“To acquire love, fill yourself up with it until you become a magnet.”
Charles F. Haanel
Simple changes
I’ve been looking forward to writing this chapter for months and in order to do so, and ensure I walk the walk, I’ve even done a bit of a spring clean of my own self-love practice. It’s just like your wardrobe – once in a while it needs a good old declutter and tidy up. I’ve added my favourite loving kindness meditation to my daily schedule and even recorded a new version of it to send to all my clients and friends. And, of course, I’m going to share it with you too. Upping your self-love practice doesn’t have to be complicated – for example, it can be as simple as changing the way you speak about yourself to others, and to yourself, as you’ll discover in the positive affirmation exercise; moving on from a friendship that’s draining you, as you start to truly value yourself; and knowing you are enough, as you’ll see when you get to the being enough and love letter exercises later on. You’ll find plenty of exercises in this chapter to help you work out a self-love practice that works for you and I’m so excited about the benefits I know it’s going to bring to you!
Soothing ourselves
I believe that as a society we have never needed self-love and self-care as much as we do now. People are under so much stress with the pace of life, juggling careers and home lives, not to mention the pressure placed on us by social media and our high-tech lives. “I’m overwhelmed” is probably the concern I hear the most in my practice. At times I feel that too and those are the days that I meditate twice as much. Self-love and self-care are what we need to soothe ourselves.
A HEALTHY LOVE!
You might be wondering how loving yourself really affects you. Well, I can tell you that it has a huge impact on you, not just mentally but physically. Loving yourself and, as a result, having high self-esteem do more than make you feel good in the moment. Psychologist Andy Martens, and his colleagues at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, have shown that loving ourselves and having high self-esteem actually have huge health benefits by protecting our heart and immune system. In their research study they found that people with higher self-esteem had a higher cardiac vagal tone, meaning their parasympathetic nervous system, which slows down and calms the heart, is more active (see a great exercise on pages 162–3 to help you to stimulate the vagus nerve as part of your self-care routine).
Kristin Neff, author and Associate Professor at the University of Texas, believes that self-compassion supports us positively and that, conversely, self-criticism activates our sympathetic nervous system, also know as “fight or flight”. This increases stress hormones such as cortisol in the bloodstream – a hormone that has been labelled by the press as “public enemy number 1”.
Acknowledging these health effects and knowing how our words and actions can affect our mind and bodies, it is surprising that we still at times resist speaking positively, thinking good thoughts and loving ourselves.
Many of my clients, no matter how successful they are professionally, lack something in their personal lives and that something is love, especially self-love. I’ve seen the most powerful and strong business people moved to tears (even those who tell me they never cry) when I have simply asked them to put their hands over their hearts and then say something nice to themselves, like “I’ve got this” or “I’m doing the best I can and that’s enough.” It seems so crazy to think that we would say such things to our friends all the time, yet neglect saying them to ourselves.
So throughout this chapter I want to share with you some of the most powerful tools, which I use with my clients and for myself, to awaken your self-love. To love yourself is your birthright, it’s within you, but it may take some practice to become really good at it and that’s okay. With the toolbox I’ve created for you, in time loving yourself will become second nature.
YOUR TOOLBOX: WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE ABOUT YOURSELF?
Before we dive in deeper, I would like you to answer the questions below. I’m asking them now as I know that the answers will bring to the surface the wounds within that need the most love and healing. I am, however, aware that the questions are challenging, perhaps requiring you to confront deeply buried feelings, so if you feel it’s too difficult to answer them now, come back to them when the time feels right for you. It may help to have your journal to hand (see page 6) to help you explore your answers and feelings further.
1. Do you believe you are lovable?
I’m lovable because….
2. Do you believe sometimes you are unlovable?
If yes, what makes you believe this?
Now, finish this sentence: I deserve to be loved because…
3. Is there anything standing in your way of loving yourself? If yes, what is it?
If you feel that you are unlovable, let’s take a look at what you have written. Are they actual facts about yourself or just things you have come to believe to be true over time? As children when we feel ugly, or dumb or not enough, our parents are quick to correct us and remind us that we are beautiful inside and out, smart and more than enough. Of course, sadly this isn’t true for everyone. Some people’s negative feelings about themselves come from the people closest to them.
The good news is that as adults we have the power to turn the unlovable part into lovable. YOU have that power to start loving yourself and believing that you are LOVABLE for sure! As Rick Hanson says in his book Buddha’s Brain, “You’re giving yourself today the caring and encouragement you should have received as a child, but perhaps didn’t get in full measure.” And little by little you will begin to give yourself that love as you take time to work through the self-love exercises and take care of you.
Loving myself
My mum taught me to love and respect myself, but later in life I realized that I had spent a lot of my adult life looking for love outside of myself. I used to love the phrase “you complete me”, until I kept finding myself in relationships that didn’t really complete me at all. It took me losing my sense of who I was in a relationship before I truly was able to come home to me, and love myself the way I wanted someone else to love me.
Being back on the dating scene in my 30s and not knowing how that whole thing worked, really pushed me to stop and look at my love relationship with myself. I think back then I had actually been running from it because I didn’t want to face it, so I didn’t spend much time alone. I kind of feared being alone or ending up alone. It was during this time I learnt what it meant to really love and respect myself. As my love for myself grew, I started to respect myself more in every relationship and stopped being worried about whether my approach to each relationship was the right one. When I started to realize that what I was seeing in other people, good or bad, was my own reflection I started to make other choices for myself.
I became so aware of my patterns, and my strengths and weaknesses – the things I loved and the things I wanted to improve on within myself. It became obvious to me that if I was not settled within, and if I didn’t really know who I truly was, that was exactly what I would attract in the other person. I remember being in a relationship that was pretty happy, but behaving in a jealous way (without good reason). As much as I tried not to feel jealous, it kept happening. It was super unflattering and really out of character for me and how I actually believed a relationship should be. I realized I had dragged my past of hurt and disappointment into that relationship and I was projecting my insecurity in a really ugly way.
I knew I had some work to do within myself to be able to trust someone again and that started with loving myself and knowing that I am enough no matter what happens to me, so I left the relationship and began to really work on building my self-love. Thank goodness I did because the next relationship I had was with my now husband and throughout our 10 years together we have had to spend a lot of time apart. I cannot imagine how that would have ever succeeded if I had not worked on my wounds and made the decision to trust and love with an open heart again
– being jealous on our busy schedules would have been a disaster.
What are you searching for?
If you want to align yourself with attracting relationships that feel good, where there is mutual respect and joy, your mission needs to be to work on your self-love. Imagine all of the energy you waste looking for those things outside of yourself – now you can spend that time on you. If you are willing to invest in being in a relationship to love someone else, surely you can start by giving yourself some of that support, love, strength and care. Once you start to believe that all relationships are mirrors reflecting back the healed and the unhealed within you, working on yourself suddenly becomes very attractive. As you probably know exactly what it is you would like to attract.
As I shared with you above, in the past I have been guilty of searching for happiness and love outside of myself and really ignoring my own power. I would like you to tune in for a moment and ask yourself: What am I searching for outside of myself? It was a game changer for my own self-love when I realized I am in charge of making myself feel loved, safe, heard, strong and confident. The self-compassion practice (see pages 129–30) will support you in this too.
“If you love yourself, you love others. If you hate yourself, you hate others. In relationship with others, the other is nothing but a mirror.”
Osho
Keeping an open heart
Many people close their hearts or create an invisible wall after a relationship break-up. They become so frightened of getting their heart broken again that they go from relationship to relationship or settle for someone they know deep down is not right for them, and in the process they end up hurting themselves. This can happen when friendships break down too. When we close our hearts because of hurt or anger, love can’t flow in or out and even our own self-love gets suffocated. My husband and I had both had our hearts broken, and I’ll never forget the day we looked each other in the eyes and agreed that we were in deep trouble. We knew we had both opened our hearts fully and if it wasn’t going to last it was going to hurt. We both jumped in and committed to our relationship that day and invested emotionally as two equals.
I have come to believe that when we are brave we get rewarded. When we are willing to open our hearts to love fully we open ourselves up to the possibility that we might get hurt, but we also open up to the possibility that we may love and be loved beyond our wildest dreams. If we are not willing to risk anything, chances are like anything else in life the return probably won’t be great. I believe we will attract what we are willing to give.
Hypnotherapist Marisa Peer explains how important it is to not carry the hurt with us, but express it as soon as we can. She says that when we are balanced we are able to say to the person, “You hurt my feelings when you…” By doing so we let it go so it doesn’t fester in our body and we are able to open our hearts again.
You are enough
One of the most fundamental things in our lives – I think of it as the foundation our lives are built on – is to know that no matter what has happened to you in life you are 100 per cent enough, always enough. When you can say, “I am enough”, and truly mean it, you are well on your journey to loving yourself. We are all born enough, but somehow through life this belief is challenged. If there are areas of your life where you are not feeling enough, the chances are that this belief was created when you were a child and it’s lingering in your unconscious mind. There are many different situations that can make a child feel they are not enough. Examples might be being bullied or your parents getting divorced and one parent leaving you behind to start another family. You might have felt “Why me?”, “Aren’t I enough for you?” and from that moment the feeling of not being enough was created. Many of my clients ask me to do hypnosis with them to explore why they feel this way.
“I am enough” seems like such a simple statement, but these three words are far from simple. They are very powerful and when we can say them to ourselves and about ourselves, and really believe them to be true, we feel empowered and can more easily love ourselves. Feeling that you are enough solves lots of situations. For example, when we don’t feel we are enough we take it personally when someone comments on our work or something we have created. When we feel we are enough, we are able to see the comment as just someone’s else perspective and not think “I’m useless” or “I’m worthless” or “They don’t like me.” Feeling you are enough means you know that their opinion about you, or what you have made or created, does not define who you are because you are enough.
YOUR TOOLBOX: ARE YOU ENOUGH?
Go through the list below and write down from 1–10 where you are on the scale of feeling good enough, where 1 is “not enough” and 10 is “knowing I’m always enough”.
• Relationship (use different relationships here that are challenging you)
• Love and family
• Body
• Money
• Career
• When being criticized
This will give you an indication of what you need to work on and reinforce daily in your affirmations. When feeling enough is between 7–10, you are less likely to take things personally and fewer things will trigger you or make you doubt yourself. You will more easily set boundaries for yourself and strive for the things you want rather than settle for less. If you’re at the lower end of the scale, moving up will help you to feel more empowered and be able to communicate and act from a place of knowing your worth. Be reassured that no matter how low you are on the scale, you can move up by working on your self-love and by doing the exercises in this chapter and the other chapters. I have created a positive self-love meditation for you to help you feel enough at all times. You can listen to it as often as you need to – just head to www.zenme.tv/mindtools. See pages 135–8 for the positive effect this meditation has had on my client Clint’s life and career.
In this meditation I encourage you to take 5 minutes for yourself to close your eyes and create some positive affirmations by repeating the words silently in your mind “I am”, saying “I” on the in-breath and “am” on the out-breath, then add whichever positive words support you best in this moment, such as:
• Enough
• Confident
• Lovable
• Strong
• Happy
• Love
• Calm
I encourage you to repeat “I am enough” on its own for at least a couple of minutes as you feel the rhythm of the words and your breath merge, before adding the words of your choice. You can switch it up too and say the words out loud if that feels comfortable to you. If you are working on moving up the scale of feeling enough, I suggest doing this meditation daily.
Sarah’s story
My client Sarah had been dating a guy for a year and desperately wanted the relationship to move onto the next level. At the same time she would often complain about the way he spoke to her disrespectfully and his lack of communication whenever it suited him – he was always leaving her hanging, while she waited for him to get in touch. She had fallen for him and told herself, and me, that he was the one, even if there were things about his behaviour she did not agree with. She would even make excuses and defend his poor behaviour at times.
When I asked her how it made her feel when he treated her this way and what she really wanted to say to him, she said she felt disrespected, doubted herself and felt that she was not good enough. She really wanted to tell him that his behaviour was not okay, but she was afraid that if she did he would break up with her. I asked her to reflect back over her life and notice if there were other times when she had felt this way. She said that when she was a child she felt that her parents didn’t have time for her and they left her on her own a lot or with different nannies or family members. It made her feel as if she was not a priority, not worthy of their time or love and not important to them. Looking back over that situation she became aware that his behaviour was a familiar pattern being played back to her and although s
he knew how to cope with it because the situation was similar to her childhood dynamics, it wasn’t what she ultimately wanted from a relationship. She also understood now that it wasn’t that her parents didn’t care about her; they were doing what they thought best by providing a steady income and good schooling, which meant them being away from home and her. Later she also discovered they had their own relationship difficulties, which helped her accept that they did what they could from what they knew and their limitations. This is often the case – parents do the best they can given their conditioning through childhood and their circumstances. It may not be what you would have done or what you find acceptable, but it can help to understand it from a different perspective.
I asked her what she would advise her best friend to do in the same circumstances. She said, “I would tell her to know her worth, respect herself and know that she is 100 per cent enough and deserves someone who sees that and loves her the way she loves them.” I asked her if she was willing to accept that advice for herself. It took a moment and a lot of tears before she said, “I’m going to work on loving myself and I don’t want a relationship until I’m ready to go into one knowing I am enough.” I was extremely proud of her coming to this conclusion and excited to watch her blossom on her self-love journey. What catapulted Sarah to look at her wounds was a romantic relationship, but the same conclusion could have been reached through any type of relationship. It is not so much about the relationship or the challenge, but more about what it brings to the surface to be acknowledged and healed.
It's Not You, It's Me Page 9