14 Signs You Don't Love Yourself Enough

0:28So, hey, guys, are you frustrated with where you're at right now?

0:33This is The Ed Myron Show. Welcome back to the show today, everybody. So excited you're with me. Today's topic is self-love, and it's probably one of the most common topics on all of social media or podcasting. But I'd like to take a look at loving oneself from a different perspective today, kind of my angle on it. And it's probably a little bit different than you've heard before. You know, I've often said with many of my friends that I want my friends to love me But I don't want them to accept me and I think sometimes we conflate loving oneself with having to accept everything about ourselves And I just don't believe that's true.

1:10In fact, I don't think you can love yourself unless you're truly being yourself You know adhering to your values Your disciplines the things that you most want to pursue in your life that you're taking actions in accordance to that that you're living in Congruency with what you say you want And so there's a difference between loving somebody and accepting them. My great friends, I tell them all the time, I love you, I believe in you, but I don't want them to accept all my stuff. I want them to expect of me better than I'm doing. I want them to believe in me and love me so much that they see the version of me I could be, that I'm capable of becoming.

1:44I think that's what a great friend does. And I think if you're going to be the best friend to yourself, perhaps it's time to take a look at loving oneself from a little bit different perspective. And so I understand the idea of having to feel good about yourself and to have that internal dialogue with yourself that's favorable. I mean, let's just be honest. Studies tell us that 80 % upwards of 90 % of most people's thoughts are negative about themselves in a given day. Isn't that an incredible number? 80 % to 90 % of our thoughts about ourself are negative? So obviously we need to take a look at that and audit that and change that.

2:20So how do we think differently about ourselves? And by the way, we don't have to believe everything we think in our life. Most of the thoughts we have aren't true anyways, whether they're about ourselves, other people, circumstances, situations. We don't always have to just to accept what we think. In fact, many of us would be better off not listening to ourselves so often and talk to ourselves a little bit more. Speak truth to ourselves. Speak power to ourselves. Speak faith to ourselves. Speak peace to ourselves. And so here's my version of self-love for today's topic. And there are other aspects of self-love that I'm going to cover today, but this is the piece everybody's missing.

2:57It's like, just love yourself as you are. Well, you know, do you, would you want to do that with your children? Just anything you love them, but are you going to accept everything they do? Should there be no improvement, no behavior change, no growth? I think with most people we love, we also expect something from them in terms of the values they live up to, their performance. I love both my children very much, but when they're not living up to their capacity, when they're not living up to what they're capable of, or just behaving in a way that doesn't serve them, our family, or other people, I want to make sure they know that that's not acceptable.

3:32And so the day that I realized, write this down, the day that I realized that discipline is one of the purest forms of self-love, that when you discipline yourself, you're truly loving yourself. When you discipline another person, you're discipling to them. You're loving them. Even in the Bible, Jesus rebuked the apostles when he needed to. Discipline gives me the confidence that I need to forge ahead in life. And so I want you to begin to consider, is there an element of self-love or a large element of self-love that requires discipline? And like I said, I want my friends to love me, but I don't want them to accept me all the time.

4:09And I want to love myself, but part of loving myself is not accepting all of my stories, not accepting all of my behavior. I mean, here's what self-love really is. It's a state of appreciation for oneself that grows from the actions we take that support our physical, psychological, and spiritual growth. Self-love means having a high regard for your own well-being and happiness and having a high enough regard for yourself that you want to treat yourself physically, emotionally, spiritually in a way that you're worthy of and not accept from yourself behavior. That's less than that. I mean, listen, I love myself enough not to eat terribly all the time.

4:52I love myself enough not to not pursue my dreams and goals. I love myself enough to believe in myself enough to discipline myself to pursue my ultimate capacity because it's only then that I can reveal the true me. It's only then that I'm living in congruence with myself. So I'll say it to you again. You can't love yourself if you're not being yourself. And sometimes being ourselves requires taking an inventory of who we really are, re-auditing what we really want, who we really want to become. Maybe we're living an old dream or an old story. You know, maybe lately we haven't behaving in a way where we're treating our bodies with the love it deserves.

5:30The hydration, the good food, the physical exercise required to truly love our bodies. And I just don't believe that you could just love yourself when you're not eating well, at least most of the time. Hydrating most of the time. If you're pouring drugs and alcohol into your body on a regular basis, that's not loving yourself. That's punishing yourself. That's hating yourself. And so this notion that self-love is just like, take me as I am, that's a bunch of BS to me. I just don't believe it. And the notion that you should just continue to treat yourself poorly and just accept it. It's not what I want out of my friends.

6:08It's not what I expect out of myself. It's not what I want from my children. It's not from anybody that I love. Is that true? In fact, I think true love is being able to be willing to speak truth to somebody. You know, the higher you climb in life, it's harder to find real friends because everybody starts to yes you, yes you, yes you all the time. You have a lot of yes people around you. And I know the people in my life that really love me, they'll tell me the truth about me. Hey, that's BS. Or hey, man, come on, you're better than that. Or cut that out or whatever it might be. When my friends do that at this stage of my life, those are the ones who really love me that speak truth to me.

6:44And so the first thing I would just say is being mindful. People who have more self-love tend to know what they think, what they feel, and what they want, right, on any given time. And they're auditing that regularly. The second thing you do is you take actions based on need rather than want. Take actions based on need rather than want. By staying focused on what you need, you turn away from enigmatic behavior patterns that tend to get you into trouble, that keep you stuck in the past. Really, they lessen self-love when you have patterns and behaviors and habits that don't serve you. What increases self-love is treating yourself out of what you need, not just what you want.

7:21At any given moment, I may want something, but it's not really what my body needs, my spirit needs, my psychology needs, my mindset needs. Here's another thing you're not going to hear every day. Self-love means taking care of your own needs and not sacrificing them all the time just to please other people. Too many of us, including myself and maybe you, will sacrifice our own needs, what we really need in our life, just to please other people, not to inconvenience them, not to make them uncomfortable. You know, maybe what you need to do is really pursue that dream you have right now, but you're not doing it because you don't want to make the people around you uncomfortable.

7:56Maybe what you really need to do right now is see a therapist or go to a gym or change the way you eat, but you don't want to make the people around you uncomfortable. Don't sacrifice your own needs just to please other people. That is not a form of self-love. Okay? Really, truthfully speaking, you can't transfer to somebody that which you're not experiencing yourself. What do I mean by that? If you truly want to love the people around you to your maximum capacity, your max out capacity, the limitation to your ability to show them love is actually capped by how much love you feel for yourself.

8:28You can only transfer to somebody a limited amount of what you're not experiencing. You have to be experiencing something fully in order to transfer it to somebody else. And so please understand this. To the extent that you invest in your own love, in your own care, in your, and what I mean by this when I say is your own self-disciplines. Remember, I'm connecting self-discipline and disciplines to love. The more you do those things to treat yourself wonderfully, beautifully, faithfully, the more you can extend love in a way that you've probably never experienced before to other people. When you truly have self-discipline in your life and you're doing the things that you know serve you the most, you will find a whole new level not only for yourself of love, but your ability to give it and for other people to feel it from you.

9:13So next level is this, practicing good self-care. You will love yourself more when you take better care of your basic needs. People high in self-love nourish themselves daily through healthy activities. like I've said, sound nutrition, exercise, proper sleep, intimacy, prayer, meditation, healthy social interactions. The next thing is this. You got to make room for healthy habits. Start truly caring for yourself by mirroring that in what you eat, how you exercise, and what you spend time doing. By the way, earlier when I was talking about that 80-90 % of our thoughts aren't ones that serve us, what if we replace just 50 % of those negative thoughts with loving, compassionate, and supportive thoughts about ourselves.

9:55What if you did that? What if you took 50 % of your negative thoughts and you replaced them with loving and compassionate and supportive thoughts about yourself? You would find the support you've been looking for from within. You won't need it externally. In fact, if you're constantly looking for support, I need support from my partner, support from my spouse, support from my friends. What you're really saying is, I'm not supporting myself. I need them to spell me. I need them to fill the gap. When someone is truly loving themselves, They don't need the support or the permission from other people.

10:25It's only when you're in necessity of that that there's a deficiency within you. And here's the truth. You already know how to do this for yourself. Think about a loved one, someone you truly care about and that you want to see succeed. How do you talk to them? How do you talk to the people that you love, your children, your partner, your friends that you love when you're speaking power and belief and love into them? How do you speak to them? What do you say to them? And begin to give yourself that same gift, that same message. So many of us that lack self-love are incredible about giving it to other people.

10:57And by the way, you think you're great at it. But like I said earlier, it's limited by how much you can feel yourself.

11:21for you to get courses that would cost thousands of dollars completely for free. It's incredible. Go to growthday.com forward slash ed and check it out. And so what you think oftentimes, here's what good people think. I'm being selfish when I work on myself. I'm being selfish. I'm bragging when I tell myself I'm built for this or that God made me as an image in his image and likeness or that I can do something awesome with my life. I'm bragging. I'm brash. I'm putting myself in front of other people. But the truth is you can't pour from an empty cup. You have to begin to fill your own cup with the words you speak to yourself and the actions you take about yourself.

12:03You can't just tell yourself great things and not take any of the actions. Why? Because then you lose self-confidence. If you don't keep the promises you make to yourself, you begin not to trust you. And so it's not just enough to, I'm amazing, I'm amazing, I'm amazing. You're going to have to take the actions to validate it, to prove it. But once you start speaking truth to yourself, like you speak to your friends, and then you begin to act in congruence with that, your self-confidence explodes, your self-love explodes, your self-worth explodes. So I think what I'm saying so far is there's a lot to be said for the way you speak to yourself and the actions you take to truly create self-love and to feel self-confidence at the same time.

12:45Let me ask you this. When a loved one's struggling and in need of support, would you kick them when they're down or would you extend a helping hand? You know exactly what you would do. Yet in our own selves, we kick ourselves when we're down. Here I go again. I always do this. I always make mistakes. I knew I was faking it. We let the imposter syndrome come in and the thoughts start stacking in our heads about that we're not legit and we're not real. And you always knew it was going to go back to what you're worth. And so when you're most down oftentimes is when you beat yourself up the most. And you know who needs you the most during those times?

13:20You. What I would say to you lastly before we get into some really powerful stuff here is here's the truth. How would God speak to you? What would God tell you in that moment? Whatever your faith practice is, most of you know that I'm a Christian, but whatever your faith is, what would God speak to you right now? I remember when I first adopted my faith, someone said to me, I'd had Max and Bella many years later, and said, can you imagine, Ed, how much you love Max and Bella? Those are my children. That God loves you even more. God loves you even more than that. It was hard for me to get my head around that.

13:57But it's true. And so what would God say to you when you're down? Right? Are you open to listening to that voice? and then when you do, you've truly started to love yourself. You've truly started to give yourself the gift between your faith practices, the way you speak to yourself, the actions you take. By the way, when a loved one makes a mistake, do you tell them how terrible of a person they are or do you give them credit for their intentions? Do you give them another chance? You ought to give yourself the same gift. Remember this, we really can't truly love others when we're not loving ourselves.

14:31So here's what I'd like to do right now. Now, I'd like to give you the gift of giving you 14 signs that maybe you don't love yourself enough. Because I think a lot of you maybe listen to going, I'm pretty good at this. When I started to work on this project for myself, I took a look at me. And you know what? I've got some room to grow in this area. It's probably why you feel like this, you know, maybe it's hitting really home today. I hope that you feel that it's really good because I really created this lesson today for myself. I think I have a high level of self-love, but I could always love me more.

14:58I could always believe in me more. I could always have more self-discipline. So I was like, what are the signs that maybe you don't love yourself enough? And so I'm going to give you those 14 signs right now. I hope this hits home with you. Actually, I hope you don't have any of them, but I'm sure maybe you have one or two of them. And when I'm done with these 14, maybe these are the things you need to work on. So first sign that maybe you don't love yourself enough. You do whatever you can do to avoid conflict. It's number one. You do whatever you do you can do to avoid conflict. How often are you willing to avoid conflict with people because we're usually people who want to avoid conflict If you find yourself being one of those kinds of people you say all my life I've been that way then all your life you've struggled with self-love You don't want to have conflict with people because You don't want them to take a very close look at you Because conflict creates them looking back at you more harshly or maybe you looking at yourself And you may not feel enough love for yourself to speak up for yourself And so you allow people to treat you in a way that's not worthy of you.

16:00You don't confront them. You don't create a conflict with them to create waves because you don't love yourself enough to stand up for yourself. So that's number one. If you're avoiding conflict all the time, here's the truth about life. There ought to be some conflict from time to time. The story of life is a story of from time to time having a conflict or having to confront something in our lives. We try to avoid that. We're avoiding living. We're avoiding growing. We're avoiding growing a love for ourselves. So if you're constantly avoiding conflict, what you're really doing is avoiding loving yourself.

16:34Second indication that maybe you don't love yourself enough is you feel awkward more often than not. Awkward or uncomfortable socially. Awkward or uncomfortable within your own skin. You don't want to be alone a lot. And so when you feel awkward more often than not, just uncomfortable with you, That's an indication that you can love yourself more and you have room to grow in this area. The third thing that's a big indication that you don't love yourself enough right now is that you're always looking for an escape. Whether that be on your phone and you're scrolling through social media just to escape.

17:09Or it could be alcohol or drugs or gossip, pornography, whatever it might be. You're looking for an escape all the time. You shouldn't have to escape if you love yourself. You should enjoy your own company. You should enjoy the peace of being with your favorite person, which is you. And again, you can't give this gift to somebody if you can't give it to yourself. So if you're always looking for an escape somehow, that's an indication. When I see someone who's got an alcohol problem or a drug problem or a gambling problem, right, or they're too addicted to being a fan of a sports team even, that's a form of escape, sports, watching spectator sports, or they're on their phone all the time.

17:53I believe this is an indication of somebody who doesn't love themselves. And by the way, one of the real insidious forms, it's obvious with alcohol and drugs, is fan addiction. I have so many friends of mine that I grew up with that I think they think they play for the Lakers. I think they think they're on the Kansas City Chiefs. I mean, they literally live or die by what a bunch of other grown men are doing. Some of them even wear jerseys with other men's names on the back. And I'm thinking, are you trying to escape yourself that much that you're that addicted? And there's nothing wrong with being a fan of a sports team.

18:27Let me be clear. I watch sports. I'm a Boston sports fan. I'm a fan of great athletes. I love watching greatness. But we all know there's a level of it where we've escaped in there hiding from our own lives. Some of us escape in our children's lives. We live through them to escape our own existence, to escape our own lives, their sports, their grades, their success. what we ultimately do is put tremendous amount of pressure on themselves on our children because we've escaped into their lives because we don't want to look at our own and so one of them is you got to be careful again I'm a huge sports fan go to a lot of sporting events but I think you all know what I'm talking about when someone crosses that line and you're like well this has become like your emotions are based on whether this team wins or loses and I think you actually think you won when they win.

19:18And that's just to escape the fact that you're not winning in your own life. And so there's a line there when it comes to sports as well. There's healthy everything. There's healthy use of alcohol for many people. Some people can't at all. But there's a healthy use maybe socially in moderation where you can maintain it. And then for some people, it's just too much, right? There's a healthy use of social media. And then there's people who use it too much, it becomes unhealthy. There's a healthy fandom when it comes to sports or entertainment or whatever it might be. There's a healthy level of it.

19:51And then there's a level where it's not healthy because we've escaped completely from our own lives. That's number three. You're always looking for a way to escape. Number four, you constantly feel misunderstood. If you're constantly feeling that people don't understand you and they don't get you, believe it or not, what's buried under there is a lack of self-love because you are seeking to be understood so often. It means so much to you to feel understood because you don't love yourself enough. I think when someone truly loves themselves enough, and by the way, I'm working on this just to be clear, but I think when you really truly love yourself, you don't have the need to be understood.

20:28You don't have the need to be accepted because you understand and accept yourself. Number five thing that would be an indication, emotion, a feeling that you might have that you don't love yourself enough is you're resentful all the time. You're holding on to resentment towards other people or a group of people or someone who doesn't believe with you politically or someone who disagrees with you religiously or you're resentful for a past event in your life. You're resentful about something in your life. That's an indication that maybe you don't love yourself enough and it's something worth looking at.

21:02If you're filled with resentment very often, that's not a form of love for oneself. You would never treat yourself that way. Number six, you're afraid to step outside your comfort zone. You're afraid to take risks. You're afraid to take chances. You think you need to be perfect. And when that happens in life, that's an indication of not enough self-love. Because when you love yourself enough, you're willing to get uncomfortable to grow. Because you know that self-discipline is one of the major keys to self-love. And so you are wanting to step outside what makes you comfortable. You're wanting the expansion of your being.

21:37See, I'm sort of at this point in my life, sort of I say often to people, I'm addicted to the expansion of my being. And what that really means is that I love myself enough not to accept where I am. And I want to expand my ability to give and think and learn and feel and grow. And that expansion makes I know I have to be uncomfortable to do it. I love myself enough to put myself through some uncomfortable things. Oftentimes, even with our children, we love them so much. We don't want them to experience any pain, any discomfort. We kind of helicopter in and protect them from everything. We think that's love, but it's not.

22:12Real love is allowing someone to do some uncomfortable things in their life. So if you find yourself often being afraid or unwilling to step outside your comfort zone, that's a self-love issue. Number seven issue that maybe you are lacking in the self-love department is you need permission from others when you make a decision. You need other people's permission, other people's acknowledgement. Oftentimes, you seek too many other human beings' advice, but what you're really looking for is permission from them. And that's an indication deep down of a lack of self-love. The most self-loving people that I know with the best self-discipline aren't looking for permission all the time when they make decisions.

22:51And although they may seek some advice from people, they don't seek a lot of it. They get counsel. They've got people around them who they bounce ideas off of, but they don't need people's permission to make decisions in their lives. So as I'm making this list, there's 14 of them, we're halfway through. Do any of these seven resonate with you? If any of them resonate with you, then there's some growth there on your self-love. If all of them resonate with you, then we really got some work to do, don't we? Number eight feeling that maybe you're lacking self-love is you feel invisible. You feel invisible.

23:22You don't feel seen. I think this is a big one for so many people. they just feel like the world doesn't see them, that no one cares, that nothing matters. They walk in a room and no one would know if they left it. And that is a thought you've created in your own mind that is not true. And frankly, if you loved yourself a little bit more, you would get a different response. So if you feel invisible, and by the way, I know exactly what that feels like. Before I was a public person, I often felt invisible in rooms that I would walk into, that nobody saw me or understood me, as I said earlier. This is a major sign because when you love yourself enough, there's enough light on you just from you and God that that thought would never occur to you because you wouldn't be seeking it.

24:21And what's ironic about life is the minute you don't seek it is the minute you receive it in abundance. Number nine, indication that maybe you're lacking some self-love is you compare yourself a lot. You compare yourself to other people. You compare yourself to another time in your life. You compare yourself to a situation or circumstance. you see somebody that's filtered or very, yeah, it's very created online. You know, I'm going to do a video on this soon, but there's so much fake online right now. It's unbelievable. There's actually a studio in Santa Monica you can go to now. It's a studio.