay, I'm going to go. You know, deadlift 150 pounds. Like you literally have to figure out how to actually do the movement. And so it's the same thing with loving ourselves. Like we weren't taught. I think a lot of us were raised by parents who might have been harsh on us. Right and from a loving place. Right, they did it from like they want us to do well, and also like there is a different way to achieve our goals and to have what we want and to be kind and considerate. So it affects, I think, every area of our life.
Desiree:
Yeah, absolutely. And what are the kind of physical health effects that you're seeing? Because you mentioned that it's all the pieces to the puzzle we're one being. So, yeah, that really strong mind, body, spirit, connection.
Erin:
When you are in that vibration since we all are energy, right, like when you are in the vibration of fear and doubt and anger and self-loathing, right, those are all lower vibration emotions, and that's not to say like this is also want to say it's like we're totally human, right, like we get to experience that right, but when our baseline vibration is one of the test and just overall, not loving ourselves, right, like they I think don't quote me, but I think the vibration of love is like around 500, 540 Hertz, right, and when we're around 200, absence of wellness or illness, dis-ease in our body occurs around that right, and so what we are wanting to do is we're wanting to be, we're a society that wants to be well, right, we're trying to seek all of these outside things, right, to help us be well, but like it starts within, right, and so raising our vibration and, like I said, it's not that you don't have a bad day, it's not that you don't get upset with your kids, that's just part of experiencing it.
Erin:
But like, if you were to name the top three emotions you feel on a daily basis, would you name them as gratitude and compassion and love and joy, or would you name them as like fear and anger and frustration and overwhelming upset, you know, like all of those lower vibration emotions.
Desiree:
If somebody is having their baseline of those unpleasant emotions, the self-hatred, the disconnect with the relationship with ourselves, what happens with the mental health I mean? I would imagine a lot of depression, anxiety. What are you seeing with your clients?
Erin:
I mean, I think we've all kind of been there, right. And also I think it's one of those things that I've always said like it gives us like the law of polarity, right. Like it shows us what we, where we are right now, is like an amazing thing, right. Because when you are able to look at it from the lens of like, okay, where am I, what am I experiencing on a daily basis and what do I want to go to, that's like pure empowerment, right there. Right, I can get to choose.
Erin:
And so I think we can kind of get in this tailspin of frustration begets, frustration begets you know what I mean. Like it's almost like the circle that we can stay in and it can be a habit, right. Like emotions are addictive. So if you're used to feeling frustration all of the time and you haven't felt that for a while, your body's like hey, wait a second, it's time to feel frustration again. I haven't felt it in a while, right. And so it is a conscious effort to bring yourself back to like, how do I want to feel in my body in this moment when I wake up every single day? How do I want to feel, consciously choosing, how do we want to feel. And so, from the mental standpoint, I think it when you're in survival mode it's hard to be in creative mode, right Like it's hard to think about what you want to create in the world and what you want to. You know birth and all of these things. When you're in this, you know survival state of being.
Desiree:
Yeah, absolutely. I really agree with that. And so, given that so many people struggle with self-love and this relationship with themselves, what are some common reasons that you believe people are struggling so much?
Erin:
with this. I think that if you were to ask people what was your childhood like and not like, we have to go back and rehash everything. Right, but like what our parents probably. Like I said earlier, the intention was to help us, right, but we also probably had parents that maybe were not. So I call it like conditionally loving. Right, like if you do X then you'll get praise, or if you do this then you'll get love. Right, like grades, if you think about you know parents who wanting their children to make good grades, or like did you do well at soccer practice or whatever, it might be right. And so if we were raised by parents that were at a certain level of consciousness, right. If they aren't loving themselves, how can we expect them to teach us that right?
Erin:
And so I think where we live also live in a society of like there's something wrong with us. I mean, if you turn on the TV, there's advertisements of like how to stick whatever. You know things I'm air quoting from you guys that you know can't see it's like things that are wrong with us. It's like there's nothing wrong with us, right? I think, through all of it societal conditioning, like school conditioning, religious, cultural, like every area of our lives. I think it doesn't come from a place of like you were whole and perfect as you are right now. What do you want to grow to? It's like, okay, this is a problem and we need to fix it, you know. So it's almost like we need to move away from this place. Versus what do we want to move towards? Because we're always expanding and growing.
Desiree:
Yes, that's so, so true. I agree with that. Those are a lot of things. It's like you can't open your phone without seeing something that you need to fix about yourself, whether internal, external. Yeah, that's super, super common. If you buy this XYZ, it'll help you to feel this way and feel better and more empowered Even something as simple as body wash. You're going to feel so happy if you buy this body wash. A lot of messages like that. Let's shift gears a little bit and talk about what we can actually do with this. How can somebody that realizes that they're struggling with this self-love, they have the low self-worth, they have the low self-esteem. What are some things that they can do to address that and improve upon that and develop a healthy relationship with themselves?
Erin:
I think first is noticing where you are, the celebration of just noticing like, oh wow, I am really hard on myself. That celebration enough. I would suggest a book that I read, that I loved. It's called Self-Compassion by Kristin Neff. That was really helpful because it was able to show me kind of where I was, why I was doing it, that desire and that willingness.
Erin:
I think a lot of times we just assume oh well, that's who we are. I've just always been that way. It's like no, it's a choice. It literally is a choice to either speak poorly to yourself or speak kindly. We've just been more in the practice of speaking poorly to ourselves. There's not a problem, it's nothing to beat ourselves up over. We don't have to feel guilty over it. It's just like oh okay, this is what I'm more practiced in. It's going to be a skill you are really skilled at not loving yourself or speaking poorly to yourself. How do I want to speak to myself?
Erin:
I remember I was on a retreat one time and I don't know what one of the coaches asked, but she had us write down something. Maybe it was the top thoughts you think about yourself, or whatever. Then she said, okay, now go ahead and turn that to say those exact words that you wrote down to the person next to you. I was like I would never say that. It's like well then, why do we speak like that to ourselves?
Erin:
Our brains are super boring. They're going to feed us the same thoughts over and over every day. You might have that tape that goes on in your head all the time when you maybe forget something. There's probably a litany of things that your brain tells you. Just noticing what are those things that your brain wants to go to, to tell you and reframe that and flip the switch on it.
Erin:
You don't have to go from like oh, that was so stupid, oh, you're so amazing, it's okay. It could just be like oh okay, I see what I did from a place of curiosity. Sometimes I think we want to go from self-detest to ultimate love. It's just too far of a jump from our nervous system. We can go to curiosity. We could go to oh well, I'm curious why I forgot that. What was going on? Was I rushing? Was I? You know? I think it's slowing down, it's noticing when is the language, what are you feeling in your body on a consistent basis, then actively choosing. It is a choice to be like okay, I want to have a better relationship with myself.
Desiree:
Yeah, so many great nuggets in there and so funny. You brought up Kristen Neff's book because I just bought that the other day. Oh, you did. Yes, it's all in the right sand. I haven't read it yet, but so funny. And also I really loved her TED Talk as well. So I will link all of those things in the show notes. She's amazing. Yeah, I really agree.
Desiree:
That kind of that first step to all of this is just that awareness, just getting in touch with the inner thoughts, the inner feelings. I feel like we're so disconnected from our bodies and our thoughts and we've so many thoughts, thousands of thoughts, all day, every day, and you can't pay attention to all of them and they're kind of just in the background as you're doing things and even working with my clients and everything. People become really surprised when we work on this awareness, like, oh, I didn't realize that I was talking to myself this way. When you really tune into it, you'd be really surprised at the messages that you're sending and all these like I should do this, why don't I know that, why don't I know how to do this? I'm such a failure and all these messages right. So that awareness is so, so key and something that I recommend like I love that exercise that you brought up is like write it down and go to, like, say it to somebody else, and you realize I would never talk to somebody that way. So really externalizing those thoughts, in a way like either speaking them out loud or writing them down, I think is super helpful just to get in touch a little bit, make them a little more tangible outside of our bodies, externalize them. I always tell people too, like, if you're talking to yourself in this way, talk to yourself as if you're talking to your best friend.
Desiree:
Kristin Neff has a lot of great examples of that and she, in her TED Talk, she demonstrates that, which is really great and it might sound silly, but how would you support your friend if they were coming to you with these thoughts, these feelings? How would you support somebody you really cared about and why don't you deserve that same treatment? Right, as you mentioned. And, like you said, it is a skill. So it's something that same with the gym metaphor the more we practice, the more muscle we build, right, so it is a skill. So, again, giving ourselves that patience, that grace, it is a journey. You don't, like you said, you don't have to go to zero to 100 right now, but take it slow, take the step. So so much great stuff in there. Thank you so much. I think that's really really helpful.
Erin:
Of course, yeah. And the other thing I want to say is sometimes I think we're afraid to let go of that identity or that self, because we have a lot of evidence of how we got to where we are, right. I mean, at least for me. I was like oh, I'm nice to myself, am I really going to be able to achieve what I want? And this goes back to what I already said. There is no right or wrong here. It's just it feels better in your body. It's the only home you have. Right, I mean being kind and loving to it. It just feels good.
Desiree:
It does, and I think that's true. I think we get stuck in these patterns, we get stuck in these habits and it's hard to break those patterns but, though difficult, it is possible. So, yeah, that's really great. Aaron, this has been so amazing. I love talking to you about this. Do you have any words of encouragement or words of wisdom that you can share with people that are really struggling With self-love, something maybe we didn't cover yet, I think?
Erin:
you summed it up like it's a practice, right, and to be gentle with yourself, and I know that might be like well, how do I do that? It's just like one step at a time, one day at a time, right. And when you're learning something new, if you want to play piano, you don't sit down and like you're gonna Beethoven all of a sudden, right, you're gonna stick your out, like, okay, this is the notes that I need. So it's just like what are the steps along the way? Embodying it is the end result, right. It's just like there's so many little ticks along the way as you get there, asking yourself some questions like how do I actually want to have a relationship with myself?
Erin:
And the thing that I do want to say is don't do it because someone says, oh, this is how we, you know we should do it right.
Erin:
Like you have to figure out like why do I want to actually speak lovingly to myself? Why do I want to have a good relationship for yourself? Like it has to come from that internal sense that you want that right. Because if we're doing it, because the self-development world is saying like, hey, this is, you know, feels better, if you don't really get clear, like why do I want to change that relationship with myself? You're here, we go back to like doing something for someone else, right, so really for you, why do you want to have a different relationship with yourself? Why do you want to speak kindly to yourself, like, really kind of get clear on, why do you want to do that? And then, slowly, right, you're gonna. I think too, it's like we think it's just gonna be like this straight line. It's like no, it's gonna be like zigzaggy backwards, all the things right, and so allowing yourself to have that experience Just as it is and it's perfect. Oh, Great.
Desiree:
That's so helpful, so important and so powerful. Thank you so much, aaron, for being here today. This was such an important conversation.
