Transcript for:
Understanding and Practicing Self-Love

You can't love someone until you love yourself. To fall in love with yourself is the secret to happiness. You owe yourself the love you so freely give to others. We hear this advice all the time and it annoys me so bad because when I was starting my self-love journey, all I could hear was how important it is to accomplish self-love, why you need it in your life, all of the benefits of it, and yet no detailed guides or accurate advice on how to actually achieve that. Like what does self-love actually mean?

What does it consist of? What does it look like on the bad days? How do you be consistent?

What mindset shifts do you need to implement? What does it look like in your personal life, in your relationships, in your friendships? I couldn't find a singular book teaching me how to do so and it frustrated me so much because after years...

of being on this journey, I have learned so many amazing lessons just through my own life experience. And that's why I'm putting out this video, which is a detailed guide on how to master self-love in all areas. As always with all of my other videos, this video is going to be split into chapters. We're going to break down the common misconceptions about self-love and mistakes you might be making, which is actually preventing you from progressing on this journey, along with what self-love actually. means and looks like and then finally practical methods and tools you will need to be able to actually practice this in your life.

Before we get into it as always be sure to check out the links in the description where you can check out the exclusive self-help content I put out every single day on my other social platforms including the BTS daily vlogging I'm doing on my Snapchat right now and of course the links to order my book. This book is split into three separate parts. understanding, healing and reawakening to support you in every single step of your journey, whether it be healing, confidence, boundary setting, tools, mindset shifts and so much more.

Now while I'll be giving so many practical steps and so much detail in this video as I do with all of my self-help guide videos, I only have a limited amount of time so I won't be covering everything in the book but this is a really good preview to get you started. Before we get right into it, this video has been brought to you by my favorite platform Squarespace. Squarespace makes it super easy to create a beautiful website, to engage with your audience and to sell anything from content to products all in one place and on your own terms, whether you're starting out or if you're managing a growing brand.

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When I started this journey, I had... quite a few slaps across the face from life because I thought I was loving myself and I thought I was doing everything right when in fact I was going in the complete opposite direction and I don't want any of you to make the same mistakes. So the first one is self-love is not isolating yourself or becoming hyper-independent.

It is not self-loving to get to a place in your life where you don't need anybody and you're completely good on your own. However, it is more self-loving than ever to heal from your wounds, to learn how to open up and be vulnerable, to be so confident in your authenticity that you allow yourself to show show up fully as who you are in front of other people so that you can cultivate the strongest, most authentic and healthiest bonds, whether that be romantically or in friendships. Please don't make the mistake that I once did of denying yourself the opportunity of romantic love, because that is such a huge form of self-sabotage.

Human connection is so necessary to living a great life and not trusting anyone or being comfortable enough to be vulnerable with them. is you denying yourself of great life experience and memories. And yes, there is a chance you might get hurt, you might get betrayed, you might be uncomfortable, you might have to learn a bunch of lessons all over again.

But self-love is holding your own hand throughout all of that because the love you have for yourself will stay consistent throughout. Mistake number two, self-love is not pride. Feeling good about yourself because you got the job, aced the test, went to the gym, won the award, or did your makeup so great that you're getting loads of attention and compliments is not self-love. It's actually very fickle and based on extrinsic confidence.

Extrinsic confidence is essentially when you are placing your worth on outside things, external factors, situations, and achievements, which I go into detail in the book. And the problem with this and extrinsic confidence is the second that you miss a day from the gym, the second that you get rejected from something, then all of your love slips away in that particular situation. But the thing is self-love Love involves imperfection.

It's actually the days where you fail, you mess up, you disappoint others, you disappoint yourself that presents you the best opportunities to actually practice and improve your self-love. It's not about congratulating yourself when you win, it's about learning how to pick yourself up when you fail. When there are billion chances to feel bad about yourself, to beat yourself up, to feel guilty, to say that you did it again or that you're proving all of your limiting beliefs right.

but instead making the choice to think differently. Like, okay, I haven't done my morning routine or I didn't work out for a week. Self-love is refraining from doing the comfortable thing of feeling guilty or like you failed or that you're not this perfect, consistent human being that everyone else appears to be, but instead changing your self-talk to incorporate some self-compassion, to give yourself forgiveness, to be able to practice patience and tell yourself, I'm a human being, not a robot. Clearly, I needed the rest.

This does not define me. I am not going to identify- identify with a bad day and use it to define my future capabilities and where I can go, I can still achieve all of the desires that I put my mind to. One bad day, one bad month, one bad year.

does not define me or deem me lazy. Mistake number three, self-love is not a destination. It is not something to complete that you win or that you do correctly.

It is something ongoing that forever adapts and evolves as you grow and evolve as a human being. For example, when I was 19, self-love to me was about becoming more socially confident, stepping outside of my shell, doing something that was outside of my comfort zone so that I could do some self-growth. A few years later, it was about letting go of external validation and needing to be the most popular person and instead giving that attention and that validation to myself. A few years after that, it was about solo dating and mastering independence. And then after that, it was about loving myself through my failures and making sure that I wasn't overworking myself, but instead working on creating a balanced, fulfilling, joyful life.

And right now where I'm at, self-love is all about bettering my mindset and doing years of conditioning and limiting beliefs and working through generational patterns. And through all of that, I know it will keep on changing. And this is why patience is such an important part. of self-love because it will never be done.

There's no point getting frustrated with yourself that you thought you achieved something and now you're back to square one. You're not back to square one. You've actually made so much progress, so much progress in fact, that you are now learning about new things you need to improve or work on or change the way you think about.

And you are only discovering those things you need to work on because you already completed all of the levels before that. Trying to get the work of self-love and self-growth done and out of the way and completed is a form of you rejecting yourself. It's like you think that you are your own biggest inconvenience when in actuality you are the greatest project you are ever going to work on you need to get comfortable with the fact that you are going to continuously have to understand yourself and get to know yourself through all of your eras and through all of your phases to truly keep loving yourself point number four self-love is not selfish i get this question all of the time what is the line between self-love and being selfish or doing too much or putting myself first and not caring about anybody else and it makes me so sad that people are refraining from embarking on the journey of self-love because they think it's going to make them disliked because they think it might make them a bad person because they're going to be too self-absorbed when self-love is not about any of that and this is such a common misconception because true self-love isn't just about you. In fact when you are working on your confidence, when you are solving your insecurities, when you are changing your mindset, you become a person that shows up for all of the other people in your life so much better because guess what? now you can support other people more genuinely.

Now you're not projecting any scarce beliefs. In fact, you're so inspired and you've grown so much that you can impart more wisdom on other people. You can show up for them in a better capacity.

You are no longer feeling resentful because you have enough boundaries in place where when you do show up for other people, you're doing it because you want to do it. You're living as your higher self. This links into number five. Self-love is not self-absorption because self-awareness is such a huge part of self-love. To be self-loving, you need to be able to recognize and acknowledge and hold yourself accountable for your toxic traits, for your weaknesses, on what qualities to keep and what qualities to let go of and which ones to work on and which ones to change and adapt not only to serve yourself, your future self, your inner child, but also the other people around you.

Self-love isn't walking into a room and thinking that you're better than others. Self-love is walking into a room knowing you're great, knowing everything you're worthy of, and also recognizing everybody else is the same. They are all great. They are all worthy of that.

their desires you know you are that girl but you also know they are all that girl as well. That is such a huge part of self-love because the work in self-love involves becoming more secure in yourself more internally confident that you can support other people's wins and other people's strengths without seeing it as a competition or a direct threat to everything you are insecure about because you've already worked on yourself. And lastly for this chapter Self-love is very different to self-care. I actually have an entire section and tables in this book detailing this entire point and different habits for self-care versus self-love and how to really separate this in your life.

But essentially, self-care is looking after yourself. It's making sure you're well-groomed. It's going for a walk and getting fresh air. It's working out. It's meditating.

Whereas self-love is working on yourself. on your inner self. It's journaling, doing shadow work prompts, it's going to therapy, it's changing your belief system, it's working on your self-talk, it's holding yourself accountable.

Chapter number two. So now that we know all of the common misconceptions, what is actually real self-love? What does that even mean? One, self-love is liking yourself through it all, through the mistakes, through the repeated failures, through the growing, through the learning, through the comebacks, through the wins. So you can tell yourself I love when I mess up because I love how I learn from it.

I love how I come back from it. I love how it changes me. I love how I adapt. I love that I'm not the person I was last year.

I love that so many challenges are still coming to me because I know that it's going to grow me into the type of person that I've always wanted to be. You like yourself through every phase of your life and through every situation. Your self-love and the way that you feel about yourself is not conditional. It does not depend on external factors of how things go. It is something constant within you because you understand that you are not a bad human being your opinion of yourself is the most valid one you are ever going to have and because of that you know all of your hopes all of your dreams all of your true good intentions and if we know all of that then why do we constantly put ourselves down why do we insist that we're not good enough or that every inevitable and absolutely normal regular human mistake all of a sudden means that we're not good enough and that we're not going to get to where we want to go self-love means in those bad situations where you can so easily put yourself down, you choose to bring self-compassion into the picture, to remember your inner child, to know what intentions you truly have, to know your hope for the future and that everything you want is going to come true.

It's choosing to focus on who you really are, your inner thoughts, your inner hopes, rather than what the actual physical situation is. This links into point number two. Self-love is a self-serving mindset. This essentially means mastering your abundant perspective over your scarce one.

Your scarce mindset and perspective comes out very easily and very naturally because it's based on fear, it's based on what society has told you, it's based on insecurities, it's based on every horrible thing that you've ever seen and this is at the forefront of your mind because as humans we need to know when we sense danger, what is risky and how to survive in a super safe safe and comfortable way. Your brain and your dopamine receptors are always seeking comfort and safety. When you try something you've never done before, your brain immediately rings alarm bells because this is unknown. It's not actually a bad thing, but that is just the way our brain works.

Self-love is understanding that and then knowing your instant scarce perspective that what if I fail, what if this doesn't work, how I'm never going to be able to do this is not true, does not define you, is not the reality of who you are and where you're going. And so instead, self-love is cultivating and practicing the process of having abundant thoughts about every situation you have. You are putting in the hard work to let go of your natural instincts of being afraid of letting fear run your life and instead choosing... how you want to deal with every situation to serve your highest self and to serve your future self to get to the life that you want to go to. I have a bunch of examples on this that take up so many pages in the book.

So I'm actually gonna give you guys a sneak peek and read this out to you. So for example, let's say this. The situation you're in is that you are at an event which will involve meeting lots of new people. The natural instinct you will have, the scarce, fearful perspective that will be showing up in your brain will be saying, I feel so anxious around these new people. Why is no one talking to me?

I bet everyone's looking at me and wondering why I look so awkward alone in the corner. I'm so shy. I'm not supposed to be here. The self-loving favor that you are going to do to be able to create your self-serving, abundant perspective and mindset will say, turning up here alone was such a big step for my self-confidence. Even if I don't make any friends, just doing this one thing to step outside of my comfort zone is a massive win.

I am so proud of myself. I belong in this room just as much as everyone else here and my focus is only on the new opportunities I can grasp. How exciting. What also links into a self-serving mindset is to let go of the thoughts and beliefs that don't do you any good.

any favors and I know that might sound so obvious to you but when you really look inwards you will understand how many thoughts and how many worries and stresses you hold which actually are completely irrelevant. Let's take for example the way that your body looks in a certain outfit or when you look at it in the mirror, the acne on your face, your appearance, the fact that you don't have the perfect nose, the fact that you don't like your eyebrows. Why is any of that irrelevant?

Because the truth of the matter is your appearance and your body shape are two of the least important and interesting things about you. You are a multifaceted, complex, completely unique, one-of-a-kind human being on this planet with a completely... Unique personality, perspective, way of seeing things, history, story, humor, kindness. And whenever somebody is introducing you to somebody else or talking about you, or if your friend or your family member had to sum you up in a few sentences, they would never talk about the way your body looks. They would not use what your nose shape or bridge is like to explain who you are as a human being.

They will explain your personality. The effect you have on other people, how you've grown, how intelligent you are, your achievements. And so if other people aren't focusing on your bloating or your outfits, then why do we put so much pressure on ourselves to think about that? When we have so much more value and so much more to offer. offer in the world.

When you think about it that way, that's self-serving. When you think about the things that actually are you, not the things that stress you out and make you feel like you're not good enough when in actuality they don't matter whatsoever. Three, self-love is you favoring your energy above all.

else this is such an underrated way to focus on your self-love it's like i'm gonna focus on being grateful every single day you know why because that raises my energetic vibration which increases my manifesting abilities increases my mood and then therefore my mental health and makes me actually enjoy the life i'm living how self-loving is that it's making sure you have the right routine that is going to benefit your hormonal balance which means fresh air sunlight moving your body eating the right foods it's creating balance in your lifestyle so that you're actually actioning your your goals but not overworking yourself to the point where your goals and your achievements define you because you are also worthy of experiencing life, enjoying it resting and taking days off. It's working on your mindset, your perspective, the way that you see things, what you surround yourself with and essentially just asking yourself in every situation and every day, does this serve me? Does this align to me, my highest purpose, my goals, where I want to get to in life and my happiness?

Because when your energy is in the right place, because of the life that you created for yourself and that you're being super intentional and conscious about, everything feels a whole lot better. This links into my next point which is that self-love involves a lot of reparenting. When we think about unconditional love, we often think about the love that a parent has for their child.

I want you to imagine right now that you have a child and how you would treat them and love them. I want to give them so much affection and care that maybe you never had or that you know that they deserve. Before you can give that to your child, you have to give that to yourself. Just like you would look after a child and make sure they're getting their fresh air, they're experiencing the world, they're having really good memories, you're making sure they have healthy, well-balanced meals, you have to look after yourself in the same way. Because if you are capable of showing up for your child...

in that sense or your best friend or your partner then why are you not giving yourself that same attention love and care to yourself and lastly for this chapter self-love looks like self-appreciation self-appreciation involves looking back on your growth and how far you've come whether it be scrolling through old pictures in your camera roll reading through old journal entries or simply thinking back to times when you struggled in ways that you are no longer struggling in ways that used to hurt so much that you fixed yourself and that you were completely over and healed you over now and living a much better life as a result. Well, yes, there are so many things that we are working towards and goals that we are setting ourselves. There are so many things that we once wished for that we currently have because we gave them to ourselves. We got them for ourselves.

We achieved those things and we rarely pay attention to those because we're so fixated on the future. Self-appreciation is you being present, is you realizing how far you've come. Self-appreciation is also taking yourself on dates, dressing up for yourself, giving yourself the good conversation that you focus so much on giving to others. You know how you're so focused on learning every insignificant detail of what makes somebody themselves or Understanding themselves completely to make sure that they feel safe with you You need to start giving that to yourself Just like how you would dress up really nice for a date to impress the other person You need to start impressing yourself because you feel good when you look good and this leads us on to the final chapter Which is my personal favorite chapter number three practical ways for you to love yourself in this chapter I'm going to be detailing a bunch of different tools and methods you can use to actively and physically practice self-love in your life so there is no confusion from this point And like I said before, in the book, after every single chapter, and there are 12 chapters in there, there is a chapter summary to make sure you can always revisit the book and refresh your knowledge to make sure everything you're learning, you're remembering. But also after every single chapter, there's also a homework summary where you get minimum three homework tasks per every single chapter on things to do to contribute and make progress on your self-love journey.

And in this chapter, I'm going to be sharing just a few of them, but there are way more in here, like times 12 by three, and that's just the minimum of the amount of actionable and practical support. steps you get in here. Self-love method number one, action supported beliefs. You can tell yourself, I am confident, I am worthy, I love myself, I come first, all you want. But if in your life you are too scared to say no, you rarely set boundaries, you're always putting other people first to show them how much you care about them, you are basically telling yourself that you don't matter just through your actions.

It doesn't matter how many affirmations you make, it doesn't matter You say it doesn't matter how you speak to yourself at that point when your actions don't align to your self-love mindset They go hand in hand every single new belief that you want to incorporate into your new abundant perspective or self-love lifestyle Needs a corresponding action so if you want to start believing that you're confident then maybe the corresponding action for you looks like Starting to take pictures and post them on social media because that's what you always want to do or it looks like going out with No makeup on or it looks like going out and talking to a stranger or taking yourself on a solo date. You are doing the action that supports the belief and therefore it makes it true in your brain and actually believable. Self-love method number two is controlled consumption. Once again, another very underrated tip. Think about it this way.

Everything we watch, everything we listen to, everything we surround ourselves with, affects our mindset. Our mindset gives us a certain set of thoughts and our thoughts create our reality. When you love yourself, you are constantly concerning yourself with self-loving and self-serving favors that you can do for your current self and your future self to be able to get the life, the mindset, the self that you want. And therefore, you become very picky. So how does controlled consumption link into this?

Well, you are not going to be consuming celebrity dating scandal videos on the internet or watching a bunch of videos on why men are toxic when you're hot. actual goal is to be in a healthy, long-term, committed, loving relationship. It doesn't go together and it starts infiltrating your mindset and giving you scarce beliefs that all men are trash, that there's no one good out there, that people are really bad. You would instead do yourself the self-loving favor of altering your algorithm and consuming content, whether that be videos, books, or podcasts on healthy relationship tips or lessons I've learned from a healthy relationship and content about how to make a healthy relationship work because you are then influencing your mindset.

to be able to believe that all of that is possible, which then helps you go out and achieve that result much better. The same goes for concerning yourself or keeping up to date with beauty trends or unrealistic expectations and trends on social media on how you're supposed to look. It's a waste of your time.

It makes you feel like you're never good enough. It makes you keep chasing a certain standard to be... good and worthy and attractive. The same goes for the people in your life, whether it be toxic family members, whether it be friends who may not necessarily be bad people, but if they are insecure and they have a scarce mindset, that is then going to influence your mindset and you are not doing yourself any favors by allowing people to have access to you and your life who are not aligning to where you want to go.

The next self-loving method is self-discovery. Can you love someone who you don't know? No, you can't.

at all. It's impossible. And that's why self-discovery is such a key element. of building your self-love. I think inner child work and shadow work are really good practices at this.

Revisiting the things that brought you so much joy as a child is a great way of doing this. I personally love to scroll back in my camera roll and revisit old memories or watch home movies of me as a child to see who I always have been and those core elements of my personality. I love to journal using prompts to figure out who I am, what my values are, what my likes and dislikes are because sometimes we are so concerned with work and achievements and just surviving every single day that we rally actually pay attention to who we are. We are so focused on the outer and the external world of, I need to be there for this person, I need to do this, I need to make sure all this gets done, and I need these deadlines before I go to bed, wake up and do it all over again.

How often are you actually paying attention to who you are, how you're changing, how you're growing, how your mindset is evolving, what you want to change, what you want to keep, what you appreciate about yourself. This links into method number four, self-compassion. Instead of blaming yourself for the wrong decisions you've made, Give yourself permission to actually be human for once.

I always say this to people when they might've gotten into the wrong dating scenario, friendship group relationship, and it's all failed and it's gone. And they're like, I can't believe I did that. How would you know any better?

You've never done it before. you're learning as you go along and that's the beautiful part about it and this is where self-compassion comes into play it's about realizing that you can't be perfect you don't have all of the answers to everything because this is your first time experiencing literally everything and it's through experiences and failing and falling down and then coming back from them to learn the lesson in which you actually learn what you want self-love method number five is intentional joy there is nothing more self-loving than taking ownership of your happiness rather than just waiting for it to be the right time, the right situation, the right circumstances and events for the happiness to come to you. For you to be worthy of it, for you to earn the happiness because you've got everything you want to.

No, no, no. No matter what the circumstances, no matter what phase or era of your life you were in, you can create that happiness. Intentional joy looks like romanticizing your life, shifting your perspective on how you receive and look at every single thing you experience in life. It looks like going from FOMO, which is fear of missing out, to JOMO.

which is joy of missing out. It's seeing the good in every single thing and how it serves you in your greatest purpose. And of course, I go more into depth with what German is and how to practice it in my book, Buy Yourself the Damn Flowers. And that leads us onto my final self-love.

Practical method that I'm going to be sharing for this video. I want to sum it up with boundaries aren't about other people at all It's not about punishing someone for the way that they treated you. It's not about cutting people out Boundaries are actually all about you boundaries. Are you taking? back control of the life that you experience and the behavior that you accept from other people.

It's not about punishing them or controlling their behavior. It's about ensuring that you are getting the experiences that serve you and align to the life that you want to experience. And what ties into this, which is something that I don't think a lot of people talk about, is self-boundaries. Which is when you do what you say you're going to do when you said you were going to do it.

Now, self-boundaries are a little bit different. Because they're all about yourself and you maintain all of the control. in your life because you are the one in the driver's seat, then you cannot fulfill or complete a self-boundary without committing action to it. Self-boundaries are all about making sure that you're being self-loving and you are not neglecting yourself. So let's say you've set the self-boundary of I'm going to make sure I work out consistently this month.

You fulfilling that boundary looks like scheduling time in your calendar of when you are actually going to work out, buying the membership to hold yourself accountable, booking in workout classes in advance, setting up different types of morning routines which align. to different phases of your cycle or your routine or your busyness or the time that you're going to have that day. But that is you planning in advance to make sure that you show up for yourself, in the promise that you made for yourself.

And there is nothing more self-loving than that. Those were just some of the lessons that I've learned on my self-love journey, but there are truly so many more in this book. There's still part two, which is all about healing and part three, which is all about reawakening and your life after completing self-love, which I didn't even touch on in this video because there's just so much to say.

But I really hope you guys enjoyed the insights and the lessons that I gave in this video and it's inspired you to start your self-loving journey and it's given you a bunch of tips and ideas on how to start this going forward. remember that you can buy my book in stores all over the UK or on Audible or on Kindle. And depending where you are, you can pre-order this now because it's releasing in December in certain countries.

I can't wait to hear what you all think about this book because I truly poured my entire heart and soul into it with all of the experiences and lessons that I learned into it as well. And I'm so confident that it's going to completely transform your life when you read it because I honestly wrote the book that I wish I could have read that would have gotten me. my dreams and my desired result a whole lot faster. Thank you so much to those of you who have already purchased the book and are supporting me on this journey.

I love you guys so much. Thank you for just watching this video. I would love if you guys could comment down below and let me know what you enjoyed about it because I love to read through them. And I will see you guys same time next week for a brand new video on Friday.

I appreciate you, bye.