Ep #6: Learning to Love Yourself | Becoming You Again Podcast
many divorced women discover they have a low self esteem and their self love is extremely low. Let's change that.
Divorce is a catalyst for you to see how strong your relationship with yourself is and how much you truly love yourself. Unfortunately for many divorced women their self esteem and self love are extremely low. Listen in to discover how to love yourself again and a stronger bond with yourself.
In today's episode I'm going to teach you how to love yourself more and create a strong relationship with yourself.
If you're tired of constantly beating yourself up, putting yourself down, falling for the same guys, letting people walk all over you and feeling miserable in the meantime, then you need to schedule your free consult call with me. Click here to schedule.
What you'll learn from this episode:
The most important relationship in your life.
What a relationship actually is.
Why self love is so important.
The self love exercise.
Thinking about yourself differently.
List to the full episode:
Full Episode Transcript:
Hi! Welcome back to Becoming You Again. I’m your host, Karin Nelson. Today I really wanted to dive deep into the topic of loving yourself. I wanted to talk about the love you have for yourself, because here’s the thing about divorce. Divorce is a catalyst for you to see how strong your relationship with yourself is and how much you truly love yourself. Unfortunately for many women who come out of a divorce this is a way for them to see how little regard they give to themselves. How little they actually love themselves. How little they respect their relationship with themselves. For me, this was 100% true. It’s why the majority of my clients come to work with me. It’s because we get out of this relationship where we often have relied on the other person to validate who we are, to give us love, to fill that void inside of us and then we get out of this relationship, this marriage and we’re like hang on. I don’t feel great. I don’t like myself. I don’t want to be with this person that I am because I don’t know this person and it feels very uncomfortable. And so when I have clients who come to work with me this is the number one reason they come. They want to change the relationship with themselves. They want to learn to love themselves more. So that is what I’m talking about it today with all of you.
Your relationship with you is THE most important one in your life. Women who are raised in this society today, especially in the western world are not taught this. It’s ingrained in our culture from the time we’re little that it’s the women’s JOB, and I mean capital JOB, to put others first – especially their partners and their children. But this is a lie and it’s something you have to work on intentionally so that you can deprogram that from your brain.
Your relationship with you is the only relationship you've had since the moment you were born (even though you didn't know it at the time), and it's the one relationship that has been with you throughout every second of your life, and, and – this is big, guys, listen…It's the one relationship that will stay with you until the very end.
The really amazing news about this is your relationship with yourself is entirely within your power to be a good one or that one. Right? There is no other relationship in your life that you fully get to decide if it's good or bad, because with other relationships there are other things outside of your control. However, your relationship with you is 100% in your control.
You are entirely in charge of deciding how you'll treat yourself, how you will talk to yourself, how you see yourself, how you validate yourself, how you protect yourself, how you stand up for yourself, and how you love yourself.
I have to start by explaining what a relationship actually is. A relationship is how you think about someone or something. It is not something that we can see. It can’t be touched or measured. We can’t even all agree on what it is – even if it’s between two people. Because one person may think that a relationship is one way and the other person may think it’s totally different. Because relationships are completely in our minds as a story that we tell ourselves.
This is proven when I have clients who come to me and they say, “My husband asked for a divorce and I had no idea that we had problems in our marriage. I thought our relationship was great.” Or when you have a favorite podcast and you listen to the podcast host over and over and over and you feel directly connected to them. Like they could be your best friend if you ever actually met in real life because you have created a relationship in your mind by what you are thinking about the other person. The relationship you have with other people is all based off of the story that you’re telling yourself and guess what? Your relationship with yourself is no different.
I want you to take a minute and think about the story that you tell yourself about you. Do you think that your life is hard, or unfair or that it’s not turning out the way it is supposed to? Do you think that you’re inadequate, unworthy, not good enough, not pretty enough? What’s the story that you’re telling yourself in your head about you, your life, your experience? Odds are if you’re telling yourself a story like this about you and your life, then you’re probably not going to have a good relationship with yourself. You’re probably not going to love yourself very much.
So the question that I want you to ask yourself is, am I choosing how I want to think about myself and my life, or am I just letting my brain tell me this is the truth and there’s nothing I can do about it?
When I was going through my divorce, I became very aware that I didn’t like myself. I had a terrible relationship with myself. I felt miserable all the time. I never wanted to look in the mirror. I didn’t buy myself clothes because I didn’t think I deserved them because I thought well I just weigh too much so why would I want to spend money on me at the weight that I am. I didn’t value my opinions. I would never tell people what I really thought. I would never make decisions. I just really didn’t like who I was. I had to work on this. I had to learn to love myself again and I had to learn to create a strong relationship with myself. One way I did that was I started talking out loud to myself, to my brain. I told myself 5 things that I liked about me every single day. I did this for months and months and months and this is not an exaggeration. I’m kind of an exaggerator much of the time but in this instance it is 100% truth. Every single day for months and months and months I told myself five things that I liked about myself and I made a promise to myself that they would be things that I believed because I had learned long ago that if you just tell yourself things that you don’t actually believe it doesn’t do any good. And so I would pick things that I really liked about myself and it was really hard the beginning. I had such a hard time coming up with five things. But I did it. And the more I did it the easier it got to be able to find more things. And then of course the longer it went I had to dig harder and deeper. But it became easier in the fact that I could see more things about myself that I really liked and that I really believed.
One of my favorite go-to thoughts is “I talk to my brain more than I listen to it.” You get to decide what your brain focuses on and the stories you tell yourself. But most of us do this the opposite way. We let our habit, subconscious brain decide what to think and decide what to feel about ourselves. This is what I was doing for most of my marriage and it’s what most likely most of you are doing as well.
The best place to start when it comes to learning to love yourself more and creating a stronger relationship with yourself is awareness. You have to know what you think about yourself. Without knowing that you’re really not going to make any strides in changing it.
Usually when we take a look at what we’re thinking about ourselves we come from a place of judgement. For example, let’s say every time I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror I think, “Ugh, lose some weight why don’t you.” And then I notice that I’m thinking that about myself but I have been wanting to change how I think about myself and so I get mad at myself because I judged myself but I shouldn’t be judging myself and so I get mad at myself for that and it just kind of continues the cycle of beating yourself up. You’re trying to change how you’re talking to yourself and yet the judgment creeps in and is keeping you from being able to make the changes that you want. When you follow awareness up with judgment you lose all your capacity to change your original thought because the judgment clouds the ability to change.
So instead I’m going to ask you guys to follow the awareness with curiosity. Curiosity lacks judgement. It’s like you’re being a scientist looking at your experiment and seeing what worked and what didn’t work and what you want to do next. This is how I want you to go about creating more self love. We’re going to take a look at what you’re thinking about yourself and then you get to decide, what’s working, what’s not working and what do I want to think next. I really want you to keep that in mind as I go through this exercise that I’m going to have you do in this podcast.
Alright so here’s the exercise for greater self love awareness. I’m going to give you 8 statements. Go through these statements and rate them on a scale of 0-10 – 1 being you never think this about yourself and 10 being you often think this about yourself. And then just kind of gauge it in between – all of the numbers in between that. I also want you write down why you rated it the number you did.
Now this is just a little disclaimer for anybody who might be listening to this podcast as you’re driving. Please don’t do this while you’re driving. You can do it in your head but I promise you it’s going to be much more useful and helpful if you can write your answers down and so if you are driving just save this part for later. Like you can listen to and go through it and it’s all good. But do the actual writing when you are in a safe space. When you are at your desk or at home or even if you want to pull your car over and get a piece of paper then. That’s totally fine. Just be safe as you are doing this as you’re listening to this podcast. Okay?
So the first statement is, I feel positive when I think about myself. Number two, it’s easy for me to do something just because I want to. Number three, I compliment myself when I’m in front of the mirror. Number four, I think that I’m enough exactly as I am. Number five, I like my unique qualities. Number six, I think it’s ok for me to take up space with my presence and my voice. Number seven, I allow my opinions to be heard. Number eight, I respect myself.
So here’s where you get to be curious. Go back and consider your answers and look at why you rated each one the way you did and notice if there’s a pattern.
But here is the really fun part. After you go through all of that. After you answer the questions and kind to become curious about your answers and why you answered them the way you did now we get to choose some new thoughts that you want to start telling yourself. That you want to start thinking about yourself. We’re going to change the narrative that is going on in your head. We know that self-love and your relationship with yourself starts with how you think about yourself. I want you to imagine your future self. I want you to imagine yourself 5 years from now. Give yourself permission to go wild with this. Sometimes we won’t allow ourselves to imagine or to become a visionary of things because we’re like that could never happen or that’s just not impossible. But I want you to just let all of that go and just imagine your biggest dream of who you are five years from now. All of the things that you’ve ever wanted to happen. All of the secret things that you secretly want to happen. You have never told anyone. All of those things come true and you are living your most amazing best life ever. I want you to imagine yourself as this person. Where do you live? What does your life look like? How do you act? How do you dress? Who are you interacting with? How are you showing up in your life? And most importantly I want you to ask yourself, what am I thinking about myself as this version of me?
Write those thoughts down. These are going to be your new goal thoughts about yourself. These are going to be your new go-to thoughts. Now, remember when I said that you have to have a thought that is believable, otherwise your brain completely rejects it. So that is the key here. You probably are not going to believe most of these new goal thoughts right off the bat. Some of them you might and that’s amazing. Use those. But sometimes when we are trying to believe new things about ourselves it takes practice. Right? You’ve had years and years of practice of telling yourself all the mean things about you. All of the things that you’ve been believing forever about yourself. So it’s going to take some time and some practice to start believing the good things. And that’s okay. One way I like to make these new thoughts more believable is to add a phrase to the beginning of my new thought. For example, I’m learning how to think…. and then I’d put in my new thought after that, right?
Or it’s possible that someday…. And then you put your new thought.
Or I’m learning to believe….new thought.
Use those kind of little bridge phrases to help you get to the belief that you someday are going to have about yourself. This is how we build new belief. This is how we build trust in yourself. This is how we build a stronger relationship with you. We are changing the narrative that is going on in your head and it has to start with new ways of thinking about you. I want you to play around with this. Let it be fun and most of all you need to practice thinking these new things about yourself. The more often you do it and the kinder and more loving you are to yourself, the stronger your relationship with you will be. You are worthy of love and respect. But it has to start with you knowing that and giving it to yourself first.
If you like what you heard on today’s podcast and you want to know more about working 1:1 with me, you can go to www.karinnelsoncoaching.com and schedule your free consult to find out more. That’s www dot Karin nelson coaching dot com.
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