Sturdy Girl
Join Jess Heiss, body image and performance coach, for conversations around body image, self-confidence and resilience (both mental and physical). Learn how to stop letting your appearance hold you back from living the big, rad life that you deserve.
Sturdy Girl
12. Do You Have To Love Yourself?
Is self-love merely a popular concept, or is it an indispensable part of living a fulfilled life? As your hosts, Ali and Jess, we invite you to join us in an enlightening exploration of this often misunderstood term. We take you on a journey, unraveling societal pressures that feed on our insecurities, and underscore the vital role self-love plays in shaping our actions and results. Expect a thought-provoking discussion, challenging you to rethink your relationship with yourself and ultimately, the quality of your life.
Take a deep breath and prepare to dive into the essence of self-love, a concept that surpasses physical appearance and zeroes in on recognizing our inherent worth. We peel back layers of misconceptions, revealing that self-love isn't a magic fix, but a skill, much like nurturing a relationship, that requires deliberate effort and practice. Equipping you with tools for cultivating self-love, we emphasize mindfulness in our thoughts and words. Brace yourself for a transformative journey, as we highlight the importance of putting self-love at the forefront of building healthier relationships.
We conclude our session with a focus on the potency of confidence, self-discovery, and the transformative experience of "dating yourself". Showcasing the power of affirmations and manifestation, we emphasize the need for action to achieve desired results. We wrap up with news on Ali's exciting offer - the Love Club, a 30-day membership crafted for nurturing self-love. Remember to follow, subscribe, and join us again next Wednesday for another uplifting conversation that pushes you towards living the big, rad life you absolutely deserve.
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Find more info about Self-Love Club HERE.
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Stay Sturdy, friends.
Hello, friends, and welcome to Sturdy Girl, a podcast focused on strength, not size, where you'll hear conversations around healthy body image, cultivating confidence and being a resilient human in both body and mind. Sturdy Girl is the podcast where we shift the focus away from your appearance and on to living the big, rad life you deserve. Hello, my Sturdy friends, and welcome to episode 12 of Sturdy Girl. I am joined yet again by my favoriteist co-host. Ali Can't get away from me. I can't even say that Megan is an amazing co-host too. She's also my favorite. Oh shit, I shouldn't pick favorites. That was a bad idea. I love you, megan. I know you listen. So today we are going to be talking about self-love, leading with the question do you have to love yourself?
Speaker 2:I mean you don't, you don't have to, no, but you have the opportunity to.
Speaker 1:You can honestly do whatever you want. You don't have to love yourself. Free choice, baby. But how you view yourself and how you treat yourself directly impacts, your actions directly impacts. How does the order of that go?
Speaker 2:It impacts your feelings. Your feelings impact your actions. Your actions impact your results. So if you're noticing that you're not getting a whole lot of what you want right now, it's probably not because you're doing everything wrong. It's probably because of who you're being.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that comes down to how you think about yourself, how you view yourself Right. All starts in our brains.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's the number one thing that I start with with my own clients is you know, you can change your relationship with food, you can change your relationship with movement, but if you don't start with your mindset and change your relationship with your body, ain't nothing going to stick.
Speaker 1:And that's something, too, where I love asking the question like how do you view yourself, what is your relationship with yourself? Because when I was throwing out a few different Instagram polls last week and talking about that, so many people messaged me and said I've never thought about how I view myself. Like, take yourself out of the fishbowl for a second and start thinking about you know. What kind of things do I say to myself? How do I view myself? Do I try to quote, unquote, motivate myself by, like using really harsh self-talk? Do I view myself as another human being worthy of love and respect? And do I talk to myself that way? Because that's just not something that we often do, because we live our whole lives inside our heads.
Speaker 2:Absolutely and I think to your point, since we do live so much in our own heads. We have the tendency to fall down that rabbit hole. We live in a society that, unfortunately, is very focused on the negative, because fear is a motivator. I asked, actually, my own clients this, and I think this is spot on for what we're talking about. Imagine what the world would be like if you loved yourself. Imagine what the world would be like if we were taught to love ourselves just like from the beginning. We could go literally down a rabbit hole on us. We completely could, but truly it's. I mean, you think of how much money our society makes off of our insecurities and we weren't born with those. We weren't born feeling insecure. No, we were actually. I love saying this, but we were only born with two fears, and it's the fear of falling and loud noises. That's it. That's what we learned. Yes, and if we learn our insecurities from the same society that's profiting off of them, why would they want us to love?
Speaker 1:ourselves. I'm just thinking about the profiting off of insecurities and I'm trying to remember the billions of dollar figures for the weight loss industry and the beauty industry and all of those things. I'm not going to rabbit hole on that. I think one thing before we talk about what self love is because as we're talking about this and saying how much different would the world be if we loved ourselves and there might be some listeners going I don't love myself. I don't think I have to love myself and I want to really open that conversation.
Speaker 1:But one piece I wanted to mention too was our relationship with ourselves, with our being, with our physical bodies ebbs and flows. So throughout this episode, as we talk about self love, just a really big point that it isn't about having to constantly be in the state of like I love myself and I love me. We're human. It's just like when we talked about types of body image and we really leaned heavily into having that body image, flexibility, having that flexibility with our relationship with ourselves and knowing those ebbs and flows are going to come up.
Speaker 2:Yes, I love to remind myself that, like I don't always have to like myself in order to love myself Right, there might be times in my life where I like myself a lot less. There's also times where it feels really easy to like who I am or to like the life that I have. But loving yourself doesn't have to falter. It's a way of being.
Speaker 1:Agreed. It's like the how to lose a guy in 10 days. Quote yes.
Speaker 2:If y'all know that movie, it's probably already in your head, like I am. I was telling Jess, I have that entire movie, like it's quoted at this point.
Speaker 1:I don't know how many dozens of times I've seen it. So for those of you who are like what the heck are you guys talking about? Kate Hudson's character in the movie says I love you, pookie, but I don't have to like you very much right now, and so that's what we want you to reflect on with your relationship with yourself is that that self love is ever present, but that doesn't mean you always like yourself.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I think, as we dive into this a little bit further, obviously we're going to talk about what self love is, but also what it's not, and I think that's an interesting point to it. When you do, you know, have just love for yourself throughout all the ebbs and flows, it's a different way of being. It's not necessarily what you're doing, and I think that's where we get really stuck. We get into this headspace of it's like the black or white, like I have to be this in order to love myself. I have to like every single piece of me in order to love myself, to be a part of self love, which is totally false.
Speaker 1:That's what it's not. Do we just want to talk about what self love isn't and then we'll talk about what it is? Why not? Okay, we're already there, because you're already saying self love it's not just a self care piece. If you Google self love and look at the articles that pop up, 90% of them come up, and these self love articles are really just telling you ways of self care. And self care is part of self love, but it's not the only thing.
Speaker 2:It can't be the only thing. Right Again, it's going back into the do mentality oh, I'm doing all these things to care for myself. Then I should, I should, love myself. Well, you can, you can do and do and do until you're blue in the face. Right, go ahead and get the pedicure and your nails done and your hair done on one week. It feels great. The spa day? The spa day? I mean hell, that's all classic, but that's not going to magically make you love yourself. It's the same thing as as when we've talked about body image and when we've talked about healing. Our relationship with food and with our bodies is. It's not about the aesthetics, it's not about the appearance. Self love is is your innate worthiness. It's not everything about your appearance or about your physical self. You don't have to love every inch of your body, right. There are days I wake up and look in the mirror and I definitely don't like certain parts of me.
Speaker 1:But it doesn't, that's okay.
Speaker 2:Love myself yeah.
Speaker 1:I like just this re-iteration of not having to love everything about your physical appearance, because so much of how body positivity is kind of this pink washed thing that's blown up on social media about loving everything about yourself all the time, and that's what body positivity is. And we're sturdy girls coming in and saying it's about body image flexibility. So making that just a really important point, that self love isn't what's portrayed on social media and almost nothing is. Yeah, I don't know if I'm going to select into comparison and such too, so like I just wanted to put that out there.
Speaker 2:I think it's so much more about the neutrality and this is a little caveat, but I think it'll make sense. We've got two different forms on social media that you see. You see the people who are constantly trying to change their appearance and it's almost become like that's become their job, that's become their hobby, is to constantly manipulate and change who they are and what they look like and what their bodies do. And then you've got the other side, that is the body positivity movement, which has been so beneficial in a lot of ways. However, we can't just fall into that and say, well, I'm just going to love every part of me and never going to change or challenge or grow, because in doing so then I must not love myself, because you don't just dislike yourself, because you want to challenge or you want to grow or you want to do something differently.
Speaker 2:Again, self love is not about your appearance, it's not about every single aspect of your physical being. It's about who you are, innately Right. It's a very weird, slash, gross example, but I'm going to use it anyways. I'm ready for it. Your body is literally just like the skin suit that you're wearing.
Speaker 2:Oh no, we a sturdy girl. We call it a meat sack. It's gross to say that. But, like truly, you are not your body, you are not the things that you've done, you are not the life that you live Like, you are what's innate, you are your soul. You are like this innate being that no one can change. No right, that is what we're talking about. I love what you had mentioned earlier, too, about like self. Love is not like a narcissistic tendency.
Speaker 1:Yeah Like oh, I love myself so much. It's not selfish, it's not putting yourself on a pedestal.
Speaker 2:It's saying I'm important enough to my own well being, that I make myself a priority so that I can prioritize others.
Speaker 1:Well, this is so overused. But it's like when you're on a plane and they tell you to put your oxygen mask on first.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's so much harder to love other people when you don't love yourself. Our relationships get very convoluted and they can get toxic and they can get codependent when we don't know how to love ourselves.
Speaker 1:Yep, when we don't have that healthy respect for our own selves first, I think another thing too that self love kind of will feel like when we don't know what it is is, it can feel like magic, like oh, you're just going to wave your magic wand and you have this self love and it's just going to fix all these things.
Speaker 2:The magic pill that we've open certain part of our lives.
Speaker 1:It's a skill, I mean, and we'll get into what it is in just a minute but it's something that takes practice and it requires so much awareness and actual effort and time. It's like a few episodes ago we talked about building confidence and being the skill to practice right. It's having that awareness around it and continually taking action to build that skill, because that's what self love is. It's not just like immediate acceptance and everything is better, it's like anything in our lives.
Speaker 2:It's not going to be a quick fix. If we want something to grow, we want something to for lack of a better word like blossom, we have to nourish it. We have to allow it to flourish. If you don't pay attention to your husband, well, your relationship is probably going to suffer and you might get a little rocky. If you don't focus on your relationship with movement, if that gets a little out of alignment, well, you're probably not going to feel very good in your body or you might get an injury, or it might get more difficult to get back into the swing of things. It's the same thing with self love If we're not being intentional around it, we're not being intentional. You know. Bring it back to the beginning Our thoughts, our words. It's not going to work right. It's not just like I do this for a week and then it magically is here for the rest of my life.
Speaker 1:No, and I think once the initial work is put in if you will and we'll kind of get into what that work looks like it gets easier with time, especially where let's say that if you've ever done any like mindfulness or meditation or those kinds of things and learning to notice your thoughts and it's like it's not about clearing your head necessarily, but it's the power of being able to notice the thoughts and let them go and that's the hardest thing I think I've ever done in my life, like practicing that and getting better at that and then you go like go away from mindfulness or meditation for while and you come back and it's easier when you come back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and for someone like me like I'm terrible at meditation, I'll admit it. I tell clients all the time if it works for you, awesome, do it. It's so good for you. I suck at it. I am not capable, and I won't say that I'm not not capable.
Speaker 2:I don't have the desire to be capable of sitting, however, with, like, this practice of self love and I think this is a great segue to get into like what it actually is it is. It's a practice within yourself and that might look different for everybody. For you, that might be meditation. It might be practicing what the thought patterns are, taking a step back and actually coming from a more realistic standpoint of like, okay, what am I actually feeling here? Right, what's triggering me? For me, it's setting up these practices that allow me to stay neutral. So things like a devotional in the morning, me writing out my thoughts, my emotions. It helps me to get them on paper, right, to take the action of putting the emotion away from me and going okay, how do I actually feel about myself in this instant and why? Yep.
Speaker 1:That's a big piece for me of that self love. And checking in on myself is the journaling piece of like I'm taking it out and looking at this emotion and saying what, where did this come from?
Speaker 1:And why do I feel this way? Okay, let me actually take it out, look at it, write about it. Oh, okay, now I better understand, like, why I've been feeling what I'm feeling, and better process it to work on the relationship. But that's probably getting ahead of ourselves a little bit. We've already kind of gone that way, but talking about what self love is, because we've covered what it's not. It's not loving everything about yourself. You're being your physical appearance. It's not narcissism, it's not magic and it's not just self care. So what is it?
Speaker 2:What a self love. I think self love is honestly just as practice of like, respecting and honoring and accepting yourself for not only who you are, but who you want to become, because, like you already said, we're ever changing. It's holding ourselves in this higher regard of you know, respect and priority Not that we're better than anyone else, but that we're worthy enough to to take care of, to want to learn about, to connect with. Rather than searching for that in everyone else, we're capable of finding that in ourselves.
Speaker 1:And that's something, too, that we are all worthy of love and respect, and respect from ourselves. And I think that that's something that gets lost when we talk about that. We talk about our neat worthiness, as people tend to look outwards, but it's respecting ourselves, cause a lot of times if we pay attention to that self talk, we get pretty disrespectful towards ourselves. So that self love piece is knowing that you're worthy of your own love and respect, nurturing that growth and being a work in progress. You know, you mentioned earlier the two different camps of like constantly changing yourself and then saying I love me and accept me as I am, therefore I won't change. I can't change because if I were to try to change, I wouldn't love myself as much, and that's not the case.
Speaker 2:And it's so much more of like you were saying, just the practice of being compassionate, because if this work is new to you, like it is to so many men and women but I like to speak from the female's perspective of saying, like self love does not come easily to us. This is not oh, I can just pick this up really quickly, and it makes sense. We have a lot of like battles to face with it. We might even understand what self love is, but we're scared of it. I we're fearful of whether we're able to obtain it or whether it even exists in the first place. Right, and I thought you said was interesting of like how self love can be, like this healthy dose of self criticism, of like reality.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's that reality check sometimes that we need, because self love isn't all fluffy. I just keep thinking of it as like a fluffy thing. In my mind. Self love initially was like fluffy and pink and soft, because that's like the.
Speaker 2:That's the advertising. The marketing buzzword Totally is yeah, look at Valentine's Day. Right, you hear so many things about self love around Valentine's Day. You know, if you don't have a partner, you can love yourself. Well, yeah, that's true, but it's not a holiday, it's any day of the entire year.
Speaker 1:Every single day. Yeah, so that healthy criticism piece is keeping yourself in check and understanding that having a good relationship with yourself isn't just acceptance of everything. There is self acceptance, but it's also checking yourself on decisions that you make, ways that you talk to yourself and other people, actions that you take, and looking at that. You talked about alignment earlier.
Speaker 1:I feel like, for some people who listen, alignment can feel a little bit woo and it's not. I mean, that's something that I was just having a conversation with a client over the weekend. She found competing for her first powerlifting meet and we were talking about being a little bit woo and we were trying to decide where you draw the line with woo. And I'm like you know, we talked about alignment, we talked about these different things, and alignment just means like does this feel right? To me, it's making sure that you're not on some level of cognitive dissonance, of like I have these values but I'm not acting in accordance with them. So this healthy criticism comes into play, of like keeping yourself in check and being able to say like, ooh, yeah, that wasn't your best work and to your point.
Speaker 2:it also means like are you in alignment with your own values, your own goals, not someone else's? Yep, it's, I think, the comparison factor to follows into play, because so often we think well, I can't love myself because I'm not blank, I'm not her, I don't look this way, or I don't have these things, or once I fix this.
Speaker 1:Yep, that's what I was going to say is like I love myself when it's kind of the big piece of. I will wear my bikini when I lose X number of pounds. I will do this activity when I feel better in my body.
Speaker 2:You have to do the thing, it's the waiting until piece and self. Love is directly correlated to our self-esteem, directly correlated to our confidence. I've said this to you a few times confidence cannot be bought, borrowed or stolen Right. We can't take it from someone, we can't learn it. Confidence is innate. It is when you are your authentic self.
Speaker 1:I would. I would contest that it is a skill. I think it can be learned.
Speaker 2:You can. You can learn aspects of it, right, but without loving yourself, without knowing like your worthiness on some degree, right. You can't out learn insecurity. You can't out learn like working through our self-esteem. We have to have a certain level of innate worthiness or authenticity to be able to then practice Exactly.
Speaker 1:You can fake ass confidence all day long and hate yourself yeah. But for real, true confidence, it has to come from a place of having a good relationship with yourself, and that's something that I want to say like 27 times in this episode is that when we talk about self love, what it comes down to is having a healthy relationship with yourself. If you don't want to call it self love, talk about it in terms of a relationship with yourself, because this is something that self love shows up in your daily actions. It shows up in the way you talk to yourself, the way you treat and interact with yourself and with others.
Speaker 2:We all have the person and I want you to just think about this. We all have a person in our life that just feels like light, people who just gravitate towards them. Like you, you get energy from being around them. You feel warm and loved and connected and you don't really know why they're not doing anything special, they're not being elaborate in some way, but it usually is because innately, they know their worthiness and they love who they are and it allows them to love others better. It shows up in who they are, shows up in their actions, in the way that they talk, the way that they treat other people, the way that they interact. That's all self love. We might not be able to put a like, pinpoint it, but it's the way we make other people feel because of how we feel about ourselves. It's one of those.
Speaker 1:it's someone's energy and the vibe that they give up, which is also that little bit woo category. I will tell you it's such an important thing because, listeners, right now you can't tell me that you can walk into a room and immediately ascertain which person is the grumpy old curmudgeon and which person is going to make you smile. You can get a sense of someone's energy very quickly and that's not. I'm not trying to delve into the woo level of that, but, ali, if I walked into a room with you, I would gravitate towards you immediately because you smile because of your vibe, right like.
Speaker 2:I know that before even talking to you guys, we were supposed to record a podcast episode together. We had maybe talked a few times in the DMs and what I think we talked for like 45 minutes to an hour before we even started recording and it was like wait, are we best friends? Do we have a reporter?
Speaker 1:before this or just totally connected and then had to cut our actual podcast recording shirt because I went first in self care and got a manicure because you needed it. Yes, I was just going to say I think we really have covered kind of what self love is. One point I just want to bring up, because this is something that we talk about in almost every single episode of Studio Girl, and that is that your relationship with yourself is the longest and most intimate of any relationship you'll ever have. How would you describe your relationship with yourself right now? Is it loving and kind and patient? Is it verbally abusive? Is it unconditional?
Speaker 1:Think about relationships with your partner or think about relationship with someone who's your best friend. They're going to do things that annoy you. They're going to do things that drive you absolutely insane. They're going to say shit that upsets you, but you still love them, you still accept them, you still appreciate them. Having that kind of relationship with yourself is what we're talking about here. It is unconditional love, but it is also that reality check of like if your best friend is going through something and you wanted to sit down and be lovingly encouraging, you're not going to call them a dumbass and tell them to get up out of their chair, and maybe you do.
Speaker 2:It depends on your relationship with a friend.
Speaker 1:Sometimes I need that, but just saying like there's so much to this that's not just love yourself. The end.
Speaker 2:It's so much more about feedback and I say this a lot but feedback over failure. Just because you don't maybe love yourself right now or you don't quite understand how to, doesn't mean you're failing or that you're never going to be able to. It means it's feedback, it's understanding. Why do I feel this way? Am I talking shit on myself daily? Well, how is that maybe making me think and feel, and what are my actions and results because of that? How do we show ourselves more love, even when we're used to, you know, constant hate?
Speaker 1:Sometimes it's just bringing awareness to those maybe negative thoughts so that while you're working on self love and sometimes going from whatever your relationship is now to all the way to self love, can feel like two sides of a canyon.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's okay.
Speaker 1:There's a small steps that you take and it's checking in with yourself. So the first part of that is awareness being aware of the thoughts, being aware of how you talk to yourself, not necessarily having to take action, knowing that it takes time and it takes effort and, like you said, it's like cultivating a relationship with someone else. It's like continuously watering a plant. You know you have to keep watering it to keep it alive.
Speaker 2:And that's why it's so important to prioritize self love. That's why we need it, because otherwise our life can feel very chaotic and overwhelming and negative.
Speaker 1:It tends to turn way more into doing, constantly doing, instead of checking yourself on how you're feeling or checking yourself. Is this a way to display self love? Does this support my values? Having those pieces? This is a great segue of kind of why do we need self love, right? I initially thought self love, like I said, pink and fluffy. Social media made it pink and fluffy and the idea of self love just wasn't appealing. I felt like it was some kind of cop out and code for just giving up on improving yourselves or growing, seeing these people in that body positivity realm of just like I love everything about me.
Speaker 2:Therefore, like I'm going to start participating in any health promoting behaviors and it was really really hard for me- I'm curious not to stop you while you're on a roll, but I'm curious where did that initial belief come from, Like, why did you believe that self love was giving up on your goals or giving up on, you know, the health that you always?
Speaker 1:wanted. You know I don't want to be like every psychologist dream and be like it was my childhood, but I really for a lot of us it is and I mean to our parents' fault right.
Speaker 2:They broke a lot of generational curses, but there were still some that trickled through.
Speaker 1:For sure and I mean for me I grew up in a home that really didn't show a lot of self-love or a lot of the importance of self-love. It was a lot about doing. It was a lot about goal setting and executing on goals. It was on how things appeared. That was a big focus, and maybe some of the listeners here didn't grow up in a home that's promoted that self-love. And that could be the beginning of it, where maybe there wasn't much thought given to that relationship piece at all, Because it's hard to understand the importance of something if it's never modeled for us and then if our first examples of it end up being on media, and I think what's interesting is I almost had the opposite experience, where I grew up in a family that while we struggled with confidence, we struggled with our relationship with our bodies.
Speaker 2:I was always taught to love who I was and how special I was and how much I needed to value myself. But what you said earlier about it feeling narcissistic, it feeling like, oh well, you need to be humble that if I loved myself, then it meant that I was better than others and I needed to not share that. And so it felt confusing of, okay, do I love myself, Should I value who I am and what I have, or should I make myself smaller because it's more digestible for other people?
Speaker 1:Interesting, though, that we could come from two different upbringings and then still have that self love. Peace be something to work on.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I think it's something that everyone can always work on, Agreed. You know there's so many benefits to it when you love yourself. To be totally honest, at least from my experience you think a whole lot less. I'm so damn worried about every single person's judgments or expectation of you or what you should or shouldn't do. You just don't think so much.
Speaker 1:It's a lot of being able to reflect on, like what is the best decision to support my relationship with myself and support myself. I mean, self love is something that, without nerding out too hard on research, it improves your resilience and it lowers your stress response to challenges.
Speaker 2:Because you innately think well, I'm going to be capable of this.
Speaker 1:And if I'm not, we're just gonna keep trying, because those negative feelings, those self critical thoughts, those compound during stress and if we have a level of confidence both, if we have a level of self love it helps us to feel more equipped to tackle challenges.
Speaker 2:And I think, not only tackle them but, even if we can't do them or we hit a rock and hard place, living from this place of empathy and from understanding and being able to say like, okay, maybe not right now, but maybe in the future, right, taking it again as feedback and being able to extend that to others as well. I think something that's interesting, especially with the timing of this recording, is, with the holidays coming up, I was talking with a client this morning about setting healthy boundaries around family members and how, if we can understand why people do what they do and we can come from a place of empathy and compassion because it doesn't impact who we are who they are and who we are are two different entities but if we can come from this place of empathy and be like, okay, why? Why do they do these things? What is their intention, we're not only able to love ourselves a little bit more, we're able to love other people more.
Speaker 1:I like that a lot. The last little piece I wanna touch on and just kind of the why we need self-love and it partially ties into what we've been talking about already is self-efficacy, and this is something that also ties into self-compassion and we haven't really touched too much on self-compassion but self-compassion is wrapped up so much in self-love and so self-efficacy I could do a whole episode on this. It is essentially four parts and that's seeing other people succeed, having your own mastery experiences being affirmed by others and feeling good about ourselves and our capabilities Confidence kinda. On that last one right. But that self-efficacy piece, when we learn to cultivate self-love, we feel good about ourselves, we're building self-trust and we're more open to new experiences and opportunities. This equals more rad things, equals living your biggest, raddest life, which is what Sturdy Girl's all about.
Speaker 2:I think it's interesting for people that maybe don't know what self-efficacy is, because that might be something that people have never really either heard or they don't quite understand. Like okay, what is the purpose here? But it brings me back to kind of the quote that we have probably all seen is that there's a different type of confidence, there's a different type of light to someone when you're not looking for validation from others and you're actually validated by yourself. That is really what that means to me is being able to live, like you said, your raddest, baddest, biggest life, I like to say like your most main character lifestyle, because you're not looking for that external validation anymore, you're not looking for the acceptance or for the guidance of other people's timelines. You're truly getting it from yourself.
Speaker 1:It ties a lot in with that confidence piece is your belief and your ability to do something. It's almost more rock-solid than just that belief, right?
Speaker 2:It's knowing that you can do it, it's having that support of others in there as well, I'm curious because you know, because you called me out earlier and didn't agree with me, so I'm gonna pick your brain again. I believe that you cannot have confidence without having self-love. I think they go hand in hand. I'm curious if you agree with me.
Speaker 1:Yes, I know, because there's also, like I kind of said, like the big macho fake ass confidence and you can still hate yourself.
Speaker 2:That's true, but I guess it depends on what your definition of confidence is the willingness to try.
Speaker 1:I think that there is value in doing things scared because you're building confidence as a skill and the first time that you are doing something it might suck, it's scary, whatever that is, and the more you do it, the more confidence you build in that skill. I guess I don't have a straight answer for whether or not self-love is required for confidence. I think for a lot of people both of those things probably feel unattainable. But there has to be a measure of self-acceptance and awareness around relationship with self to have true and lasting confidence.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And I think to your point when you say like, well, there's a lot of like bullshit confidence right, it's a lot of facades. I tell clients this that confidence is not just being like the loudest, most outgoing bubbly person in the room. Confidence is just innately knowing yourself. You might be shy and quiet, but you are confident in knowing, like this is who I am. I don't need to be different, I don't need to be the loudest person or try to make friends with every person here and we're like that's just not my thing. Okay, we've talked about what it's not what it is, why it's important. How the hell do we get it?
Speaker 1:I think there's a few key ways. One of the big things, like you talked about, is that getting to know yourself is so, so important, and I like to think of this in the context of dating yourself, because how do you get to know someone If you've never thought about who you are as a person and what kind of relationship you have with yourself? Date yourself, take yourself out, and whether that taking yourself out is sitting down with a journal, is it taking yourself out for a cup of coffee? Is it taking yourself out on a date to be like, oh, do I even like doing this thing? Hmm, I've never thought about it.
Speaker 2:But taking the time to spend time with yourself, Maybe asking the questions that you would typically ask of a partner. Can you answer those things?
Speaker 1:Are you actually interested in yourself or are there things where you're like, wow, I may be a little boring and pretty negative, I might want to upgrade a little bit here, Uh-huh absolutely, or you get caught up in trying to be like someone else and when you actually start to pay attention to what you like and don't like, you're able to kind of step away and be like. Actually, I like to fully accept that I love Nickelback and I accept that as part of my identity.
Speaker 2:I love that this has now become a. This is a vulnerability hour.
Speaker 1:Actually, I have no qualms. I listen to all the things.
Speaker 2:We're gonna take it back now. You are Nickelback diehard. I love that for you.
Speaker 1:It does not usually appear in my spot if I wrapped, though. Fall Out Boy is always my number one.
Speaker 2:Okay, mine doesn't make any sense either. I've got a lot of country and I've got tech nine, so that's my version of Nickelback. But to your point is that when we say date yourself, we mean like it's really easy to want to match someone else, whether it's for their love, their affection, their acceptance. We start to do things that other people like to do or to honestly just not be a burden right. We are so used to not putting ourselves first and to not prioritizing ourselves that we just go with whatever somebody else wants or likes, and then we get to this point where we don't even know what we like in the first place. So date yourself.
Speaker 2:Another big one and I talk about this all the time, and you know this is affirmations. Again, they sound very woo-woo, I get it. You maybe are not gonna start out with standing in the mirror, blood ass naked and telling yourself how gorgeous you are. That might not happen today, and that's okay. But affirmations can be more about who you are than, again, what your physical appearance is. It can be as simple as I am deserving of loving myself. It can be as simple as I love myself. I like what I like and I don't like what I don't like being very neutral about the statements. I like that.
Speaker 1:I think there's two parts to affirmations and I went kind of round and round and round on this because there is a lot of benefit that can come from affirmations, I mean for our relationship with ourself and our outlook on life. There can be so many benefits. But there's also a piece of the affirmations where they look at like negative effects because of cognitive dissonance. Like I say, I look in the mirror and I tell myself I'm gorgeous, but I actually don't believe it, so I'm lying to myself. These studies looked and said that they actually led to less action taken, because it activates the reward part of our brain when we're telling ourselves these things, so like reading a self-help book and then taking no action. Affirmations can kind of almost aid in a fixed mindset. I'm like well, I've told myself these things. My point here is not to just be like pooing on affirmations, but to your point.
Speaker 2:It's the follow through.
Speaker 1:It's the follow through, it's the actions, the sensitivity, yeah, and then you can't talk about manifesting like your best life and then just sit around and wait for it to happen, like these affirmations are a piece of like. Maybe it's finding the things that you can actually kind of believe and you start there and then it is those things that you want to believe are true and you're working towards. But it's taking action, it's working towards them.
Speaker 2:I think it's super interesting because again, we keep talking about this like pink, fuzzy, stuffed animal creature. That is self love. In my head it's almost a luffa. I don't know why, but but when we picture that, I also feel like the era that we're in has kind of put affirmations and manifestation and mantras all of those, in that same bucket. They're all these fuzzy, beautiful, fluffy things, when in reality, again it goes back to just like being realistic with yourself.
Speaker 2:You can't just say sweet nothings to yourself and think that everything's going to magically change. We can't say, oh well, I'm going to think about this one thing, I'm going to manifest it and it's going to happen. No guys, again it's the action part. We have the thoughts, the feelings, but then we have the actions and the results. It's saying, okay, I'm going to start with saying more positive things than negative, which is going to make me feel more positive than negative, which is probably then going to be my actions are going to be more positive than negative. Then my results are going to, in turn, show that manifestation.
Speaker 2:Same thing with this. It's saying, okay, this is what I want. I'm getting crystal clear on what it is I want. Yes, I'm going to think about it, I'm going to spend time with it. The whole other piece of manifestation is the action. It's saying okay, I'm spending time on it, which means what is my one small goal, what is my one small step to move towards the manifestation? It's really just a woo, woo way to set up your goals. We remind you of your goals. Yeah, we're not like magical crystal witches over here that snap our fingers and things happen.
Speaker 1:I wish I wish that we could just make it be magic. That'd be awesome.
Speaker 2:Let me know when you figure that out. I will keep you posted.
Speaker 1:I love that. Okay, I'm trying to think if I even want to belabor this, because it's more just finding the place of choosing phrases that we want to believe or working towards believing. It's kind of like we talked about taking a look at your relationship with yourself and then looking at self love and feeling like you're looking across a canyon. You don't want to choose affirmations that make you feel like you're looking across a canyon. Maybe it looks like the next road sign that you're walking towards finding things in that realm. Yes, I love that.
Speaker 2:It's the things that inspire you, the things that again make you feel authentic. Because if you're spouting a bunch of bullshit, whether it's positive or negative, your brain's probably not going to do much with it. It knows your brain is smart. It knows you can't bullshit a bullshitter. Your brains are with you, girl, it knows you well, right. So deep, diving into again self love, how to cultivate, how to step into it more, is really setting those boundaries with yourself. It's prioritizing the self care and then holding yourself accountable to those boundaries and to those actions that you have created.
Speaker 1:You just put on all those main pieces. I think one last one and we kind of mentioned this right First one way to cultivate self love is how you would speak to a friend. This ties into conversations we've had in other podcast episodes of self compassion and this is a big piece of self compassion. If a friend was struggling with accepting their body, their imperfections or appearance something, how are you going to speak to them? Because we certainly, if we start gaining that awareness around the way we speak to ourselves, it's usually not how we would speak to our friends, and so part of this self love piece is gently calling ourselves out. Maybe we have to aggressively call ourselves out. It depends on our relationship with ourselves. So we can develop that awareness around the self talk to kind of reframe and maybe redirect and say like, can I challenge this thought right now? Do I need to just let it come up and let it go? Because we want to create this relationship with ourselves where we do talk to ourselves like we would talk to a dear friend.
Speaker 2:Basically everything we talked about on this episode. It all comes back to. We are mental and emotional human beings first. We just are. We can't do and fix our way out and through everything, what is the number one thing that fixes the most problems and makes us feel the best is understanding something and talking through it. It's the same thing we have to do with ourselves.
Speaker 1:Like Jeff, yes, exactly, and I think we pretty well covered how to cultivate self love. I think one piece to where we were kind of shitting on that self care piece, but talking about prioritizing to love self care. We do love self care. I mean, I ditched you on a podcast episode to get my nails done.
Speaker 2:So we're just saying that it's not. You can't self care your way to self love, exactly.
Speaker 1:And this piece of like taking care of yourself and prioritizing that, it's setting boundaries in your life. It is respecting your body, respecting your being, respecting your space. So when you talk about respect, there's so many different domains. But then it's also looking at nourishing your body. How are you taking care of your body, honoring your body and its needs? So, knowing that this self love piece sometimes your self love answer to should I work out today is a yes, and sometimes that answer is a no, and it's all dependent on where your self care is and how you're taking care of yourself. If you slept like shit last night, haven't eaten much, probably haven't even touched a glass of water, today, maybe the answer is making yourself a nourishing meal and going for a walk with the dogs versus going all out on your heavy lift.
Speaker 1:And this is kind of figuring out that piece of taking care of you and that's something that I'm going to say away for just a second. There was a guy I dated, probably 12 plus years ago and I know my God, and he gave me a sunshine yellow journal, because I have I've kept journals since I was 10 years old and he gave me a card with it and inside he said take good care of you. Now, at the time, I was not taking good care of me. I was working full time, going to school full time, training for a marathon and rock climbing.
Speaker 2:It sounds like we were trying to avoid some things.
Speaker 1:I was in the doing. Remember I told you we didn't grow up with the self love, it was the doing, out to prove things and prove myself and myself worth. So this card said take good care of you. And I remember reading this at first and being like the hell. Does that mean I take care of myself, I eat good food, I move my body, I'm going to school to get smarter what more do you want from me? And then it, we fast forward years and I I'm pretty sure it was when Blake and I, like, bought this house and we were moving in and I was unpacking some boxes and I have this rubber made tote of old journals and I happened to go through it and I found this card and I was like this makes so much more sense. Now I know how to take good care of me.
Speaker 2:Yes, I love full, I love full circle moment and I think, I think everybody has that point in their life and if you haven't had that point yet, it's coming, it will get there if you want it to full circling back to the beginning of this, this episode is do you have to love yourself? No, you totally don't have to. But if you want things to change, if you want to feel good in your body, if you want to enjoy your life, if you want to love others, you know, to your fullest capacity, then yes, you can totally love yourself and you will totally get there. It might take time but it's completely possible.
Speaker 1:We can't hate ourselves into living a good life. No, you can't have a bad relationship with yourself and have an enriched lovely life. What's the word I want? Wholesome. I was looking for wholesome, like, just like, wholehearted, wholesome life without some level of good, healthy relationship with ourselves.
Speaker 2:Otherwise, you will always be left wanting.
Speaker 1:And not even necessarily knowing that you're wanting, just feeling like something's missing. The missing piece is you Get to know yourself.
Speaker 2:How profound is that? Like the only piece that you're missing is you, and you already got her. She's already there, she's ready. She's just like waiting for you to hold the door open for her. Stop saying mean things to me. I'm here, I love this, and I think this is such a good time of year to really lean into loving yourself. I know, as we wrap this up, we're all going into the holidays. We're going into a very busy, overwhelming chaotic season. We're going to hit the New Year's resolutions. There's going to be a lot of messages about how you need to change yourself, how, in order to be happy, you have to look different, act different, buy something different. You don't. You're more than allowed to just love who you are and then take each day as it comes, exactly.
Speaker 1:And the shameless plug for our last episode of the Sturdy Girl season is going to be on setting yourself up to have the best.
Speaker 2:here I love that and shameless work for myself. I just launched I just launched myself Love Club, which is a 30 day membership with like small little actionable things that you can use to cultivate more self-love into your life.
Speaker 1:I will be sure to include that link in the show notes. Thanks so much for listening, friends. We'll talk to you next Wednesday. If you enjoyed this podcast episode, please feel free to follow, subscribe, like whatever the heck you do with podcasts. As always, stay sturdy, friends, and we'll talk to you next week.
