Embracing Self-Love: A Journey Towards Triumphing Over Stress and Celebrating Identity

When Angie Costa and I, April Sabral, sat down to discuss the profound nature of self-love, we never imagined how much our own tales of adversity and triumph would resonate with the journey so many of us face. Together, we dissect the immense effect that nurturing self-love can have on mitigating stress, propelling success, and shielding ourselves from the relentless onslaught of negative chatter—both internal and from the world around us. We peel back the layers of our identities, often so tightly intertwined with our careers, and issue a bold challenge to redefine who we are at our core, beyond the confines of our job descriptions.

In a world that often glosses over our wins in pursuit of the next big thing, Angie and I delve into tangible strategies for truly honoring our achievements and amplifying self-esteem. We share a toolkit for battling those stealthy negative thoughts with a barrage of positivity, and discuss the transformative potential of a daily affirmation practice—whether that's 'mirror time' or keeping affirmations in clear sight. Remember, it's not just about the journey or the destination—it's about pausing to celebrate the milestones and spreading that infectious positivity we so passionately believe in. So, if you're ready to embrace a life brimming with self-love and eager to sprinkle kindness like confetti, join us for this soul-nourishing conversation and become part of our vibrant community at incurablepositivity.com.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey there, positivity seekers, welcome to another episode of Incurable Positivity, the podcast where we explore practical ways to shift your thoughts from negative to positive.

Speaker 2: 0:11

I'm April Sabral, and with me is the incredible Angie Costa. Together, we co-authored the award-winning book Incurable Positivity, and we're here to bring those pages to life in this uplifting podcast.

Speaker 1: 0:25

Absolutely, April. Our mission is simple to help you think and feel better. Life does challenges our way, but it's how we respond that makes all the difference. Today, we've got some tactical tips to share with you that can truly transform your mindset.

Speaker 2: 0:41

For more positivity, head to wwwincurablepositivitycom. Stay positive, stay inspired. This is incurable positivity. Today I woke up and I was like it's the celebration of love day, so you know what we're going to talk about self-love and celebrating ourselves today, Right, Angie.

Speaker 1: 1:04

Ooh yeah, that's what we're going to talk about. It sounds so beautiful, doesn't it? Self-love. It just sounds so flowery and so positive and yet it is so difficult, isn't it? It's a tough topic to cover and really a tough practice to incorporate and integrate into your life.

Speaker 2: 1:28

Yeah, it really is. Yeah, it does sound fluffy and flowery it does, but it's really not. I mean, it can be, but it really takes the deep work and the deep commitment to that work. And that's always the struggle for people. You know, facing that, you know, just facing it and like thinking about what we can do, and there's so many articles you can Google, you know, self-love, what does it mean? How do you do it, what are the benefits of it? And I think, at the end of the day, we're going to be able to do a practice that you know, we take care of our families, we take care of our kids, but then do we take care of ourselves? Like that's the you know, yes, yeah, and I think of women who are such nurturers of everybody else, right, but like we always put ourselves last, right, right.

Speaker 2: 2:14

So I was up this morning doing my meditation, as usual, doing my journaling, and I'm doing a little bit tooling around on Google and doing some research, and you know I wanted to talk about the benefits of self-love, like what it is, the benefits, and I thought I'd start with just a bit of a reading this morning, because I found this really helpful, especially because we're all about positive thinking, right and positive thoughts and just creating a positive life. So self-love. Self-love helps us take care of ourselves, lower stress and strive for success, but it also protects us from negative thoughts, self-sabotaging thoughts and pushing ourselves too far. It's important to recognize that knowing what to say no to is just as important as learning when to say yes. When we practice self-love, we accept ourselves for who we are and recognize our work, which has a healthy impact on our self-esteem. Self-love also encourages us to take care of ourselves, both physically and emotionally, and helps us to protect us from outside influences that diminish our self-worth. I think that's so powerful, angie.

Speaker 1: 3:29

Yeah, that's an interesting that last line there Outside forces that diminish our self-worth. There are so many outside forces, and I'm thinking particularly about social media, but there are also maybe people in our lives or situations in terms of our career that we take hits on our self-worth because there are so many standards that we are expected to live up to and we forget that we are unique and that there's something very valuable and special about who we are, outside of the norm or outside of what other people's expectations are about us.

Speaker 2: 4:14

Yeah, 100%. I mean I struggled with self-love. I might be confident and confident in the work that I do and highly skilled in being a coach and a leader, but as an individual, as a person, I grew up as an identical twin right, some people know that, some people don't. But, like you just said about external forces, comparison is something that really kills our self-esteem. We know that from social media, from comparing ourselves. So I grew up being completely compared to somebody at a very early age and living through comparison and having to live up to that external force. And it's interesting because as much as I loved that experience I think just having a built-in best friend there were still some other side effects of it just thinking she was prettier or she was smarter, that competitiveness, and also just being compared to all the time by external forces like teachers in school, parents, friends that we just always compare us. So comparison to me is something that really can kill our self-esteem.

Speaker 1: 5:27

Yeah, it sure can. It sure can. It's so funny. If you've ever been asked the question, tell me about yourself. Most of us would start with our occupation. Most of us would, because that is how we define ourselves as leaders. Most of the time, we define ourselves by what we do, and that, I think, is a really good clue about where we might be on the continuum, on the spectrum of self-love, because we have so much to offer. There is so much about us that is positive, that is beautiful, that is useful to others and radiates from us, and yet we do lean a lot on what we do as the definition of ourselves. And maybe a great self-love practice would be to think about another way to answer that question Tell me about yourself, and not say anything about work or think anything about work, but think about all the other things about you that really just go neglected, that we really don't value as much.

Speaker 2: 6:39

Tell me about yourself. Okay, so I'm gonna throw that one back at you. So, angie Costa, tell me about yourself. If you had to describe yourself without saying what you did, what would you say? Would it be difficult?

Speaker 1: 6:53

You know I've been working on this for years and I know we're gonna talk about this in a minute because this is not easy right. So I've been working on this for years, thinking more about all of the other things that I offer to the world. You know I'm a lover of words. I love poetry, I love all kinds of literature. I write poetry. I obviously I write books, but I love music. I'm a singer.

Speaker 1: 7:24

A lot of people don't know that about me because I don't talk about it very much, but that comes from that lack of love of comparison to other singers. Well, maybe I'm not as good as this person and you know I should have had a Motown recording contract and all of that. But the truth is that you know that I love music and that I produce music that I think is really, really beautiful, and I'm learning to love that side of me a whole lot more. I'm also a painter Yet another thing and I find so much expression in these other areas of my life and, you know, learning to not just talk about. Well, I'm a mom or I'm a business owner. You know all of those are an easy place to run and hide, but to really like expose yourself and be a little bit more vulnerable when you talk about who you are, because those are parts of you that you have to learn to love, even more I was gonna.

Speaker 2: 8:26

Oh, I love that. I love that you said talk about who you are and that you shared that Also, what you shared about like being a singer and then comparing yourself to other singers, because I think we measure ourselves up to unrealistic expectations that are just put on us a lot of the time and that's really what will kill our self-love and, well, our self-esteem, which is a whittling way down to lower your confidence and then, you know, not love yourself. And that's why the practices of self-love are so beneficial, because we know the benefits of loving ourselves have an impact on our health, on our well-being, on how we show up, on what we can accomplish, what we can believe we can do. And I believe that each one of us has a mission on this planet, something inside of us to make an impact and step into and have a greater influence. And sometimes that could just be with a family, it could be in your community, it could be leading a business, it could be leading a huge team, it could be writing a book, it could be hosting a live, it could be anything. But when we compare ourselves constantly to unrealistic expectations, then it stops us from stepping in and that's why the self-love practices are so key to being more whole in what you do.

Speaker 2: 9:45

It's funny because this weekend I played the piano Not a lot of people know that and I haven't been playing it as much because I've been comparing myself to my 17 year old self, when I was really good and yeah because, you know, when I was at school I did all exams and went through to the highest level and it was like a classically trained.

Speaker 2: 10:06

And I was with somebody this weekend that has a piano and I was literally sitting in front of it and I just didn't want to play because I was like I haven't played for so long and they kept saying stop avoiding the piano, or you probably know how to play it and just put your fingers on the keyboard.

Speaker 2: 10:21

And it was kind of like that Am I good enough? Am I worthy enough? Am I going to be judged? Am I judging myself? It's all of these things, these negative thoughts, that come up right when we're we're putting those moments. So I think that's really important to really kind of channel out who you are. This is what you do. I would. I think I'm going to do that after this call today, because you've just inspired me. Think about that.

Speaker 1: 10:49

We live in a like a self improvement culture, april, where it's always about getting better, changing your life.

Speaker 1: 10:56

You know all of these platitudes about living your best life and we live in such a you know you have to grow, you have to change, you have to transform and all of that is good.

Speaker 1: 11:09

I'm not, obviously, I'm not presmerging that, but I think there's, there's a lot of benefit in taking a moment, even a day, of your you know, of your, your journaling time, your, your you know preparation time in the morning and just talk about what is good, what you have done, what you have accomplished, how far you have come, you know, and not always be striving, striving. Striving because part of self love is self of acceptance and accepting who you are, embracing who you are, versus saying I need to get better, I need to lose weight, I need to make more money, I need to get a higher position in my company Again, all of that is good. We have to have goals, we have to be growing, but if you just said you know I'm going to, I'm going to reserve Monday just to love me and, and you know, embrace who I already am and what I've already done, wow, can you imagine how that would transform your life, if you just loved and liked you more.

Speaker 2: 12:13

Oh gosh, I think I am going to build that into my Monday practice. I absolutely love that and I I 100% agree. You know, like I'm in the world we are of self development coaching, like many people, and you know you can get stuck and wound up in that that you're not accomplishing things and your thoughts can start spiraling down. So it's not about that. It's about continuously accepting yourself, loving yourself right and writing out those positive thoughts. I sent some text messages out this morning because it is Valentine's Day and it's a day of celebrating love, and as much as I don't buy into holidays that much just myself personally I know that other people do, and so I wanted to make sure that I got some messages out. And you know one of the messages that I sent this morning and I want to share this because I think this is, you know, important that we do send messages out to people and let them know that we care and love them, because many times, you know, some of our biggest regrets is that we didn't tell somebody how we felt about them, and so, as we move into, like best practices or things that we can do to continue to build that self love.

Speaker 2: 13:24

This is one of the messages I sent out this morning to my son keep dreaming big sun. Then keep taking action towards them. Love, you have a good day. You are worthy of everything you are growing into and I can't wait for that because I think sometimes, like you said, in the world of self development, growing, accomplishing, achieving sometimes it's about recognizing who you are, what you have, and then accepting that and then accepting the journey of growth, Like self love is a journey of growth, right, and that journey of growth and just recognizing that in itself is such a great moment to be proud of and be grateful for and celebrate. So I think that's really important that we tell people today that you know, that we're proud of them and that they're. You know, keep knowing that you're worthy of what you're growing into, because so many people don't know that no-transcript.

Speaker 1: 14:24

Oh, it's so, so true. I think a lot about football because you know, players are not supposed to do like too much celebration when they reach the end zone, and I've always hated that rule because I think you know, here you are On the field, you've got to get through these gigantic obstacles. You're talking about people. You know 250 pounds, 300 pounds, and you got to break through all of that and run. You know, run the yards and make it into the end zone and then they don't want you to celebrate. It's like to me I think there should be fireworks and I think there should be Kassetti and the band should play you every time you reach the end zone. It's such a great thing.

Speaker 1: 15:12

And you think, like in sales organizations I haven't been in sales in a long time now, but when I was in in sales, you know we would set these lofty goals and then we would reach those goals and we would celebrate for like one minute. You know it would be like to be at the start of the meeting, you know congratulations. Okay. So now here's the new goal. Okay, so now here's the new goal. And and I think self-love works that way where we, we don't take time to celebrate, and I mean take time To celebrate like really, really, you know, reward yourself and pamper yourself and Acknowledge what you have already done. I think that's the right springboard to the next goal, not just okay, we did it, that's great. What am I now? What am I starting for now? What's the next goal?

Speaker 2: 16:00

That really brings me back to when I led retail teams Angie, like majorly. It was like that you know, you're only as good as today's numbers and tomorrow's a new day and there's some.

Speaker 2: 16:12

There was some great you know Experiences in that, because you get to start every day new, but also it's like, okay, well, yesterday was done, that's not good enough. You know like it can. It can compound that feeling. That's what that takes me back to. Yeah, right, as we move into like some best practices, right for like self-love, because I think it's always important to think about, you know, the practices that can help us cultivate this. For For those you know people listening on the podcast, what is some? What are some best practices or some practices that you Practiced over the years, maybe still practice today, in terms of like, building that self-esteem, building that self-worth.

Speaker 1: 16:53

So I had a coach once tell me that every time you think a negative thought about yourself that you, I, was, she instructed me to say seven positive things out loud. So every thought was counteracted with seven words or seven statements about myself, and I think that's really a great way to contemplate your thoughts and be very, very aware of what you're thinking. I used to have a habit of saying, god, I'm so stupid, why did I do that? I'm so stupid. Well, of course I'm not stupid, right. But we say these things about ourselves and we know, and that's an assault on your own spirit, on your own soul, when you make these, these comments about yourself, and so to immediately acknowledge it and recognize it is a huge step. If you do nothing else, that's tremendous. But to replace that negative thought with an out loud declaration, yeah, of seven things that are so great about you, to undo the negative, negative thing that you've now allowed to circulate in your brain, that's really good.

Speaker 2: 18:06

I like that. I mean that just goes along with a practice that I had implemented and I learned from a coach as well, when I was going through a tough time in my life and I was coming out of a divorce, and you know, that's something that I felt like was a failure. I wasn't good enough, it didn't work out, and so she said write down a list of things that you love about yourself and stick it on the wall where you come, where you can see it, and you know it took me a good six weeks to write about 20 things at that point, because I've never actually practiced that. You know, just being a mom, being a wife, being a leader in business and having to think about the things that I like about myself, and so that was a really good practice and I wrote them down and I've used this with all the clients as well and coaching, and I literally would just stick it on the wall and just look at it every day. The same thing, right, it's like programming your mind, programming your thoughts, kind of thinking about the things you like, and it can take some time to do that like.

Speaker 2: 19:03

It's not an easy practice when you start doing this, but even if you are already. Let's say you're self-loved on a tank is like one to ten and you're a eight most days because you've done this work and you know you feel like you're pretty good about it. I say that you can always get to a 10 to a 12, you can always get 15 to a 20, you can always exude it and you can always pass this on to somebody else, right? So I say, even if, write that list so that you can look at it every day. I look with somebody wants a roommate and she had on her mirror in her bathroom. You are powerful, you can accomplish anything, and so it's something that she looked at every single day and I'd go in the bathroom. I'm like, oh, that's really cool. You know, right on your mirror playing post-its or whatever. I think that's really important as well. What else? What's another practice?

Speaker 1: 19:52

I love this another practice I've tried before and boy was this difficult. But I call it mirror time. So you know, we look in the mirror only to. You know, check our hair, check our makeup, whatever. You know, make sure our clothes are, you know, on point. But have you ever just looked in the mirror to look at yourself? Yes, strictly for the purpose of looking at yourself.

Speaker 1: 20:20

I will tell you, the first time you do it, it is uncomfortable. It's almost as if I said to you you know to stare into my eyes and don't speak, just looking into my eyes. Imagine how you know cringy and difficult that would be for you. It is the same when you're looking in the mirror the first time, strictly for the purpose of looking into your own eyes and just studying your own reflection. It's really, really difficult.

Speaker 1: 20:45

But over time you do gain a certain comfort with yourself, and so many of us are uncomfortable with ourselves. It's why we don't like to be alone with our own thoughts or, you know, by ourselves. You know traveling, or you know hanging out or whatever, because we feel like we need that distraction from ourselves. So your time is a great way to say you know, I'm, I'm at one with myself, I'm at peace with who I am. I'm okay with me. I love that statement I'm okay with me. I am not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, and sometimes, when you do this work with impositivity, people expect that you are. I am not perfect, but I'm okay with me. I'm doing good, I'm doing great and I like who I am, and so looking at me is a great way to remind myself that I am okay. I am okay.

Speaker 2: 21:43

I like that. I think talking about this with you every week first of all, showing up on a Wednesday and having these conversations is just a good reminder. Honestly, keep leveling your practices, because I think you can always keep building on, building on, and it's like anything we fall off the wagon on things. So it's about picking things back up and at different times in your life, I think you'll need different practices. You'll need to go deep and do deeper work and at other times maybe not so much, depending on where you're at, but I think it's about the practice and just recognizing that. So I love that mirror work. I think I'm gonna yeah, I think I'm gonna try that again do a bit more of that.

Speaker 2: 22:23

I also think that self-talk is so important, and you've hit on this a couple of times right, like seven positive things talking to yourself in the mirror, also looking at how you celebrate yourself, and sometimes I think it's really hard when we are not feeling our best and we are having that moment, to come up with a positive thing to say. So something I've learned recently is a bridge thought right, using bridge thoughts to get you to where you wanna be, to think positively, to think highly of yourself, and that is a really easy step. And so one of the ways that I've been practicing recently, angie, is using this statement I'm choosing to believe, I'm choosing to believe. So, if it's like I don't know, as an entrepreneur, it's like ups and downs. It'll be the biggest self-development journey of your life, I think, choosing this path after being a corporate leader for so many years. And sometimes it's like I'm having a vision about something that I wanna create in my business, which is dependent on whether I can believe I can do it right, which is all comes back to self-worth and self-belief.

Speaker 2: 23:42

And sometimes I'll just say, maybe I'm thinking I can't do it, but I'm gonna write out some statements saying I'm choosing to believe that I can. Whatever it is, I'm choosing to believe I feel better. I'm choosing to believe I'm a person that experiences happiness every day. I'm choosing to believe that joy is just who I am, because sometimes it's just hard to make that switch when you have in that moment. So I think I'm choosing to believe is something that I've adopted from a coach that I learned that I think is really, really helpful. I don't know what you think about that, but yeah, that's so good, april.

Speaker 1: 24:23

Sometimes I feel like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. It's like the answers to your success and to your joy and your bliss are already inside of you. They're already there and we search for them externally and we think that we can get them from other places and other people, especially on Valentine's Day. I mean, there are a lot of people today who are not hooked up right, they don't have a date tonight, and that can set up some negative thought patterns. That can set up some negative thought patterns. But this choosing to believe is about taking control and it's about saying that the power is already in me. I've already got the answers. I've already got what it takes to be and to do and to have. So looking outside of myself is not the answer. I'm not gonna get it from someone else. It needs to come from within me.

Speaker 1: 25:20

I think about this all the time because I always share that. I was such a negative person and yet I had all of these positivity, belief practices inside of me. They were there to sort of lay dormant right. I had read the books, I had gone to the seminars, I had watched the TED Talks. All of that positivity was there, ready to launch, but I didn't, because I was always looking outside of myself for something else and not realizing that what's in me is enough. And so when you choose to believe, you activate something within that really does have the power to take you wherever I mean in terms of all of your goals. So I love this idea of choosing to believe. It puts the power back where it belongs, which is within you.

Speaker 2: 26:07

Love it. Well, we're coming up on time, it was so. It's such a great conversation I've got some great best practices from you, angie that I'm going to up level my positivity, self love practices Right, and I think I'm going to do some little rituals today, on Valentine's Day, because, yes, I'm one of those people that's alone, but I'm not alone because I've got amazing friends and family and a huge network. So I think one of the things is I'm going to do is just send out some more messages to some people that I do know are alone, particularly Because I think, like you just hit a nail on the head that people can feel that a bit more on this day. So that's something I'm definitely going to do. But as we wrap up this wonderful Wednesday conversation, is there anything else that you want to share or add?

Speaker 1: 27:02

I think that's a great challenge, april. If we all take a moment and just spread a little bit of love, you'd never, never know where someone is today, what they're experiencing today, what they're thinking, what they're feeling. We would all just take three minutes and just send five or six messages to people who we know closely, maybe, or contacts when we met not too long ago and they made an impact, somebody we met on the airplane, and just say, hey, I think you're pretty awesome, I think that would be such a great thing to do today, and I will bet that you're going to hit somebody who really needed to hear that today.

Speaker 2: 27:43

Yeah, wonderful. If you love this episode, be sure to hit that subscribe button, leave us a review and head over to incurablepositivitycom, where you can get access to lots more resources. The community and myself and Angie, where we go live with book club and talk about everything positivity we love you, we appreciate all of you and until next time, stay positive.