3 Steps For More Self Love And Acceptance
Today I’m sharing 3 things you can do for self love and self acceptance.
If you’re here thinking, HA! Must be nice for Gwen to love and accept herself, clearly she’s got it all, let me tell you, self acceptance and self love have, for most of my life, been a hilarious concept.
(Only thin, rich, successful people that have a nanny get to be happy and love and accept themselves! Right?)
And then I worked with rich successful people with nanny’s and it turns out, they don’t always love and accept themselves either.
So that bubble was burst.
But anyway, gradually over the course of my twisted up and wonderful life, I realised that self love and acceptance WAS an option for anyone, no matter who they are or what their circumstances are or what they’re up to at the moment.
Including you.
To start on a journey to self love and self acceptance here’s what we’re going to do:
Start to actually pay attention to how you’re feeling and doing and how things are really going for you.
Start to make small changes that are genuine acts of self love.
Start paying attention to how you’re thinking about yourself and talking about yourself.
Number 1
Actually paying attention to how you’re feeling and doing, and how things are REALLY going for you.
When things feel hard or uncomfortable, for many of us our trigger response is to numb out. To check out of the discomfort. I know I talk about this a lot here but it’s because it’s a HUGE part of what causes us to suffer and struggle.
We avoid the bad feeling in order to not feel it, only it doesn’t go away. It’s always there causing us to do things like eat, drink, read romance novels based in Europe on a vineyard, or you know, watch shows or scroll late into the night or while our kids are telling us the most mind numbing but apparently important story from their day.
We check out. Often. All in an attempt to avoid feeling uncomfortable feelings.
Sad, angry, scared, disappointed, lonely, guilty, ashamed… whatever it is.
There’s endless nuances to this, that is why it comes up so often on this show. Because we ALL DO IT in some capacity. Or, I’ve yet to talk to someone who doesn’t.
But it never works. Jamming the feelings under a bag of cheesies doesn’t make those feelings go away. They're still there, only now there’s a layer of cheesies on top of them, which also comes with its own layer of bad feelings. To which we attempt to avoid by layering in consuming endless content when we’d planned to be batch cooking or going for a walk.
Do you see how things add up and impact us?
Feeling will never go away unless they have been heard and acknowledged.
NUMBER 2
Start to make small changes that are genuine acts of self love.
FIRST, let’s get clear about what GENUINE ACTS OF SELF LOVE are, and are NOT.
Genuine acts of self love are not:
Staying up super late because it’s the only time you have, or because you feel lonely and don’t want to go to bed.
It’s not over drinking so you can manage the end of the day exhaustion and overwhelm you’re feeling.
It’s not eating food that gives you immense mouth pleasure while you're eating it, but also makes you feel horrible in your body.
It’s not zoning out on screens, or cheesy romance novels or porn or whatever.
As a side note, I am not telling you to NEVER do these things, I’m saying there’s a big diference between having a gin and soda with a few besties on the weekend in celebration of togetherness, vs having a bottle of chardonnay after work to cope with the shit storm that your day was and the fact that your kids are acting like monsters. Right?
GENUINE acts of self love are:
Cooking a homemade meal
Going for a walk
Taking a shower to release the pressure of the day
Hydrating…
I have a free list of genuine self love actions on my HOME PAGE that you should go and download for more clarity on this!
The most important thing to understand is that genuine acts of self love create an entirely different relationship.
When we do things that feel like instant gratification and pleasure but ultimately hurt our body, it’s like being in a toxic relationship. We don’t build trust, we can’t rely on that person, we don’t know if they will be nice or horrible… It’s messy and hard and ultimately we don’t feel safe.
BUT! When we do actions of self love we start to feel loved. We start to feel noticed and taken care of.
Think about being in a relationship with someone who encouraged you to do things that ultimately made you feel bad, physically, emotionally and mentally. What does that feel like for you? How do you feel in that relationship?
Now imagine you're in a relationship with someone who makes you soup when you’re tired or feel sad or under the weather. Who gets you out for a walk when you feel stagnant and lonely. Who encourages you to sign up for things when your loneliness gets too loud. Who brings you water. Who listens to you and acknowledges you. Who doesn't try and make you hide your fears and feelings, and instead stays open and curious and without judgement.
Feel that difference.
Most of us don’t think about how our actions impact our relationship with ourselves.
Which leads us perfectly to…
NUMBER 3
Start paying attention to how you’re thinking about yourself and talking about yourself.
When you start paying attention to this you will become aware of a potentially abusive relationship that might be scary to uncover, but the relationship you have with yourself is the most important relationship you will ever have, so you better figure it out.
If you’re self thoughts are always negative you will always feel bad and you will always want to numb those feelings out.
If you use words to describe yourself what are hurtful or dismissive you will quietly be creating the belief that you are worthless…
I spent a lifetime hating myself and making jokes about myself. Excusing myself endless for being stupid, ugly, untalented, unworthy, unhelpful…
This is a clear defence technique used to beat people to the punchline, and it comes from having a father who would always beat me to the punchline first so I had to get really quick at it.
If I could say it first I could own it and nobody else could hurt me.
What kind of relationship does that sound like to you?
Hot tip! It’s not a healthy one.
This is hard to catch because often we’ve been doing it for so long we don’t even notice the impact it has anymore, but the challenge is, we believe it. We say it, often all the time, and so we believe it.
Maybe you make jokes about your body, or being a hot mess, or being crap at finances, or if you’re like me, you make jokes about being too stupid to figure shit out…
What happens is THAT becomes your identity.
But of course, it’s complete bullshit.
When we laugh at our own jokes about ourselves, we quietly break our own heart. We quietly sever trust and love and acceptance and safety.
IWhat you say and think about yourself is HUGE. There’s no space for hurtful jokes.
So! How do we actually make progress on this work?
You need to be willing to take your very precious time and put in effort.
Of course the best way to do this is to work with a coach, and I know that might sound like a sales pitch, but I actually mean it from my own experience.
Having someone there who calls you out and catches all the sneaky ways you try and sever the connection with yourself is legit life changing.
It IS something you can do on your own, but be ready to work double hard because catching how we do this is challenging, because most often we believe our thoughts and don’t think, or notice to challenge or question them.
So I always encourage people to start with the actions! Printout the freebie and get to work doing small actions every day that are genuine ACTIONS of self love.
LOVE IS AN ACTION that feelings follow.
The rest of it is going to take effort in self awareness and the best way to do that is to journal every damn day.
I know, you might not WANT to journal, or you might not LIKE to journal. I hear you, but if you’re not going to hire a good coach, and you’re not going to journal, you’re basically deciding to continue to struggle with loving yourself.
I’m not saying it’s essential, but I’m saying it’s FASTER.
If you want to take the next 10 or so years sorting your shit out, that’s ok, but If you want to do this work at a faster pace, hire a coach.
If you’re not ready for that but you’re ready for change, get some paper.
For number 1 and 3 I want you to check in daily with yourself and your journal and start asking yourself questions. Get curious about how you are and what you think and say about yourself.
Practice noticing if you make a joke about yourself or if you excuse yourself in some way. Notice your thoughts before you dive into your ice cream. Notice your feelings. Notice your energy.
Notice the relationship you have with yourself. How do you treat yourself? How do you talk about yourself? How do you feel about yourself? What are you doing to create the relationship you WANT?
It’s not light work, but it’s life changing.
This relationship is at the root of every single action your taking in your life right now.
If you want to start prioritising your health, if you want to build your business, if you want to fall in love… THIS is the work you need to do in order to make everything else easier for you.
Thanks for reading!
Xox,
Gwen
