Hey sweet sunshine,

Today we’re talking about self love and acceptance and digging into my favourite practice that will help you on your journey to changing the conversation you’re having with yourself. 

There’s no work more important than this work, so listen up! ;)

Quickly I wanted to mention that if you want to hear more about this topic you could jump over the my podcast The Missing Ingredient with Gwen wherever you listen to your podcasts, or you can find it on my homepage!

Ok, here we go…

I have noticed that when we shift into the mode of self love, our life starts to shift around us in the most healing and beautiful ways. 

Sometimes it means hard things are happening, but when we do hard things from a place of self love it feels like a hard thing we are READY and WILLING to go into battle for. 

Because when we start to love and accept ourselves we might find that we need to change some things in our life. We might discover our relationship needs work, our job is toxic, or our friendships are hurtful.

We might discover that what we’re eating is making us feel unwell, that our sedentary habits are hurting our body, and that our overflow of stress, anxiety and overwhelm is, well, the worst.

So when I work with clients that are open to it, I deeply encourage them to start a self love practice because if we can get a shift on THAT level, we can shift EVERYTHING.

First of all I do want to acknowledge that our brain will most likely want to put up some pretty hefty walls with this stuff. It will shut it down as stupid and ridiculous and a total waste of time.

And of course, I cannot say for sure that anything covered here will cause an immediate transformation, and also maybe these ideas are really stupid. 

But! I want you to entertain the idea first, that perhaps your brain is being a jerk if it’s thinking these things. 

And below that even, perhaps your brain is being scared of change and scared of all that comes with the potential of change and scared of the possibility of rejection and scared of potentially failing, and just scared of all the things that could go wrong. 

Honestly, it seems that that’s usually a solid part of what our brain does. 

And it’s both paralyzing and defeating at the same time.

But it’s ok. 

Often I like to think about my first thoughts as a small child that is scared of EVERYTHING, because honestly, that’s what’s happening for me. 

It might not be that way for everyone, but this allows me to step back and assess the situation with more compassion and kindness and patience, and love even. 

Now, as mentioned, I am of the mind that self love is at the root of all healing, and when we work on self love and acceptance and just being gentle with ourselves we often find a new ability to really start taking care of ourselves in a new capacity. 

We might not do things “perfectly” but we might create a baseline that shows us every day that we do actually think we are worthy of nourishment and health and happiness and joy success and of all kinds goodness.

I want you to know that I believe this is a journey, and a personal or unique one to be sure. 

There are some of us that have a broken link inside that has been there since as long as we can remember and the idea of loving ourselves feels like suggesting we swim to the moon… impossible. 

And there are others that are already on their way, and have already found that slice of knowing that I believe really does live inside all of us.

The slice of knowing is that we DO in fact love ourselves. 

That we WANT to accept ourselves and to embrace ourselves and our yearning for our own love and acceptance.

I think I’ve talked about it before, the idea of who’s love do we crave the most?

I believe it’s our own.

That all this time the person who’s love and energy and attention and kindness and acceptance we crave with all of our heart, is in fact, our own. 

Anyway, I digress. If you want to learn more I did a podcast episode called Who’s Love Do You Crave The Most and I explain this in greater details and you can find that on the bottom of my homepage.

So in full disclosure I was in the first category; existing without any connection to self love and looking for it externally always, and for much of my life, in all the wrong places. 

With the help of the practice I’ll share in a hot minute I have slowly shifted. 

Not perfectly and not always and not as if I have arrived at a destination, but surely as if I am on the journey. And it feels good. 

Sometimes I get lost my sweet friend, and that’s ok because I am always looping back into this practice I will share with you RIGHT NOW! 

For those of you who’ve been around my platform for a while this will come as ZERO surprise to you, but my favourite tool for self love and acceptance is… 

GRATITUDE! 

I know, it might seem like a cheesy, overdone woowoo concept or word that has been overused to the point that we’re not sure if it even means anything anymore… but just hold tight for a hot minute because this has been the most powerful tool in actually changing most areas of my life.

So yeah, even though it might be a bit cliche, it’s still on point. 

Gratitude has been an essential ingredient in my own journey to learning to love and accept myself and even though it gets tossed around like confetti at an 80s wedding — honestly, I don’t think I ever went to a wedding in the 80s but I imagine there was a lot of confetti going on, it’s a powerful place to start our healing and self love journey. 

Because this is a gratitude practice focused completely ON YOU. 

This can and should apply to your body, your brains, your tenacity, your bravery, your accomplishments and failure, your wins and losses and lessons, your kindness, your empathy, your left earlobe, your organs, your everything… every single thing about you. 

It can and should induce things you're proud of but feel uncomfortable to admit out loud to people, or things you have accomplished, or things you have done that need a space to be celebrated. 

We have GOT TO CELEBRATE THAT SHIT!

So often we brush things under the rug or act bashful or shy about our wins and efforts. We’re taught to deny these things so we don’t seem conceited or self involved and vain. 

So many of us have been led to believe the idea that owning our goodness and greatness makes us self centred or egotistic or arrogant or boastful or immodest or smug or full of ourselves… so we let it bleed out of us in silence.

We literally have a framework that tells us that it is bad to love and appreciate ourselves and our gifts and strengths, but to be modest is good… 

Complete and utter GARBAGE I tell you!

And damaging.

And if you’re raising a girl and that doesn’t fill you with fire that makes you want to show HER what it looks like to love and accept yourself, I don’t know what will!

Okay, I’m getting spicy here BUT! that’s because this matters so dang much!

We need to learn to love ourselves and celebrate ourselves and let that be OKAY. Let it be GOOD and GREAT.

So we need to create a place for that in our lives. 

And THIS is that space! You are creating that space by doing THIS work!

It’s for you and about you and focused entirely on YOU, and the spillover will NOT make you a narcissistic jerk who only cares about herself. 

Ok? 

I will tell you what it might make you feel though… FULL. COMPLETE. WORTHY. ENOUGH. LOVED. SEEN. SAFE. WHOLE.

And I want you to take a second and think about how feeling those feels will impact how you show up for your life and the people in it…

What would change about you?  

Yes, it can be hard to start this, and yes I suggest every single person does this for at least the next 6 years.

For real though, in the beginning I suggest sticking to this practice for a solid 30 to 60 days. And I know, you’re not always going to nail it, and that’s just fine, but do your absolute best to stick to it. 

Even, and actually ESPECIALLY if it seems stupid or redundant or hard or like a waste of time… 

Most of the time these are red flags. They are self sabotaging thoughts designed to keep you in line and feeling like crud about yourself. 

Do not let these thoughts make the decisions in this celebration of YOU space you are creating!

These thoughts are generally fearful thoughts that are trying to keep you safe from being rejected or hurt. And these thoughts have been working HARD all these years, believing they were keeping you safe. Let them know they are ok, they are safe, and you are going to start doing a self gratitude list and they can just come along for the ride and those thoughts can take a rest now.

Over time you won’t hear them so loud, and over time even those thoughts won’t believe themselves. 

Now love, if you are deep in the trenches with this, please seek out help. You are worthy of the support required. You are. Find a therapist who can hold all the space needed in order for you to unpack the boxes in the shadows, and at the same time, do this.  

So what does this practice look like? 

It looks like sitting down daily with a pen and paper and writing out something, preferably 3 or more things that you are grateful for about YOU. 

It can be something from today or from your past, it can and should be focused on big and tiny things and moments, it can and should at some point start to include parts of your body, and it will absolutely be uncomfortable.   

This practice is my favourite for connecting to self love because we cannot feel gratitude and hate at the same time, and also because if it feels outrageously uncomfortable we can always start with how amazing our small intestines are and our how incredible our microbiome is.

Just in there growing like a garden, trillions of microorganisms extracting nutrients and minerals and all the essentials from the food we eat without us even thinking about it… So cool! (I’m a total nerd and I love and accept that about myself.)

We can start with things that feel like the lowest hanging fruit, and challenge ourselves to come back to the practice every day and push deeper.

Heal some unknown wound.

Break some unknown and unhelpful belief.

Shine light into the all the places that have been waiting for you to notice and celebrate. 

Here’s the thing though, the real work comes from actually experiencing the sensation of gratitude when doing this work.

Letting yourself be washed in the sensations of expansion and joy and light – or however gratitude feels for you! 

THAT is what we’re working at here, and that can also be the harder part to find, because we can intellectual think thoughts of gratitude, we can say “I am grateful for my legs and my nose hairs” and write them down on the paper and check our daily self love gratitude off the list of things to do without even actually FEELING grateful for those things… and I mean, nose hairs are VERY cool so they deserve some real heart felt love! 

So yes, the letting yourself actually feeeeeel the sensation of gratitude towards YOURSELF is the work, and it can be hard, and that’s why we need to practice.  

So before you start thinking of your list for the day you can let yourself feel grateful for something outside of you if needed. 

Maybe imagine the physical sensation of gratitude you get when your kids give you a tight hug out of nowhere, or the light filters through the trees in just the right way and makes you believe in magic for that sliver of time. 

Cultivate the sensation you feel in your body so you know what you’re aiming for, and then start your practice. 

You can surely tell I’m pretty pumped up on gratitude, and I will in the future share with you my own journey of how gratitude has changed my life. 

But for now, if you have more questions don’t hesitate to reach out by sending me an email or come hangout with me on Instagram at @gwenjohnsonofficial and DM me.

I hope you give this a try if you’ve been feeling like you're not totally in love with who you are. I understand that it might seem basic, but it’s actually quite hard and also incredibly healing. 

Hard things often have that kind of potential.

Who we really are is worthy, enough, lovable, beautiful, smart and really just good enough in all the ways.

Do you know how I know?

Because I have tried to map out what changes between the time we were born and when we were children to when we are adults, trying to find when this truth changes. 

And then I spent a lot of time thinking about my own babies and what would make them truly spectacular when they were 2 but utter garbage when there were 22 or 42 and here’s what I came up with…

For all of us, the only thing that changes between the time we are born and the time in our life when we start “knowing” we are worthless – is our thoughts. 

Just our thoughts.

Yes, there are many THINGS that happen in that gap. So many things. And those things create thoughts about who we are and how we fit.

Some of these things are truly horrific, and if those things are too heavy for you to carry alone find a trained professional that will help because these things can be a lot like carrying a refrigerator… better done with help.

I can actually remember the slip for me, and it started when I was maybe 5 or so. The world around me became filled with confusion and things that I could no longer hide from or pretend my way around. They were there and loud and full of hurt, and they had been pushing in on me all along.

When we are that little our brain hasn’t developed the ability to separate ourselves from the things happening in our world. We can’t look at a situation and understand that it’s them, not us or something we did wrong.

So, weeds get planted.

You know, I think this part of having children is the thing that has always scares me the most because no matter how hard I try I know I will do or say something that will land wrong and create a crack in my children.

Anyway, that’s a story for another time and also, I know being raised in a house that feels safe and full of love is the best any of us can do!

But still, parenting am I right!?

If you’re here because you’re trying to support your health or make lifestyle changes or eat better or heal your thoughts about a diagnosis or health circumstance, or whatever, know that this self love work is the foundation. 

It’s the foundation of healing, and of making choices that support our health and our happiness and our goals and all of our choices in that impact all of our life. 

So yeah, self love. 

I do want to add one more thing here! 

And that’s to do an audit of your social life and social media.

There’s nothing quite like working away at building up our self love while hanging out with people that make us feel like crap, or only seeing “perfection” on social media. 

If you can, put a pause on those accounts, friendships, and family members for the next 6 months and see how you do. 

This is your permission slip for you to do you. To finally celebrate who you are, even if it feels like the most awkward thing ever!

Do work.

I would really love to hear what your takeaway is today.

Did anything stand out for you? Do you feel ready to challenge yourself? What will your biggest challenge be?

Let me know!

Because here’s the thing I know, when you take the time to commit yourself to a new practice there’s GREAT POWER in telling someone else what you are doing. 

And if you need an accountability partner, I’m your girl. 

Also if you would like to learn more about coaching or working with me as a client, head on over to the Work With Me page and send me an email!

It all starts with a free consult that allows you to share your story and what’s going on for you and what you dream about… it’s actually a really good time. 

Thank you so much for joining me here today, and I hope the rest of your day is SPECTACULAR! 

Xox,

Gwen