Hello hello, my name is Sabrina Amina and this is the Feelings Pod.
Today's episode is a continuation of the last one on love and that took me in some unexpected
directions.
Today the primary focus is self-love and recognizing that in order to experience the most fulfilling,
profound love in this life, it starts here within me.
It starts with cultivating a loving self-concept.
It starts with noticing the moments when I'm not fully self-loving and learning how to
be with those feelings and learning how to move through them and transmute them.
Learning how to love myself is probably one of the best things I've learned in this life.
And I think I've definitely talked about self-love in other episodes.
I like the idea of giving it its own time in this episode.
So self-love is, I'd argue that we're born with a self-loving concept.
We come into the world fully expressed and
perhaps that's not everyone's experience and I certainly don't mean to speak for anyone
other than myself.
But I do think that we come from the source of love.
We come into the world as love and the human experience that we have sometimes challenges
or diminishes that loving self-concept.
Yeah, sometimes I think about my younger self and how much she went through and the messages
she got that she wasn't good enough or smart enough or pretty enough.
She didn't work hard enough or wasn't doing the right things.
And when you're young, when I was young and I think this is true for many of us, we do
our best to please those who take care of us, our primary caretakers.
And when our primary caretakers lean towards criticism or are not super generous with loving
language, loving actions, it becomes a little harder to stay in the knowing.
And as we grow into adulthood, we start to see our patterns and for those of us who have
access and the privilege of doing the work of deep healing, we can start to come back
to ourselves.
And that's going to look different for everyone.
And instead of getting into how to return to the place of self-love, I'd like to focus
on this episode on how self-love has created more love in my life.
First and foremost, it gives me the opportunity to show people how I wish to be loved when
I'm fully self-loving when I show myself love by setting boundaries, by identifying my needs,
by expressing my desires, by protecting my peace, by being discerning about the company
I choose or the way I wish to show up in the world.
All of those acts allow me to align with the energy of a self-loving concept.
And from this place, I have no desire to spend time with folks who challenge that or to be
in spaces where it feels like hard work to prove my worth or show others how great I
am.
Being more in love with myself, I feel much less of a need to prove myself to others because
I know I'm great.
And I remember first learning about being more aware of the hypercritical voice.
I call mine Carl for whatever reason.
One of the techniques I've heard that's helpful is to name your inner critic to kind of engage
with it.
And then you can be like, okay, Carl, thanks for your input, but that's not needed right
now.
So I was like engaging with that hypercritical voice and learning how to shift that narrative
instead of, ugh, you're so lazy.
Just get up and do those dishes already.
That's pretty harsh.
I would never speak to anyone like that.
I really wouldn't.
And yet I have in the past spoken to myself that way.
And I still think that voice creeps up when I'm not very well resourced, when I'm tired,
when I'm not feeling wonderful about myself.
Carl pops up with the hypercritical dialogue and I'll be like, you know what?
Yes.
The sink is full of dishes.
I really don't want to do dishes right now.
And that's okay.
I can choose rest.
I can lie down.
Choosing not to do the dishes in this moment doesn't diminish my work as a human.
Also, laziness, side note.
Laziness does not exist.
I highly encourage you to check out the book by Devon Price.
If you tend to think of yourself as lazy when you're not doing things that you think you
should be doing.
If you feel like you're not being as productive as you should be.
Yeah.
That's a great resource.
I don't want to go too much into that because it'll take me down a rabbit hole, moving us
away from the topic of self-love.
Yeah.
Another book that's really profoundly shaped how I've cultivated my loving self-concept
is Kristen Neff's work on self-compassion, mindful self-compassion.
I've done a lot of, you know, I've taken her courses.
I've read her books and learning the meditations and those specific ways to be more loving
with ourselves.
Really has, it's like I'm so proud of myself because I've noticed a dramatic shift in the
way that I speak to myself.
I speak to myself with more love and respect and self-honoring and acceptance.
I notice more when I'm feeling difficult feelings like shame or anger or jealousy or rage and
I can witness the difficult emotions without feeling like I'm a horrible person.
A piece of the self-compassion work that Kristen Neff teaches is remembering, you know, our
connection to others and remembering that, remembering and also affirming, yes, I feel
this way.
I'm not alone in this feeling.
Everyone feels this way sometimes.
And when I started this work, I remember how uncomfortable it was to say really wonderful
things about myself.
It felt like, ew, I remember that feeling.
I was like, why is this so hard?
Why is it so hard to give myself loving self-compassion?
And it's a practice.
And yeah, at first it feels awkward and strange and not really, it almost felt disingenuous.
I was like, this isn't it.
But I stuck with it and now I've gotten to a point where it feels much more natural for
me to offer myself loving words of support in difficult moments than to really come down
hard on myself.
And you know what?
This transformed the way I show up in relationships because if I can't offer myself love, then
and I'm trying to seek that love outside of myself, it will always be incomplete.
I will always feel like I'm not enough to receive the love that I'm seeking.
I will always feel like I have to prove to others that I'm deserving of their love and
if I can just love myself and trust in that, then I attract more loving people in my life.
So I have a newfound appreciation for the people in my life who knew me before I really
started doing any of this healing work.
Yeah, they saw me before I could see myself and there's just something really special
about those kinds of people.
I really honor them and how they've helped me remember my light and my magic and what
makes me wonderful and special and worthy of love.
If you're interested in trying something to cultivate a more self-loving concept, I recommend
a loving kindness meditation, it's from a Buddhist tradition and there are so many you
can find.
Personally, my favorite meditation app is the Insight Timer and if you just search loving
kindness meditation, I mean even if you put loving kindness meditation into a Google search,
you'll come up with lots of resources and of course, Chris and Neff have great resources
for loving kindness.
Yeah.
So this week, my invitation for you is to notice when you're being less than loving
towards yourself and see if you can shift that, see if you can move from a place of
self-loathing to self-loving.
And it doesn't have to be a dramatic shift from loathe to love because that can be quite
a big jump but maybe move towards understanding, acceptance.
Yeah.
So I think that's all I have to say about that for now.
I think that's a wonderful way to end the second season of the Feelings Pod.
This is episode 20 and this week is the Summer Solstice.
I'm looking forward to sharing more on Feelings with you in the next season.
All right.
So find a comfortable position.
You could be lying down or sitting up comfortably.
Once you've adjusted and settled in, just notice any micro adjustments you could make
to get 10% more comfortable.
I invite you to close the eyes if that feels comfortable or find a soft gaze and begin to
tune into the breath and really allow that breath to fill the belly.
And let it go.
And as you follow your breath, imagine breathing in love.
Take a deep breath into the belly and imagine that love permeating your entire body and
radiating outwards.
And imagine a color that you associate with love.
And on the next inhale, imagine that color light just filling your entire body, expanding
from your heart space, radiating outwards, upwards toward the head, downwards toward
the heart, to your torso, allowing that loving light to expand in all directions throughout
your entire body.
Take a deep breath in and let it go.
Take another deep breath in.
Let it go.
Notice that loving glow around you, within you and around you.
And imagine that loving glow is here to protect you, to nurture you all day long.
And as you move through the day, imagine moving with this bubble of light that protects a
loving self-concept.
Take a deep breath in.
Let it go.
You can continue breathing in this space.
And whenever you feel ready, let the eyes flutter open, perhaps offering yourself a warm
smile, maybe giving yourself a nice hug.
Thank you so much for practicing with me today.
Have a wonderful day.