Welcome back to Episode #36 of The Daily Interaction podcast. Today’s topic is on The First Rule of Confidence: Love Thyself.
That’s right. We talk about love today, baby, so listen up. Loving yourself is one of the most fundamental parts of becoming a confident person, and that plays a huge role in your interactions, both with the world and with yourself. It is part intuition, part following your gut feel to be kind to yourself, and part an obligation – you owe it to yourself, you do!
We explore this topic today where I ask you deep questions and make you reflect on your life. Please feel free to be beautifully selfish for the next 30 minutes as you tune in to this show.
The inspiration for talking about confidence comes from a FREE program on Confidence Building Series that I am offering all my email subscribers. If you want in on the tips, resources, and exercises on building confidence for you in bite-size chunks every other week then just go to the top right hand corner of this page here and sign up. The program will be in your Inbox starting early April 2012.
Loving yourself should not depend on your situation or outside factors in your life. You should not wait for life to be better before you love yourself. It is particularly hard to love yourself when you feel guilty for something in your life. For instance, if you have been in an accident and now your life is a mess with the victims of the accident after you for personal injury claim, you may feel guilty and stressed about what happened – naturally! – but don’t let yourself go into a self-hatred self-berating mode either. In these situations, life tests us and I know you can still tap into self-love somewhere in there even in the extreme situations.
Guess Who is the Fresh Voice This Episode:
Anne-Sophie Reinhardt is the Fresh New Voice today on the show and I am delighted to introduce her to you; she has done a lot of healing in her life and shares her experiences with her blog readers. She is also a traveler and an explorer of life, and her message on her blog, My Intercontinental Life, is beyond inspiring. Hop on her newsletter and check out her work on My Intercontinental Life. Thank you, Anne-Sophie!
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Your Weekly Friday Show Notes:
1. Why loving yourself is a huge part of building your confidence, and why loving yourself is not so much selfish as it is self-nurturing.
2. What it really means to love yourself – and why this is not narcissistic and egotistical as it is absolutely normal and necessary, in fact, as necessary and normal, if not more, than loving all the other people in your life.
3. On inspiration from Louise Hay and the power of changing your thoughts first and how they create your life. And how this relates to happiness and to loving yourself, and how no one is exempt from this rule.
4. Do You Love Yourself? And if you don’t, why not? This is the question you must answer before you can start seeking answers to other big questions in life such as happiness, confidence, and being a master communicator.
5. How do you know whether you love yourself. First, it is in how you treat yourself. Listen to the ways that you can be doing the wrong and harsh way or the right and kind way and learn to recognize those in your own life.
6. My story of becoming an early riser – 4:30am every day, baby! – and the shift of going from a harsh discipline to loving and gentle pushing and how it has changed the impact of my own decision and promise to myself.
7. Another expression of love is in how you take care of yourself. Are you getting enough rest? Are you taking care of your body and your mind, or are you always putting other people first?
8. I ask you questions here that might create a shift in your mindset, please listen in and answer these questions honestly.
9. The beautiful and difficult Louise Hay Mirror Rule for you to do first thing in the morning. Can you do it? I know you can, if I can do it. Let’s give it a try.
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{ 16 brilliant comments, Care to add another? }
Lovely episode. Thank you!
Vidya, sweet friend and my fellow positive thinker in eastern culture thinking movement (just being silly and wishful
), hi!! Welcome back here…. Oh I am so proud of you for doing this – funny enough, I learned self-love on my own but want my own mom to do more of it for herself. I am so sorry for your loss, she would be so proud of you. THANK YOU for making my day by coming over.
Farnoosh my journey to happiness began the day I started loving myself – there is no other way! Thank you for this fab post!
Corinne, beautiful – I know self-love works but hearing affirmations and validations still goes a long way. Thanks for sharing!
I remember reading somewhere that we should fall in love with our life. That phrase stuck with me.
Galen, beautiful – I love it. And I’ve heard the same phrase and live by it. Thanks for sharing.
I think when you have parents who treasured you as a child, you are more easily able to love yourself. I was lucky enough to have those parents!
Thanks! Loved the post! Esp. the “Your Weekly Friday Show Notes”
Betsy, Zen Mama, welcome here, and what a beautiful observation. Thank you for sharing your lovely thoughts – I’ve been enjoying our recent exchanges a lot.
If we don’t love ourselves first, how can we expect anyone else to love us? We teach others how to treat us.
I agree that self-love is critical to happiness. Before I discovered this, I spent much of my life as the demanding, controlling, resentful victim in my close relationships (a special gift from my mother). This won me either spineless followers (which gets old quickly) or others just like me. I expected love from others but didn’t know how to give it. It wasn’t until I put things on hold and discovered how to love myself that my life changed for the much better. My relationships became more fulfilling and rewarding and I was happy to give my love.
Call it selfish if you want, but you have to put yourself first in order to be there for the other important people in your life.
Awesome post Farnoosh! Such an important message!
Dear Paige, what a profound question and I am so glad you came to the conclusion that you did – Selfish is perfectly fine but since the poor word has such a bad rap, I called it self-nurturing.
As for your special “gifts” from your mom, boy do I HEAR you – and this is actually coming to me in such a crazy time in my relationship with her these days that it feels especially comforting, thank you. I know we have to do our healing in our own time, and everyone is on their own journey but boy is that hard to accept some days! Sigh – think I need an special dose of self-love today. Thanks for stopping by.
oh that’s one thing i learnt with depression – LOVE MYSELF!!!!
put myself first and love myself, take care of my health, my well being….
and i love having Anne-Sophie as the fresh voice. she’s always positive and I love how she shares her experience around the web
I “met” her when she commented on a post I did on another blog
Thanks Farnoosh
Noch Noch
Hi dear Noch Noch, how wonderful a lesson you’ve learned. Good for you. And so so glad you enjoyed the podcast. Big hugs to you.
Hi–I don’t want to be the fly in the ointment here, and I am happy for those of you who have commented on your own processes. And I look at my life and wonder where the joy went. As a child I was enthusiastic and eager, had lots of dreams. After divorce and my children growing up, I was alone for the first time and all the life in me just fizzled. I only do things (for the most part) that I am expected to do–work, shower, babysit grandkids, etc. This is not depression, I think this is conditioning. That all those years of raising kids and being married, I WAS doing what was expected, putting my dreams on hold, that I think I now don’t have a clue how to feel my dreams again. And I don’t know where to start. My thinking brain has overruled my feeling heart so long, I don’t know how to get it back. I do a lot of journaling, but that is often just more thinking. I can give myself affirmations, but deep down, I really don’t believe them, and soon give up. Does anyone know how I can re-connect with my soul, my heart? I absolutely KNOW that I am valuable and my soul is of inestimable worth (just like every other soul in the universe). But I don’t FEEL it, don’t connect with it. And therefore, I cannot be who I REALLY am because my thinking brain just rides rough-shod over it all. I’ve tried meditation and that helps momentarily, but nothing lasting. I really don’t know if there is anything I can do, if anyone can help me in this situation. I’m just reaching out for whatever I can find. Thank you for listening to my ramble. I would appreciate any comments.
Hello dear Sherri, generally I wait a day or so before I get to the comments but I did not want to make you wait. You are SO very brave and sweet to trust me and my space here to share your personal struggles so first, thank you!!!
I am so glad that you said this part: “I absolutely KNOW that I am valuable and my soul is of inestimable worth…” but then you said you don’t really believe the affirmations and perhaps even this very phrase, so if I asked you, is that really true, would you say yes or no? I know that on the surface, you are doing what needs to be done to re-connect with yourself and to awaken your dreams, but I wonder if maybe you are giving enough time to first let yourself HEAL from all that has not gone right, because we do need to take time to come to terms with it first and acceptance is a really difficult part. We can’t go into bliss when we are in denial. And it’s ok to have some grief or regret about the past and going through the acceptance is part of the process – then after that, I really believe you will have some inner peace and can THEN begin with tiny steps to find and reclaim your dreams. I hope this helps for now. I don’t know what else to say without knowing more and without working with you closely. I do believe that it IS possible for you to find that happiness again. I really do. Thank you for sharing your thoughts, dear Sherri.
Thank you for your quick response, and your sweet affirmations to me. It brought tears to my eyes. I don’t mean to be too much trouble or to expect more from you than you are willing to give, but I so appreciate your taking the time to respond to my little whine.
Just so you know, the way I found your page was to Google : “thinking vs feeling”. I am sure that my biggest trouble is in the fact that I learned to think my way into, out of and around the situations that arose in my life, and learned that my feelings were of no use to anyone but me. I had no trouble allowing other’s feelings, and I think I did a good job as a mother. But my own needs and feelings were only acknowledged in my poetry and journaling, and it wasn’t until I was living alone before I realized I had no one else’s feelings to acknowledge anymore, and I could not then allow my own to surface, having been hidden so long. It has been 8 years since this emptiness began, and I have tried in many places to “find myself” again, to no avail.
Your question about my KNOWing my own value is valid. The reality is that for years, I didn’t KNOW, could only acknowlege that everyone else was valued, but had reservations about myself. I had an “awakening” in the past 6 months in which I fully realized my own value as being equal to that of everyone else. So I can say I KNOW. But the deep FEELING connection to my REAL SELF is missing. Just like as a child, I KNEW my parents loved me, but I didn’t FEEL it.
I better stop here. I don’t want you to feel that I have any expectations of your help here — no more than you are willing to offer. I have just become so strongly needful of finding myself, I am asking for help anywhere I can.
Thank you again and again for what you have offered me already. I am looking forward to your Confidence newsletters that I signed up for.
Sherri
Dear Sherri, I read this a few times. I can’t say that I *know* how you feel (Don’t you hate it when people say that and they have no idea!!), but I want you to know that ANYTHING is possible if you set your mind to it. If you decide that now is the time to turn things around, and that the past does not dictate the possibilities of the future for you in your life, then you will be able to change it. The how part is detail. The most important thing is that you choose to believe that this is possible. First. Then when that belief starts to take shape, you can begin the execution part. It Takes Time to let go of a lifetime of conditioning and to start to believe something else altogether …. and you will have a lot of resistance to it but you can also make progress and it will slowly emerge that beautiful part of you and your dreams. I am so happy you are signed up for the Confidence series and I also have some group coaching calls that I do for that series totally free and I send out the invites in emails so watch for it. And share it with anyone else that may need a boost in confidence. Thank you Sherri!
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