The Practice Of Self-Love

What? Life isn't supposed to suck? Get out of here. Life is supposed to be good for me? I don't think so. Truth? Did you know that you have the power to create your own reality? True? Did you know that you can live the life that you've always desired? Holy? That's right. And that's why we're here. Are you ready, unless you're on Joy overload, you've come to the right place, it's time to get out of your own way and start creating more of what you want, and less of what you don't end up with the excuses. I'm your host, Jani Roberts, let's do this.

Welcome back, my friends, I am happy to be here with you. And I want to take this moment to acknowledge you for all of the effort, the energy, the work that you're doing for you, for yourself, today, we're going to focus on self love. This is probably one of the most important topics that we will ever discuss together, this is so powerful and absolutely essential to your alignment to your well being. We've really got to dig here. And we've got to look at what our pattern is, How comfortable are we won't even hear the words, haven't the phrase self love or loving oneself? How does that make you feel? You know, do you get a little twitchy, there was certainly certainly a time in my life when it made me uncomfortable. So I can completely relate to that. Now, it's way more comfortable, I wouldn't say that I don't have moments where I doubt my worthiness at all, I absolutely do have flashes of that. But confusion can fit in right in the middle of the madness. But I am knowing that self love is something that is my work to do. Only I can generate my own self love. And as it is, as well for you. So, you know, let's think about this.

Throughout our lives, particularly early on, we're taught basic skill sets, right? We're taught how to read and write well to tight.

I'm dating myself, we're also taught how to manipulate. I don't know about you, but if you've got any babies around little ones, you can see that come into play quite early on, we want to get what we want, right? Nothing wrong with that.

We're taught to configure or calculate, to, to think to theorize, to study, to analyze our lives and our work. Our relationships, were also taught to be destructive.

So there's a lot of incoming information and we pick up a lot of this residual, some of it comes in very directly, some of it just catches our eye, and we attach to it, for whatever reason. But there are many, many things that were taught.

I'm not so sure, early on, that we're taught how to love ourselves.

We know how to say please and thank you.

We're taught what is acceptable and what's not by others, by society. You know,

one of the things that just always blows my mind is the,

the missing piece of self respect for one another, as well as ourselves, to accept the fact that we're doing the best that we can, with what we have. And what people consider to be our flaws are simply areas of evolution for us. And from our perspective may not be flaws at all.

But we may judge and see what we consider to be flaws in others as well. And that teaching of compassion and understanding around the fact that people are doing the best they can with what they have with what they've done, what they've been taught, or what they've been manipulated to believe, is missing. And we are just almost led to feel as though it's an

ego kind of generated thought this one of I'm worthy I am. I love myself. I am worthy of being loved. So I just don't ever recall being taught that I was taught to, you know the Golden Rule Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. But we never really taught

fact about

do you feel as though you love yourself? Do you feel as though you know, you're worthy, I wasn't taught the opposite either. I wasn't taught that I was unworthy. So I was really fortunate in that respect, but I don't remember those types of conversations until I got to be teenager, young woman, when I started to dive into this work, and people were really talking about it. And I was uncomfortable with that conversation. So

to some degree, we're creating, it's going back to boundaries we've talked about before, we're

starting to look at what we want to embrace and what we want to release.

So at one point in my life, I was saying, I guess I was really saying no to self love. And now I'm saying yes to it. So these, these are

learning curves for us. And very, very important. So so how, how do you feel about this idea.

And as these feelings rise up, as, as I'm chatting with you,

jot them down, pay attention to them, notice them. We don't need to overanalyze in this moment, but just paying attention, as we always do, here at EY to how we feel

that you may have been raised in a in a circle

of people where, you know, you were taught to always put others before yourself, you got to take care of everybody else. And it was selfish, to consider what you needed first or ever, you know, you just don't do that. And since your role.

So I think it's fair to say that when we

just listen to those words, other people first and then if I have anything left over, I'll take care of myself kind of concept, we can, if we sit quietly, know that that's probably not going to work.

Because our, our intuitive self, our inner self, our connection to Source

certainly

teaches us if we can sit quietly and feel our way through this, that it is a beautiful thing to do for others.

But it is essential to care for ourselves.

First.

I'm just gonna let you sit with that for a second.

So what self love really is, it's a practice. And we weave it throughout our work here at eight because we know that we have to practice this understanding and compassion

for ourselves, and move away from the beating up of ourselves. pattern that we have probably been practicing quite well.

So we want to really understand that self love means nurturing our entire being, our physical body, our emotional self,

our mental self, our spiritual self, all of ourselves. And this is going to involve forgiveness work, we've talked in depth about this, we're going to look at what we're perhaps not so good at, from a place of love and go, Okay.

Over here, I feel really good about this over here. This bothers me really bothers me. When I allow myself to be verbally abused by others.

Some people would say that's a flaw, I'm going to say no, to that word, I'm going to say that's just my choice. You make your own obviously, I am going to say it's something I've picked up along the way. And I'm no longer comfortable with that. So I don't see it as a flaw. Just see it as an area that that is looking for healing.

And I'm going to embrace all of the parts of myself. And I'm going to look at what is uncomfortable what is not working for me.

And if there's a part of myself, that really loves to beat me up.

We're going to have a conversation

and and that work

A require assistance that may be work that you don't necessarily want to do on your own. I work in the field of shamanic practice, and that is the type of thing that we we journey for.

And I feel that I did that work assistant, and I'm

working toward doing that for others as well. And that was such a fast track. For me, I can't even it's hard to articulate that as another call. But just note itself, you may require some assistance there.

And

contrary to what a lot of people think, self love isn't all about just, you know, go me Go me ego, ego, ego kinds of thoughts, it's, it's very much about looking at what isn't working, what some would consider a flaw or weakness, or

I'm actually reading a book right now that's quite interesting as shadow it might be considered that

if you've done shadow work, you know what I mean there. And that is also another call, we will get to. But

there are parts of us that we simply need to embrace. And he'll

take a few deep breaths.

And give yourself that gift. Even if it's just cracking the door open to considering the fact that

you're not broken.

You just have some areas that need to be healed, like we all do. And we will all continue

to do, we'll need to do it. Because once we heal,

parts that are really currently needing our attention, other things are going to come up, life is going to continue to challenge us. And that's a good thing. Because that's how we expand. That's how we grow. That's how we learn. That's how we all move forward, individually and collectively. So

you are fabulous. And you are worthy of everything you desire. And certainly Loving yourself is one of those things, regardless of awareness.

And without that self love.

Breathe.

Until you fully love yourself first.

You'll never fully be able to love someone else. In my opinion,

there will always be a gap. You'll always be a bit on guard and trusting

it expecting something to go wrong?

Can you tell that I'm talking a little bit of perhaps about my own journey prior to coming into self love.

You may have a background where just this conversation would be considered

evil or dark or

sinful or

just socially unacceptable.

I think we're encouraged to suffer.

I'm not a believer in that.

We will inevitably, to some degree suffer.

But we don't need to suffer all the time. We don't need to suffer in order to be worthy.

In my opinion,

we don't need to sacrifice our joy.

For others.

We can have both. I think one of the things that we've forgotten is that

when someone that we love is not fully well. They're suffering from trauma, physical situation, however, it's manifesting.

It's important that we hold space for them and we send them love regardless of how we feel toward them. Because love is the only thing that's real. And their wellness does affect ours. Because we're all connected. You know, there was a time. For example, within the shamanic work, we know that when someone in a community would become ill, the entire community would come together to assist because they were very clear that collectively, they were more powerful than individually. They would be they would function more fully as a community when they were all well and they could rely on each other. If something happened and they needed assistance. They needed support. They needed love. I'm not talking about going in and fixing things I'm talking about simply

Holding space and being there for someone. And, and perhaps it would be more depending on the gifts that you have, maybe you would go in and assist. But simply making that a priority so that as a whole, we could reach our full potential. So this idea that, you know, taking care of ourselves, first is just met with this intense, like wall of resistance is just nonsense doesn't work. So if you don't believe me that it's nonsense, you can look around and just take it in.

How's that working?

If we want to hold a powerful, positive presence in this world, we must care for ourselves. And then, of course, for others, we must be compassionate toward our own healing what we need what has happened to ourselves in our lives, what gaps we need to fill what wounds we need to heal all of that we must. And when we do our own work, it is so much easier to be compassionate towards others, because we understand Whoa, I didn't even know I had a lot of that going on. Certainly, I'm not the only one. And we can see it in others. When we've done our own work. We're like,

I know what's going on there. I can really feel compassion. I know what that feels like. But when we try to manage and compartmentalize and just pretend, oh, I can't show that I that I'm weak that I need any type of healing. That's just all woowoo that's for weak people. Push it the most brave, seek the help. We've talked about this. So it's just a matter of getting our head around it.

Yeah, self love. Gotta start there.

We can't give away we can't give people we don't have so if we don't have self love, how are we going to give love you know, contemplate this. It is understandable how people could confuse self love with egotism but or you know, narcissism or your self indulgent, you know, you're just really indulgent. It's all about self self, self self self. Self indulgence is your vibe. You only talk about you. That's not an expression, in my opinion of self love. If I feel the need to talk about myself all the time, I'm probably insecure. I'm probably doubting my own abilities. I'm definitely not doing my work. Because if I was I would be equally interested in what is happening for me, is what is happening for you.

Have you noticed? How when you simply become fully present, when you're with another human being, and you look them in the eye and you ask them, How are you doing? Maybe you touch their hand or their arm? How are you and you look them directly in the eye? That is a very powerful connection. That's very different than Hey, what's up? How you doing? Oh, I'm fine. Okay, next. That's okay, we're gonna do that. But I'm talking about really being present, and genuinely asking, how are you doing?

I can almost guarantee that they're going to turn around and ask you how you're doing. And if they asked you first, and you give them a sincere and truthful and full answer, you are in evidently going to immediately and how are you? Thank you for asking, how are you? And maybe my answer is I'm hanging in there. Been hitting some bumps in the road, maybe I don't want to go into it. But I'm gonna be truthful, hanging in there right now then dealing with some stuff. But you know, I'm working. I'm working through it. I'm working my practice. And I'm knowing it's all it's all working out as it should. How are you doing?

Thank you so much for asking me that. How are you doing? Maybe now we can have a conversation. Now we can actually connect. So it's not about self indulgence. Just about taking care of yourself.

When you love yourself, you want to be the best you can be you want to feel the best. You can feel physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually. You want to practice your inner work you want to do this all you want to do thework. You want to look at it? How could that possibly be an unacceptable thing? Or a negative thing? How could that be?

Wanting to be the best that you can possibly be? Not financially or outwardly. And I'm not criticizing those are all that's like icing on the cake. I'm talking about the cake.

The actual foundation? How could wanting to be the best human being you can be be a bad thing. I just finally get it guys. I just I don't know how could be.

So we're taught that. But I'm thinking now I'm thinking No.

But I definitely have have experienced the thought process of if a person is successful, then it must have been at the expense of others. And therefore they are fill in the blank. Word. I just made that up. Where did that come from? Probably don't even know anything about these people. And even if I do, I haven't walked in their shoes. I don't know their whole story. I'm just making shit up.

Why probably to make myself feel better. Is that a flaw? I don't see it that way. Is there some healing work to do around that? Most likely? If I'm mindful about my own self love, then I'm really aware of what comes out of my mouth. Whether or not I'm being harmful to others, whether or not I'm being critical of them.

Because it's the Do Unto Others. I'm not going to feel better. If I hurt someone else, just because they hurt me. I'm not I could. Maybe I get a little temporary relief I've never experienced that. didn't take me long to figure this one out.

But it just doesn't do the trick. I'm still there. My thoughts are still there. It's really self destructive. So if I'm really loathing someone, is it really hurting them? Or is it self destruction? This is a desire for a truthful, self exploration a journey. And it requires respect, and love and compassion for oneself.

If I'm coming from ego, I'm relying on the I'm putting on my power outside. I'm relying on others to acknowledge how worthy I am. That's going to be a long wait. Good luck with that. No judgment around you have to go through that lesson. I certainly had to go through it. Before I realized, wait a minute, I'm giving all my power away.

Now we know that this process of self love and waking up spiritually are powerfully connected. We are knowing that if we commit to this practice, living in alignment, really commit to it. It's all about self love. We are committing to spiritual transformation. Expansion. That's pretty cool. You might feel like it's a little scary. But let me let me ask you this. What could be scarier than putting your worth in the hands of another for me, nothing. Nothing could be scarier because I've tried it and it sucks. So this isn't something that we do on the surface. This is something we dive deep on now there are a lot of things that you can do to get this moving and I'm going to move on the surface a little bit here. Lightly and I want you to

As I list these, gauge it for yourself how it makes you feel. Maybe, you know, I don't want to label it, but maybe just do something like good, bad, indifferent. So G B, I don't know you you decide but just gauge it for yourself. Steps steps, okay, towards self love. Change your diet just swap out some shitty food for something good. Once a day. Keep it simple. Don't try to you know, you know what I'm saying? Don't try to go crazy. Just simple.

No guilt attached zero. eat and eat, enjoy and bless what you're eating. But just for you. Not because you want someone else to look at you and go Oh, you look so good. See, there's the ego. Oh, you look like you lost weight bla bla bla.

You can't even win with that. Because then it's like, oh, so before you used to tell me I look great. Now you're telling me I look great. So I didn't look great before you I mean, you're just going down a slippery slope. So just simple. Okay. identify what's going on with the voices in your head. Pay attention to him.

Alright, it's like your inner ones. Do they criticize do they worry? Do they make you feel like a victim? Is there a lot of negative self talk in general. Just one of them want you to be a perfectionist is one of them super compassionate, I don't know. Has that make you feel thinking about identifying those. This practice can help you with this tremendously. Start reading the books will quiet your mind and empower your soul. It's literally food. Practice this inner work. Use the tools that we've been giving you. Experiment with journeying or self hypnosis.

Get the rest you need. Listen to your body.

Set boundaries.

Pay attention to your patterns or your like mental, like traps that you set for yourself.

Treat yourself like you treat your best friend or someone you love. Unconditionally.

Practice being alone. That's a good one. There's so much power in solitude, oh my gosh. Meditate.

And again, if sitting still doesn't work for you, we have those tools. meditation brings in self awareness. Truth bottom line. No one can argue with that might be uncomfortable, but it brings in self awareness. Identify people in your life that their energy is not serving you. You never feel good in their presence. When they come into your space. And when they go out. You never feel good. Identifying and then seek people who do support you.

Don't rely on them. I'm not talking about you need down I'm just saying why not? If you have a choice of who you're going to surround yourself with, why not pick some people who get it. This goes into the next point trusting your intuition. Trusting your inner being How do you feel about that? Do you trust yourself? Put your feet in the dirt. Major heels. Sand dirt, snow, whatever. Take your shoes off. Connect. Move your body every day. Five minutes 60 minutes I don't care. Just move. Alright, now take a deep breath and ask you to do a technical How do I want to say this? A way to detox from technology detox from technology.

I want you to set a specific amount of time that you can Be engaged in social media or computer time, whatever, limit it to a certain amount so that you can have time to read. And you can have time to put your feet in the dirt. And you can have time to meditate, etc, etc.

Find some type of art to work with whether you color paint, draw, doodle, take a stick, and play in the sand on the beach color is really powerful. Play with that, maybe it's puzzles, maybe it's I don't know, I'm gonna let you go with that. There's so many options. And of course, we want to take time to play in what brings us joy. So if you have a powerful desire around something, you know, we just touched on art, but it could be anything. Anything, it really gets you excited just thinking about doing it.

It doesn't matter, right dance design, doesn't matter. Drive, get on your motorcycle and go, I don't know what whatever it is.Time, make the time.Pay attention to the things that are really bringing you stress in your life. And see if you can't begin to reduce those. Again, I know this can be we have tools for you to help you take these steps. You know, as I'm moving through this, it might feel a bit overwhelming. But this this is so doable. Most of us just need a you know, some guidance. So we don't get overwhelmed. We can give you that. And then embrace the contrast embrace what's not working in your life. Because that your teacher to guide you to your healing. It's not a bad thing is a big big time good thing.

It is time to feed the soul. How do you feel about that feeding your soul nourishing your soul. It's time that vulnerable part of you needs to be fed needs to be fueled need to be needs to be embraced. It's not a weakness. It is your source of power, of connection of truth. It's where your answers lie.

Or true. If you haven't started consistent spiritual practice. I don't know what else I can say to encourage you. But the time is now for you. Structure is helpful. I would love to help you further on your journey.

But that's up to you. I'm simply here to encourage you to find the way that feels right for you to no longer neglect your inner self, your inner ones to understand that you are worthy and that you are capable of self love and without it. You are literally holding yourself apart from all that is trying to come to you know this about yourself. Take this step do it. Smile about it you are worthy of self love. You have the ability.Your time is now the universe's waiting to assist you.

Now it's up to you to decide. And with that, I'm gonna let you go ahead and do that. Decide for yourself now. And if it's not yet, that's cool.

But I want you to know that we're here for you and you're ready. Until next time, Much Love nothing but love. We'll talk soon. Peace