The Key To Self Love

0:07Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast.

0:30We're going to be talking about how to start to love yourself more, how to accept yourself more, how to stop talking trash to yourself all of the time. And, you know, so many people struggle with self-love. And I had a conversation, I was on a Zoom call for Mindset Mentor University the other day, and a lady had brought this up and she was asking about self-love and how do I get better at loving myself? and I understand after talking with so many people that we can be so so cruel to ourselves like we can be so mean to ourselves in our heads a lot of people listening out there are meaner to yourself than any bully has ever been in your entire life and that's okay for now because now you're aware of it and something you cannot change something that you're not aware of but now that you are aware of it that you need to get better at self-love and self-acceptance Now it's something that we can start to transition into working on.

1:27And really what it comes down to is we need to get better at accepting ourselves. I think self-love is a great phrase, but I think the problem is not the love. I think the problem is the lack of acceptance of ourselves. We feel like the version of us that we are should be different. And I'm going to talk about why that comes up. I'm going to talk about how to get better at it. it's not really about love. What it is, is about self-acceptance. There's an aspect of myself that I don't accept. And because of that, it is a barrier to me loving myself, right? The barrier to self-love is self-acceptance.

2:07To accept yourself fully as you are, the good, the bad, the beautiful, the ugly, all of that. Because behind self-judgment is love. And the doorway way to get there is the acceptance. And so I really believe that the natural state of a human is love. And so like, for instance, I don't see, I don't see babies or, you know, toddlers with self-love issues, which means it's somehow it's learned that we can't accept ourselves as we are. And so then I always think to myself, whenever I find something that people bring up a lot and that I'm working on with myself, I always take a step back and I'm like, why if I want to accept myself more?

2:55Yeah, I want to know how to do that. But first off, why is it so hard to accept ourselves? Like, why is it so hard for me to accept myself? And if you can really start to understand this and what I'm going to talk about today, it could absolutely change your life and your perspective on yourself and everyone else around you. And as I've been doing a lot of, you know, over the past 19 years of working on myself, as I've been working on myself, as I've been helping other people who are working on themselves. What I've come to realize by watching people, by thinking about what's going on, is we have been socialized so that we can fit in with the world, so that we can fit in with society.

3:34And our parents are put under pressure to socialize us, to make us fit in, right? And a child does not fit in with our social constructs. It doesn't. The children are naturally a little bit wild. They're a little bit loud. They don't fit in with the way that we're quote unquote supposed to act in public. You know, I was reminded of this a couple of years ago when I was at a dinner and we were in a pretty nice restaurant. It was my friend and his children were there and his son was probably two and a half, three years old. And in the middle of the dinner, he just screamed as loud as he could. That was the natural emotional feeling for that child at that moment for some reason.

4:20But I'm telling you at dinner, it did not fit in. And it was just very apparent to me of like, and he was like, Hey, no, no, no, you can't do that here. Like this is a quiet thing. And so there was nothing wrong. And mind you, I'm not trying to tell anybody who's a parent that you're doing it wrong. I'm not trying to tell you any of this. I'm just trying to help you become a little bit more aware of yourself first off, and then also maybe just the way that you interact with your children, right? And one thing that tends to happen with a lot of parents is a lot of parents will emotionally reward or punish a child based off of how they act.

4:56So it's kind of like, hey, if you're good, you get my love. If you're bad, I remove my love. And a lot of us have been raised by parents who use this tactic probably unconsciously on us to make us do what they wanted us to do. Now, mind you, children are crazy. They are pretty nuts, right? You got to keep them alive. Sometimes they want to jump off of a 10-foot wall or something like that. So you do have to make sure that you keep them alive. But when you start to think about it, if a child who doesn't really have the processing that we do and the knowledge that we do as adults. If a parent unconsciously does the same things that their parents did to them, which is, hey, if you're good, you get my love.

5:40If you're bad, I remove my love. There's no reasoning process for this in the child's head. A child doesn't really fully understand everything yet because they're still young. A child realizes that certain ways that it is are naturally not acceptable. And it's not conscious. It's just very subconscious and everything's going in and out. But if I act this way, I'm a good boy. If I act this way, I'm a bad boy. If I do this, if I'm loud in a restaurant, my mom feels like she's pulling her love for me or my dad feels like she's pulling love for me. It's not really something that they consciously think about.

6:15It just kind of all happens. And there was a stat that I read back in 2009 that really like blew this all out of the water for me and really started making me understand people more. And it is the average child is reprimanded eight times more than they're praised. The average child is reprimanded eight times more than they're praised. Don't do that. No, you can't do that. You got to be quiet. You got to sit down. You got to do this. And so if you take a step back, what is the child subconsciously thinking most of the time, eight times more than I am good enough, they're thinking to themselves unconsciously, I'm not good enough the way I am.

6:54And that's why literally every single person's core paradigm that I've ever worked with, thousands and thousands of people is I'm not enough. And the biggest fear is if I'm not enough, then I won't be loved. And so the child unconsciously has to change itself so that it can fit in with society and with the way that the parents want that child to be. And so if you think of that, the child has to change itself, which means that there's parts of itself it has to actually adapt, which means we start developing this feeling of, I don't accept myself the way that I am. I've got to change. I've got to be different.

7:31And so the child has to let go of a lot of aspects of itself based off of what the parents tell them. But all the child really cares about is, does my mom love me? Does my dad love me? And when I'm having fun and I'm running around in public and my mom yells at me, I must have done something wrong. There's an aspect of myself that is wrong. Now a kid could be, you know, I've seen it many times running around and screaming and stuff like that. And the parent reprimands the child in public because they're too loud or because they're being too rambunctious or crazy or whatever it is it might be. And so the child gets reprimanded in its full expression, having fun, laughing, having a great time, and its full expression, the child is then reprimanded, which makes them think, in my full expression, in my truest version of who I am, my mom yelled at me, aka retracted love for me.

8:24So therefore, this aspect of myself is wrong. I am not accepted as I naturally am. if I am acting, if I'm not acting right, then I must be wrong. So you're seeing what I'm picking up and how I'm kind of bringing this in is that we naturally, as children being socialized and being, you know, as I always say, domesticated more than anything else, we kind of learn not to accept ourselves as we are because there must be something wrong. And so this happens so frequently, I mean, so, so frequently as I've become aware of this, as I coach people, you know, for almost two decades at this point, everything I'm start, I see it.

9:04I see it all of the time, everywhere I go, you know, I'd see it in public. I see it in, uh, friends that have their children and stuff like that. And I honestly don't know. I don't know. I've been thinking for a long time. I don't know if there's a way around it. I don't know if in order to keep a child alive there, we can like, you have to, sometimes you have to be a little bit more firm so that they don't do something dangerous like running to the middle of the road, right? But what happens is we all typically learn from a very young age during the socialization process that we are in some way not good enough as we are.

9:33And we must act a certain way in order to be accepted or in order to get our parents' love or in order to be the way that we need to be to fit in. And we have to act a certain way, even if that certain way is not me. And the result of that is a feeling of unworthiness because of this socialization. And so your personality from the beginning has been built upon repressing who you truly are. We're going way deeper than you thought you were going to go today. We're just talking about self-love, right? But our personality, the foundation of our personality of having to change ourself is built upon this repression of who you actually truly are.

10:12Somehow I am bad and I need to look to my parents to see if I am right or to see if I get their validation. Now, it's not all the parents' fault because then we also have to go to school and school is the exact same thing. We have to be a certain way for these teachers and we have to get a good grade or else will they're stupid kid. And then we, we somehow get into this, you know, comparing our grades to everyone else's grades and the top in the class and the lowest in the class and all of that. And we start developing a whole other set of paradigms around it, of identities around it. If I'm the smartest kid or I'm stupid or I'm not good enough.

10:47You know, I remember when I was a kid and I was in second grade from second to third grade, I switched class, I switched schools. And when I went to third grade, it was at a small school and it was so small that there were split classes, which means that my teacher taught second grade and she taught third grade. I was in third grade and I was the only kid in class in third grade that couldn't read. The second graders were able to read and I wasn't. I remember thinking to myself, I am so stupid. I just didn't pick up reading until later on in life. I wasn't good at it. And so I wasn't, my brain just wasn't processing it for some reason.

11:22But because of the fact that I was behind all these other kids, I felt stupid, right? So that's another example of that's nobody else's fault. That's not my parents' fault. It's not a teacher's fault, any of that stuff. But it was me being around other children, comparing myself in all of that. And so as we get older, we have other things. So we have our parents, we have society, we have the rest of our family. Sometimes it's older brothers and older sisters that can help with this paradigm that we're creating, right? And so as we get older, we then start seeking others' approval. So not just our parents' approval, but others' approval.

11:57Do you love me? You know, if I get good grades and if I'm number one in the class and if I beat everyone else, do you love me? Do I look sexy enough for you? Did I get enough likes on Instagram or TikTok? If I make a lot of money, will you accept me? And so we were always kind of getting in this feeling of seeking others' approval versus seeking approval from ourselves. And so what I have found is we're trying to do or become something a lot of times to feel accepted. I remember in middle school, it was like every kid became a chameleon in order to fit in with everyone else and want to be the same and to be accepted.

12:36So we abandon our true selves in order to fit in with other kids. And so what we're trying to do is we're trying to become something else so that we can feel accepted. And that means that we do have to abandon our true selves. So the issue is, can we validate ourselves based off of who we are as a person and nothing else? Now that you have an idea of how we've built ourselves into this feeling of there is something wrong with me. I don't accept myself. I don't love myself. You can start to see, I bet through me giving you these stories of these, how you became a little bit of how you are. And as you start to dive deeper into this, more, more stories, more memories are going to come up in your head.

13:19You're gonna be like, Oh my God, I remember when this happened with my father. I remember when this happened with my older sister. I remember when this happened in school and you'll start to understand yourself more. And, and really what it comes down to, like I said, is, is okay. I've, I can understand now some of the reasons why I don't accept myself and how I have built myself into the person who doesn't accept myself. And if I don't accept myself, I don't love myself. It's there's, there's things in the way it's the barrier. And so can we, every person, myself included, everyone listening to this, can we get to the point where we can, we can accept and we We can validate ourselves based off of who we are as a person, nothing else, not our looks, not how much money we have, not our cars, not our jobs, not our bodies, not our social media followings, all of that.

14:11Can we get to acceptance without having to do anything else? You know, there's this, and I've said this before on the podcast, there's this meditation I used to do a couple of years ago. It's with a spiritual teacher. His name is Muji. And he used to say in the meditation, he would say, you have no pockets, you have no storehouse. And what he means by that is you came into this world naked by yourself. You're going to leave this world naked by yourself. You're not going to be able to bring anything with you. There's nothing you can throw in your pockets, in your storehouse. You don't have them on your actual physical body, right?

14:46What he's saying though behind that is there is nothing that you can do. There's nothing you can say. There's nothing that you can achieve. There's no amount of money that you can have. There's no amount of properties that you could buy. There's no amount of sexual partners that you could have that could make you more or less than what you currently are right now. If you can really get that to lock into your head, it'll make this process of self-acceptance so much easier is because there is nothing that I can do to make me better. There's nothing I could do to make me worse. I am who I am and this is who I am, right?

15:23Now, society will tell us, oh yeah, well, you're better when you make more money. You're better when you have a successful job and all of that. But really what it comes down to is you're not seeking anyone else's approval with self-love. You're not seeking other people's approval. You're not seeking society's approval. You're seeking approval from who? From yourself. And so you have to learn to disapprove. You have to learn to, let me try to phrase this correctly. You have to learn to see your disapproval of yourself when it pops up. And you have to see to yourself, okay, yeah, I'm not accepting myself as I currently am right now.

16:00You have to learn to accept yourself as you are by yourself. And it really comes into looking at all of the parts of who you are and learning to accept it. Now, it's very easy to accept the good parts of you, the fun parts of you, the beautiful parts of you, the exciting parts of you, the one that's outgoing, the one that's loving, the one that's funny. It's very easy to accept the quote unquote good, quote unquote bad, even though neither one of them are good or bad, but we as humans tend to categorize things. So it's easy to love the quote unquote good sides of us. It's hard to love the bad sides of us.

16:35And so we usually look at the bad sides of us and naturally say, I want to change this about myself. I want to change this. But can you learn to accept it? Can you learn to accept that you're short or that you're fat or that you're skinny or that you have no money or that you have acne or that you're negative sometimes or that you have negative thoughts or that you have a short temper or that you're selfish sometimes? Can you or that you're judgment? Can you learn to accept first no judging? Now, this is very easy to say and it's very hard to do, but it takes this self-awareness of going, yeah, I need to get better at accepting myself.

17:16Because what you'll realize is the quote-unquote, I keep saying quote-unquote because there is no bad and there is no good within you, but can you look at the quote-unquote bad sides of you and learn to accept them? Because if you resist them, it makes them stronger. If you accept them, they slowly start to dissipate and you really don't have, they don't have any more control over you. And you can look at yourself and say, yeah, I am. I am kind of, I am kind of shitty sometimes. Okay. Like I understand that that probably was just a mechanism that was built within me, a protection mechanism when I was a child to be more selfish or to be a little bit judgmental or whatever it is that I am, that I need to accept.

17:54I can see that I was a protection mechanism that I built up in childhood unconsciously. And I don't even know where it came from and I don't need to know where it came from. But can I look and I can say, I can still love that part of me. You know, and learn to just appreciate. Like you don't go into a forest and you start judging the trees. Oh, that one's fat. That one's short. That one's skinny. No, you just appreciate all of them as they are. But we judge ourselves so much, don't we? We judge others for better and for worse. And we get a lot of insecurities from that. And we live in a state of a lot of people judging themselves and a lot of people judging other people.

18:34But mostly what we do is we judge ourselves more than anybody else. You have to allow yourself to be a human being. You're not perfect, right? You're fucked up in some ways. So am I. We all are. It's just the way that it goes. We're flawed exactly as we are. So can we learn to accept ourselves with all of our flaws, with all of our fucked upness? and not have to achieve and not have to buy something and not have to accept ourself only when we're wearing makeup or only when we're a certain weight. And really what it comes down to is, can I rediscover who I truly am? I'm on this path of life and I have tried to change myself for other people and turn myself into a chameleon in a lot of different ways.

19:17Can I rediscover who I truly am, what I want to be, what I love, and rediscover your inner child in some sort of way? like what do you what do you love do more of that what did you love to do as a kid do more of that you know like i always think about i've said this before on the podcast too but like i i realized probably six seven years ago that like i just really love being outside in nature some people don't i just really love it and i had a conversation with my mom and sister and they're like yeah i used to sleep outside on the porch we had a screened-in porch in florida and i used to sleep on this couch we had outside like used to sleep on the couch all the time outside.

19:54And I was like, oh my God, I completely forgot about that memory. And so now I know like the house that I live in now, we're surrounded by property because of the fact that I wanted to be in nature more because it made me feel happier inside the inner child that I have. And so it's like, can you start to think about like, what is it that I love? What is it that was fun to me? What is it? I used to paint so much when I was a kid. And then I remember that one kid told me that I was, my paintings were ugly and I stopped doing it. My dad said that you got to stop painting and you got to start playing sports because, you know, pansies paint or something like that.

20:28Real boys, they go out and they play manly sports. Whatever it is that your parents could have said to you or society or children or bullies or whatever it is that might have said to you, you have to learn to go like, what's my, I'm going to go on this path of rediscovery myself. And no matter what I find on this rediscovery, I need to accept myself because there is nothing that you can do that will make you more of who you are. There's nothing that you need to prove. There's no change that you need to do within yourself. You just have to learn to accept yourself more. And if you learn to accept yourself more, the natural thing that flows in through that door is love.

21:04And so if you want the key to self-love, it's self-acceptance. How can you learn to accept yourself more? So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please do me a favor, share it on your Instagram stories, tag me at robdialjr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. The only way this podcast grows is from you guys actually sharing it. And so I greatly, greatly appreciate it if you share it, if you would put the message out there so that we can try to help more people change their lives because that's ultimately all I really want to do. So if you do that, I would greatly appreciate it.

21:34And with that, I'm gonna leave the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make someone else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.