October 10, 2023 • 31 mins
What if the secret to a happier, more fulfilled life was as simple as loving yourself more? Sounds too good to be true, right? But it's not. In this enlightening episode, we examine why our society discourages self-love and how this lack of self-appreciation traps us in a cycle of harsh self-judgment. Through understanding the two archetypes related to self-love (or the lack of it) - the Wounded Child and the Inner Critic - we shine a light on the barriers obstructing our path to self-love. We also discover how discomfort can serve as a catalyst for growth and empowerment.
Are you ready to silence the inner critic and nurture self-love? By focusing on our unique abilities and talents, we can quiet that critical voice inside us. But it's not just about quieting the critic; it's about engaging our curiosity and openness to help us along the journey of self-love. So, when the inner critic pipes up, question it. Ask it why it's saying what it's saying, challenge its assumptions, and broaden your perspective. It's through this inquisitiveness, this curiosity, that we can navigate through self-doubt and criticism.
But the journey doesn't stop at questioning. It's time to celebrate! Celebrating our accomplishments, no matter how small, can lead to a stronger sense of self-love. As part of this episode, I am thrilled to introduce a half-day workshop designed to further explore and discuss self-love. Let's delve into the impact our inner critic has on our capacity to love ourselves and how by changing our perspective and celebrating our accomplishments, we can fully embrace self-love. So what are you waiting for? Listen in, and let's start practicing self-love together!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back, shifters, to another episode of
the Inviting Shift podcast.
I'm your host, christina Smith,and I am so excited today
because we're going to start themonth of October and go through
the entire month of Octoberwith self love topics and I know
if you're cringing.
There was a few years ago thatI would have heard the word
(00:21):
myself and been like, eh,whatever, that is right.
What does self love mean?
Well, this month we're talkingwith other experts.
I'm going to give you the keysto self love that I think are
truly, truly important for selflove, and I want us to dip into
this, knowing that self love isa practice.
It's not an end point.
(00:42):
There is not a time where weget to self love and we're like
I'm never going to doubt myselfagain, I'm never going to go
through that suffering spiralagain.
That's just not how it works.
In fact, self love is apractice that myself and many
other coaches are still workingon, because there's always
depths and expansion in selflove.
(01:03):
You're going to hear about thatin a round table.
I got different women fromdifferent walks of life and
specialties to come on here andtalk to us about what self love
means to them.
But today I want to talk withwhat self love means to me, and
it's really, really hard, isn'tit, to step into this energy of
(01:24):
self love, for a couple ofreasons.
One, it's such a fuzzy topicwhat is self love?
And two, our culture doesn'twant us to have self love, and I
know this because when I lookup the definition in the
dictionary wow, that one took mea while, thank you midlife I
(01:48):
see words like being overlyobsessed with oneself, conceit
and vanity, and that's notrelated what it is.
So we talked a little bit aboutit last week, but I want to go
a little bit deeper into acouple of the keys, right, and
the reasons that we have a hardtime loving ourselves, and one
of those are one of twoarchetypes that I want to talk
(02:09):
about today.
One of them is the wounded child.
So the wounded child is the onewho was probably wounded while
we were a child, but we havealso gathered evidence as we're
moving on.
We never really let go of ourwounded child.
She's always there, we can helpheal her, but she's the one who
takes all of those storiespersonally.
(02:30):
What other people say to uswhen we shame ourselves, when we
think that, if we're just meanenough to ourselves.
We won't do that mess up again.
Right, she takes the brunt ofthat.
It's as if we're screaming atthis wounded child and telling
her yeah, you know, you're notgood enough.
Let me tell you about when youwere eight.
(02:50):
Let me tell you about thatthing we did when we were 16 or
22 or 31.
Right, that wounded child isalways a part of us that thinks
that we're not enough or we'reway too much, and that's where
most of our underlying problemwith self love comes from is
that we have been collectingevidence as to why we aren't
(03:12):
enough or why we're too much.
Whatever those things are ourentire life and this is a safety
issue, right.
So our brain actually uses thisas a safety feature that
anything that is unsafe, we wantto be able to point it out.
The problem with our brains isthat they don't really know the
(03:33):
difference between safety anddiscomfort, right, really, the
feature that is picking up thispart of our brain that is
looking for all the things thatcan go wrong it isn't balanced.
It is looking for anything thatwill make us uncomfortable as
well, and the struggle withdiscomfort is.
(03:53):
Discomfort is really where ourgrowth edge is.
That's where we empowerourselves from.
So discomfort isn't necessarilya bad thing, but being unsafe
is, and so sometimes, when wehave that inner critic coming
out, we first have to askourselves that question of is
this unsafe or is thisuncomfortable?
(04:14):
And we'll get to that in alittle bit, but usually what
happens is we go through thissuffering spiral is what I call
it.
I experience a trigger or amoment of emotional woundedness,
right?
Maybe one of my inner child'swounds is that I'm not smart
enough.
Right, because when I was young, that was the only thing that
(04:34):
was important is am I smartenough?
And so whenever I feel like myintelligence is being challenged
, my wounded child can come out.
Right, if I'm being questionedor I just take somebody's
comment the wrong way to meanthat I'm not very smart, that
wounded child comes out and shegets so mad.
(04:56):
She's like oh yeah, oh yeah,and she gets along with the
inner critic.
Now, in our modern midlifementorship, we talk a lot about
the inner critic today, whichisn't actually an archetype the
way that I talk about her.
She's actually the shadow partof our judge archetype.
So we have this judge thatwants to be free and wants to be
(05:18):
safe, and there's a scale there.
Right, on one side is freedom,on one side is safety, and our
judge, our inner judge, tries todiscern what is unsafe versus
how can we be free?
Right, so what are the risks?
Right, that's what our judge isdoing.
But when our judge startslistening to this wounded child
(05:39):
part of ourselves, suddenly thatjudge becomes so strict on
safety and wants to just putourselves in this tiny little
box so that we don't ever getout, that we don't grow.
But not growing also means well, maybe we won't feel pain,
maybe we won't embarrassourselves, right?
All those things areuncomfortable, they're not
(06:02):
unsafe, and so we have to bringourselves back from the inner
critic.
And this can be hard, becausethe moment that we need the most
self-love is usually themoments that we don't want to
give ourselves permission togive it to ourselves.
At least, that's how it worksfor me.
When I am feeling my low,there's a part of my wounded
(06:23):
child that just wants to keepkicking myself in the head,
hitting my head against thatwall and telling myself why.
It's true, then I'm just notgood enough or I'm too much, and
so we really want to.
How we correct these twoarchetypes?
Right?
We're going to start with someof the keys of self-love today.
The first one is compassion.
(06:45):
It is going to be dang hard tolove on yourself if you're not
going to have compassion foryour humanness.
I say this all the time in myemails be gentle with your
humanness.
That means bringing thatcompassion factor in.
Compassion is so essential forself-love because it's the part
(07:06):
of us that can give ourselvespermission to be nice to
ourselves.
And I know that some of yougen-axers are going yeah, but
how will I correct it If I don'tuse shame or I'm not mean to
myself or tell myself how stupidthat thing was to do?
I love what Brene Brown says,and she says that shame breaks
down the very part of us thatthinks that we're capable of
(07:28):
change.
So I have tried the shame gameso many times in my life that I
just make myself miserablethinking about how I make all
these mistakes.
And if I just would do theright thing right, or say the
right thing or not say anythingright, whatever the circumstance
might be, that somehow, if Imean enough to myself, I'll do
(07:50):
it right, better or better thenext time, right.
But that's not really how itworks.
Shame breaks down that part ofus that thinks that we're
capable of that change.
So it may work.
Sometimes, right, I've donesome things because I've shamed
myself or been mean enough tomyself to force myself to do it.
But it's not nearly as effectiveas having compassion for
(08:13):
ourselves, because compassiongives us a moment to go wow,
that was very human of me, thatwas a mistake.
I can go fix it.
I can go apologize.
There might be things that Ican do in order to make that
right.
But I'm also going to be kindto myself, knowing that I'm
human.
I'm not a robot.
(08:34):
I'm not going to get thingsright just because I know better
, and I love that quote by MayaAngelou.
It's like when we know better,we do better, but that's not
always true.
Sometimes our ego gets in theway.
We get defensive, we sit in ourwounded child, our inner critic
comes out.
All of these energies canimpact the way that we do things
(08:56):
, even if they're not the waythat we want to.
So what I want us to learn todayis that self-love is a practice
.
If you remember nothing elseout of this, I want you to know
that self-love is a practice.
One of those practices iscompassion, and compassion is
all about having kindness forourselves.
(09:17):
In fact, I have the definitionright here A feeling of deep
sympathy and sorrow for anotherwho is stricken by misfortune,
accompanied by a strong desireto alleviate the suffering.
Now, that shame that we'reputting on ourselves, that
meanness, that's part of thatmisfortune, right, we're
(09:39):
actually creating our ownmisfortune, and so we want to be
able to be kind, that they wantto alleviate the suffering.
And the way that we alleviatethe suffering is stop being mean
to ourselves, right, stopshaming ourselves.
And the first thing I've alwayshad to do is give myself
permission permission to be kindto myself.
(10:01):
Even though my humane goeswrong, even though I don't show
up the way that I want to, eventhough I say things that
embarrass me, even though I makemistakes, some of them
repeatedly I get to still chooseto give myself permission to be
kind to myself.
So, if that's never anythingthat you've said to yourself, I
(10:24):
want you to say to yourselfright now I give myself
permission to be kind to me, tohave compassion, even when maybe
I knew better or could havedone better or should have done
better.
We're going to give ourselvescompassion.
I want you to write it down now, because I want you in the
(10:44):
moments where we need it themost.
It's the hardest for us tochoose it, and this has been one
of my practices for the last 10years is really learning how to
be kind to myself, even when Idon't want to be so.
The first thing is givingourselves permission to be kind.
Sounds kind of silly, but a lotof us really need that because
(11:05):
we don't think it's justifiedwhen we do things wrong.
If you grew up in religion orCatholic church, it was pretty
much you know bad things arehappening to you because God can
see what you're doing and he'spunishing you right.
So there was like a definiteconsequences for all of our
actions, and so when bad thingshappened, at least in my house,
(11:26):
it was because I had donesomething wrong and I don't want
us to step into that anymore.
We do things wrong because wemess up.
We're human, we can do our best,but the best way to bounce back
from that and come back to ourbest self is a lot of self-love,
getting stuck in that sufferingspiral by constantly saying oh
(11:47):
yeah, christina, you always dothis wrong and remember you
don't do that right and you'renot very good at that either.
What can you do.
You know, what kind of friendare you?
What kind of wife are you?
I can ask myself all of thesequestions and just get stuck in
that really negative place, butinstead I'm choosing compassion,
which means that I'm going tobe really kind.
Wow, christina, that wasembarrassing and that's okay.
(12:11):
Hopefully we won't do thatagain next time.
But we can be loving toourselves, right.
Start healing that woundedchild instead of continuing to
shame her.
We can step into it and say wow, that was a mistake and that's
okay.
Right, how we would want toraise our children to be kind to
(12:31):
themselves.
We really need to parentourselves in a way in which we
can forgive that inner child ofours and we can really see the
love and intention behind them.
So here's three ways I want youto be a little bit kinder to
yourself.
First was that permission.
The second is I want you tospeak kindly to yourself.
(12:54):
Now, a lot of people useaffirmations which I think can
be great, but there's a lot ofways in which we use
affirmations that aren't ashelpful as we think they are.
For me, at least, one of themis when I say I am magnificent.
Right, that might be a reallygreat affirmation.
However, for a long time, whenI wasn't giving myself self-love
(13:18):
, I really had this hard partabout putting these magnificent
claims out there.
These big claims.
Right, if I'm not feelingmagnificent, it might feel like
I'm lying to myself.
Right, that I'm like foolingmyself and just saying words,
and then people repeat them overand over and over again and the
(13:40):
words start meaning nothing andbringing nothing to me.
And so, instead of that, I wantyou to be honest with yourself.
Right, you don't have tobelieve the statement 100%, but
there has to be some credibilityin there, some ability to go.
Oh, I can go with that.
So if saying I am magnificentfeels too big, one way we can
(14:04):
give ourselves compassion is Iam curious how magnificence will
show up in my life today.
I'm curious as to my ownmagnificence.
I'm open to seeing my ownmagnificence.
Our eyes are at least pointedin the right direction and we
might be open to seeing more ofit.
(14:24):
So, affirmations we want themto be true if you're going to
use them.
We want to feel that, so thatit doesn't start feeling like
just words that we're repeatingto ourselves.
We want to really breathe themin and feel them in.
We also need to let go ofperfection.
(14:46):
I know we love it, gen Xersespecially we just somehow think
that perfection is attainable,achievable.
I remember one time when I wasin the suffering spiral, my
husband was like I was saying oh, I'm doing terrible as a mother
, as a wife, I'm doing terribleat work, my friends, you know I
(15:07):
went in that whole sufferingspiral.
My husband asked me Christina,who's getting this perfect?
Name me one woman, look aroundand tell me one person on this
planet who's getting it allright.
All at the same time.
I really thought for a longtime and I was like holy cow,
(15:29):
everybody's got something wrongwith them.
Right, everybody's got a thing.
And so we just want to be awarethat we're often comparing
ourselves Like I'm comparing mymothering to a woman who I see
as perfect, and she probablysees me as perfect because we
(15:50):
have different skills and wejust see we cherry pick right,
we just see the parts that we'relike oh, I really want that,
that's how I want to show up andI'm not doing that.
So I must be doing it wrong.
But we're not really tuninginto the magic and the gifts
that we actually have.
We're just comparing our flawsto other people's highlights and
(16:11):
that's not really fair, is it?
So we're going to showourselves a lot of compassion
and remember that humane is hard, even if we don't think we have
a hard life.
All humane is hard, all of it.
And so we can give ourselvescompassion, give ourselves that
permission for compassion.
(16:33):
The second key that I wanted totalk about to self-love that I
believe there is is curiosity.
This is a huge one, and theseare things that we can practice.
Even if we don't really connectwith self-love, even if all
those warm, gushy, fuzzyfeelings aren't showing up for
(16:54):
us, we can at least start withthe keys, so we can start giving
ourselves permission to becompassionate.
But we can also give ourselvespermission just to open our view
, and that is what curiosity isall about For me.
Again, my inner critic can comeout, my wounded child can come
out and all of a sudden, I'm sojudgmental.
(17:17):
Oh, I'm so stupid.
Why do I do that?
I'm lazy, right, we come upwith all these negative
descriptors.
I'm an idiot.
Why would I trust people?
Why would I trust myself?
Why don't I ever stay committedto myself?
Right, we can get so judgmentalwhen we put ourselves in this
like negativity box and we canget stuck there.
(17:40):
But curiosity is the cure forjudgment.
Curiosity is the cure forjudgment because when we're
being curious, our mind startsopening to possibilities and the
definition for curiosity incase you're curious like I am
the desire to learn or more knowabout anything.
So when we are desiring tolearn more or know more about
(18:05):
things, we haven't made ajudgment completely on it right,
we don't have one-sided opinion.
We are open, we want to learnmore, we want to see it from
different angles, from differentfacets.
Right, we want to be able todiscover more.
And when we're discovering more, our brains need to be open,
(18:25):
right?
Because if not, cognitivedissonance would come in and go
nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.
If you are in a nope mood,that's a really great indication
that you're stuck in woundedchild or inner critic.
Because I got to tell you whenI'm really wanting to be mean to
myself, I don't want to see anyother possibilities, I don't
(18:46):
have curiosity, I just want tohave judgment and some damnation
for whatever it is that I'vedone.
Right, punishment Society issaying well, maybe there's more
to the picture, maybe I couldstay open and curious, maybe I
could figure out what else istrue about this, right?
So, instead of going into thisjudgment mode, which doesn't
(19:09):
help, you know, callingourselves lazy or stupid or
mindless none of that is reallyhelping us become a better
person, it's just punishing us.
But instead of doing that andthen bringing up all the
evidence right, because we loveto gather evidence during our
lives, I have so many differentpieces of evidence as to how I'm
(19:29):
not enough or too much, right.
Going back to that, and whathappens is I can remember all
the way back to oh, rememberwhen I was eight and I said that
mean thing to my friend.
Or when I was 12 and I messedup that dance recital, right,
like I can go into thatsuffering spiral.
So instead of getting there andgetting stuck there, we want to
(19:51):
just build new evidence.
There's so much evidence outthere to your magic and gifts.
The problem is that safetyfeature in our brain isn't
looking for all of our magic andour gifts, it's just looking
for all the pitfalls, right?
It's looking for all the risks,all the ways in which we can
hurt or embarrass ourselves orsuffer discomfort.
(20:13):
So instead, I would love us tostart celebrating ourselves and
really looking at our own giftsand magic, being more curious
about ourselves than judgmental.
Yeah, maybe I messed that up,but what are five things I
actually got right today and Ipromise you, you make more than
a hundred decisions in your day,so I'm sure that there are some
(20:36):
decisions that are perfect andmagical and work out just right.
We just don't notice thembecause we're so good at them.
But we want to start doing that.
We want to start building thatpile of magnificence here is my
pile of magnificence, right andif I balance that pile, start
(20:58):
balancing those two piles ofevidence versus, you know, the
critical, versus the gifts andthe magic then we start getting
a more balanced judge on theinside and the inner critic kind
of has to shuffle away,especially when we have
compassion for that inner criticpart of ourselves.
So curiosity is how we're goingto cure the judgment.
(21:22):
So, when we are feeling all ofthis criticism coming up, I want
us to start asking ourselvessome really great questions
Because, again, we want to beable to decipher what's unsafe
versus uncomfortable.
This is a very good curiosityquestion, right, what's unsafe,
what's uncomfortable, unsafe?
(21:44):
Obviously we want to take careof most of the time.
Most of the time today, we'renot running from bears or doing
other physically fatal thingsright, so we're pretty safe.
It's really about ourdiscomfort, and again,
discomfort is where our growthedge is.
(22:04):
It's always uncomfortable togrow, otherwise we would just
have grown that part alreadyright, but it's the discomfort
that keeps us from that.
So we want to make sure thatour brain is giving us data and
not just these made-up storiesof what might go wrong, could go
wrong, and so what I want us todo is start with some really
(22:26):
delicious questions and goodquestions help us again open up
and see more possibilities.
Otherwise, we can get veryblack and white.
I can see there a yes or a no,and usually in situations
there's a ton more opportunitiesthat we're not exploring.
So great questions Is it unsafeor uncomfortable?
(22:49):
We want to ask ourselves thatright away, because as long as
it's just uncomfortable, we cancalm down that nervous system,
take a deeper breath and startgetting curious about well, what
are the possibilities right,instead of feeling the fear as
if it's a real thing and as ifit's actually going to
(23:11):
physically hurt us.
So bringing down the nervoussystem with is it unsafe or
uncomfortable?
The second question that I gotfrom a sales trainer many, many
years ago was what if theopposite is true.
This question has opened up somany possibilities.
(23:34):
So if I'm thinking to myself,christina, you're such a mess up
, you always mess up.
What if I asked if the oppositewas true?
Do I always mess up or do Ioften get things right?
Well, often I get things right.
It's just these parts that I'mnot expecting right, or the
(23:56):
perspective that I'm having atthe moment right.
I didn't want this to happen.
So suddenly it comes.
The worst thing, rather than wedon't always recognize when
we're using the best parts ofourselves, we kind of expect
that to happen and don't reallyquestion it.
So what if the opposite weretrue?
So if I'm thinking about thefuture and I'm like, oh, what if
(24:18):
nobody listens to this podcastor gets anything out of it?
Or I can start asking myself,what if people get a lot out of
this podcast?
What if they really starttuning in and asking themselves
these questions, putting theirinner critic in linemen right,
healing that wounded child, sothat we don't have to act from
that really over-emotional partof ourselves?
(24:40):
What if the opposite is true?
The third one is a questionI've been asking myself for 15
years.
It's not about a silver lining,but it is about asking
ourselves.
How can I love this?
Everything's got pros and cons.
I'm not saying that we shouldalways just make the pros so
(25:04):
extraordinary that we don't seethe cons.
Of course not.
We couldn't make really gooddecisions if all we looked at
the good stuff, right.
But what I'm saying is, how canI love this?
Sometimes I love it by saying,wow, I'm being challenged, this
is a good thing.
I'm gonna grow some.
That might be the only thing Ican love this.
But can I love about this?
(25:25):
I am brave enough to take onthis challenge, that I am brave
enough to keep trying, eventhough I've failed.
Right, that's how I can lovethis.
We make it about the gifts inourselves, that we keep trying,
that we're consistent, that wedid our best, that we even tried
in the first place right,that's how we can love it.
(25:49):
How can I love the situation?
Wow, maybe there's a situationthat's really teaching me how to
communicate in a better way.
Maybe there's a situation thatI always believe that conflicts
among people can be really greatopportunities for deepening
connections, not separating them, and so I can start getting
(26:12):
curious about how can I lovethis?
Wow, after I have this conflictwith my friend, I might have a
closer relationship if I startmoving forward in a way that I
feel good about right.
How can I love this?
The last piece is what can Icelebrate about me which might
be part of our?
How can I love this, too?
I celebrate that I'm tryingthis again, even though it
(26:34):
didn't work out the first time.
I'm celebrating the fact that Ihave I just cried out and moved
right on.
I'm celebrating myself forreally showing up with courage.
I'm celebrating myself fordoing the thing that I said was
hard and I did it anyway.
Celebration is one way that wecan get more curious about
(26:57):
ourselves.
What can I celebrate aboutmyself?
And this might be hard at first.
So I always suggest to myclients go tell someone in your
family something awesome thatyou did that day or something
awesome that you're proud aboutyourself for right Doesn't even
have to be from that day buttell them about your gifts.
(27:17):
Celebrate yourself, because Iknow that in other worlds, when
we were growing up, to celebrateourselves was showing off or
bragging.
But how do we really step intoour fullness without celebrating
who we are?
How do we allow other people tostep into their fullness if
we're not willing to show themhow to celebrate themselves.
(27:39):
I really think celebration is ahuge part of being curious,
right Starting that new pile ofevidence as to our magnificence,
rather than always depending onthat old pile of evidence that
tells us how we're not enoughfor too much all of the time.
And these are the first twokeys to unlocking self-love.
(28:01):
It's a half-day experience thatwe do once a year with my
clients, and if you join in tothe modern midlife mentorship
now for the introductory priceby October 31st, if you sign up
on November 4th, we will begetting together and spending
half a day together as a smallgroup to really talk about this
(28:23):
self-love, to give you anexperience of self-love.
So if you're not sure exactlywhat self-love is, I hope that
you'll join us then.
If you have any questions,please let me know.
Otherwise I will see you allnext week with a couple more of
our keys.
Welcome back, shifters, to another episode of
the Inviting Shift podcast.
I'm your host, christina Smith,and I am so excited today
because we're going to start themonth of October and go through
the entire month of Octoberwith self love topics and I know
if you're cringing.
There was a few years ago thatI would have heard the word
(00:21):
myself and been like, eh,whatever, that is right.
What does self love mean?
Well, this month we're talkingwith other experts.
I'm going to give you the keysto self love that I think are
truly, truly important for selflove, and I want us to dip into
this, knowing that self love isa practice.
It's not an end point.
(00:42):
There is not a time where weget to self love and we're like
I'm never going to doubt myselfagain, I'm never going to go
through that suffering spiralagain.
That's just not how it works.
In fact, self love is apractice that myself and many
other coaches are still workingon, because there's always
depths and expansion in selflove.
(01:03):
You're going to hear about thatin a round table.
I got different women fromdifferent walks of life and
specialties to come on here andtalk to us about what self love
means to them.
But today I want to talk withwhat self love means to me, and
it's really, really hard, isn'tit, to step into this energy of
(01:24):
self love, for a couple ofreasons.
One, it's such a fuzzy topicwhat is self love?
And two, our culture doesn'twant us to have self love, and I
know this because when I lookup the definition in the
dictionary wow, that one took mea while, thank you midlife I
(01:48):
see words like being overlyobsessed with oneself, conceit
and vanity, and that's notrelated what it is.
So we talked a little bit aboutit last week, but I want to go
a little bit deeper into acouple of the keys, right, and
the reasons that we have a hardtime loving ourselves, and one
of those are one of twoarchetypes that I want to talk
(02:09):
about today.
One of them is the wounded child.
So the wounded child is the onewho was probably wounded while
we were a child, but we havealso gathered evidence as we're
moving on.
We never really let go of ourwounded child.
She's always there, we can helpheal her, but she's the one who
takes all of those storiespersonally.
(02:30):
What other people say to uswhen we shame ourselves, when we
think that, if we're just meanenough to ourselves.
We won't do that mess up again.
Right, she takes the brunt ofthat.
It's as if we're screaming atthis wounded child and telling
her yeah, you know, you're notgood enough.
Let me tell you about when youwere eight.
(02:50):
Let me tell you about thatthing we did when we were 16 or
22 or 31.
Right, that wounded child isalways a part of us that thinks
that we're not enough or we'reway too much, and that's where
most of our underlying problemwith self love comes from is
that we have been collectingevidence as to why we aren't
(03:12):
enough or why we're too much.
Whatever those things are ourentire life and this is a safety
issue, right.
So our brain actually uses thisas a safety feature that
anything that is unsafe, we wantto be able to point it out.
The problem with our brains isthat they don't really know the
(03:33):
difference between safety anddiscomfort, right, really, the
feature that is picking up thispart of our brain that is
looking for all the things thatcan go wrong it isn't balanced.
It is looking for anything thatwill make us uncomfortable as
well, and the struggle withdiscomfort is.
(03:53):
Discomfort is really where ourgrowth edge is.
That's where we empowerourselves from.
So discomfort isn't necessarilya bad thing, but being unsafe
is, and so sometimes, when wehave that inner critic coming
out, we first have to askourselves that question of is
this unsafe or is thisuncomfortable?
(04:14):
And we'll get to that in alittle bit, but usually what
happens is we go through thissuffering spiral is what I call
it.
I experience a trigger or amoment of emotional woundedness,
right?
Maybe one of my inner child'swounds is that I'm not smart
enough.
Right, because when I was young, that was the only thing that
(04:34):
was important is am I smartenough?
And so whenever I feel like myintelligence is being challenged
, my wounded child can come out.
Right, if I'm being questionedor I just take somebody's
comment the wrong way to meanthat I'm not very smart, that
wounded child comes out and shegets so mad.
(04:56):
She's like oh yeah, oh yeah,and she gets along with the
inner critic.
Now, in our modern midlifementorship, we talk a lot about
the inner critic today, whichisn't actually an archetype the
way that I talk about her.
She's actually the shadow partof our judge archetype.
So we have this judge thatwants to be free and wants to be
(05:18):
safe, and there's a scale there.
Right, on one side is freedom,on one side is safety, and our
judge, our inner judge, tries todiscern what is unsafe versus
how can we be free?
Right, so what are the risks?
Right, that's what our judge isdoing.
But when our judge startslistening to this wounded child
(05:39):
part of ourselves, suddenly thatjudge becomes so strict on
safety and wants to just putourselves in this tiny little
box so that we don't ever getout, that we don't grow.
But not growing also means well, maybe we won't feel pain,
maybe we won't embarrassourselves, right?
All those things areuncomfortable, they're not
(06:02):
unsafe, and so we have to bringourselves back from the inner
critic.
And this can be hard, becausethe moment that we need the most
self-love is usually themoments that we don't want to
give ourselves permission togive it to ourselves.
At least, that's how it worksfor me.
When I am feeling my low,there's a part of my wounded
(06:23):
child that just wants to keepkicking myself in the head,
hitting my head against thatwall and telling myself why.
It's true, then I'm just notgood enough or I'm too much, and
so we really want to.
How we correct these twoarchetypes?
Right?
We're going to start with someof the keys of self-love today.
The first one is compassion.
(06:45):
It is going to be dang hard tolove on yourself if you're not
going to have compassion foryour humanness.
I say this all the time in myemails be gentle with your
humanness.
That means bringing thatcompassion factor in.
Compassion is so essential forself-love because it's the part
(07:06):
of us that can give ourselvespermission to be nice to
ourselves.
And I know that some of yougen-axers are going yeah, but
how will I correct it If I don'tuse shame or I'm not mean to
myself or tell myself how stupidthat thing was to do?
I love what Brene Brown says,and she says that shame breaks
down the very part of us thatthinks that we're capable of
(07:28):
change.
So I have tried the shame gameso many times in my life that I
just make myself miserablethinking about how I make all
these mistakes.
And if I just would do theright thing right, or say the
right thing or not say anythingright, whatever the circumstance
might be, that somehow, if Imean enough to myself, I'll do
(07:50):
it right, better or better thenext time, right.
But that's not really how itworks.
Shame breaks down that part ofus that thinks that we're
capable of that change.
So it may work.
Sometimes, right, I've donesome things because I've shamed
myself or been mean enough tomyself to force myself to do it.
But it's not nearly as effectiveas having compassion for
(08:13):
ourselves, because compassiongives us a moment to go wow,
that was very human of me, thatwas a mistake.
I can go fix it.
I can go apologize.
There might be things that Ican do in order to make that
right.
But I'm also going to be kindto myself, knowing that I'm
human.
I'm not a robot.
(08:34):
I'm not going to get thingsright just because I know better
, and I love that quote by MayaAngelou.
It's like when we know better,we do better, but that's not
always true.
Sometimes our ego gets in theway.
We get defensive, we sit in ourwounded child, our inner critic
comes out.
All of these energies canimpact the way that we do things
(08:56):
, even if they're not the waythat we want to.
So what I want us to learn todayis that self-love is a practice
.
If you remember nothing elseout of this, I want you to know
that self-love is a practice.
One of those practices iscompassion, and compassion is
all about having kindness forourselves.
(09:17):
In fact, I have the definitionright here A feeling of deep
sympathy and sorrow for anotherwho is stricken by misfortune,
accompanied by a strong desireto alleviate the suffering.
Now, that shame that we'reputting on ourselves, that
meanness, that's part of thatmisfortune, right, we're
(09:39):
actually creating our ownmisfortune, and so we want to be
able to be kind, that they wantto alleviate the suffering.
And the way that we alleviatethe suffering is stop being mean
to ourselves, right, stopshaming ourselves.
And the first thing I've alwayshad to do is give myself
permission permission to be kindto myself.
(10:01):
Even though my humane goeswrong, even though I don't show
up the way that I want to, eventhough I say things that
embarrass me, even though I makemistakes, some of them
repeatedly I get to still chooseto give myself permission to be
kind to myself.
So, if that's never anythingthat you've said to yourself, I
(10:24):
want you to say to yourselfright now I give myself
permission to be kind to me, tohave compassion, even when maybe
I knew better or could havedone better or should have done
better.
We're going to give ourselvescompassion.
I want you to write it down now, because I want you in the
(10:44):
moments where we need it themost.
It's the hardest for us tochoose it, and this has been one
of my practices for the last 10years is really learning how to
be kind to myself, even when Idon't want to be so.
The first thing is givingourselves permission to be kind.
Sounds kind of silly, but a lotof us really need that because
(11:05):
we don't think it's justifiedwhen we do things wrong.
If you grew up in religion orCatholic church, it was pretty
much you know bad things arehappening to you because God can
see what you're doing and he'spunishing you right.
So there was like a definiteconsequences for all of our
actions, and so when bad thingshappened, at least in my house,
(11:26):
it was because I had donesomething wrong and I don't want
us to step into that anymore.
We do things wrong because wemess up.
We're human, we can do our best,but the best way to bounce back
from that and come back to ourbest self is a lot of self-love,
getting stuck in that sufferingspiral by constantly saying oh
(11:47):
yeah, christina, you always dothis wrong and remember you
don't do that right and you'renot very good at that either.
What can you do.
You know, what kind of friendare you?
What kind of wife are you?
I can ask myself all of thesequestions and just get stuck in
that really negative place, butinstead I'm choosing compassion,
which means that I'm going tobe really kind.
Wow, christina, that wasembarrassing and that's okay.
(12:11):
Hopefully we won't do thatagain next time.
But we can be loving toourselves, right.
Start healing that woundedchild instead of continuing to
shame her.
We can step into it and say wow, that was a mistake and that's
okay.
Right, how we would want toraise our children to be kind to
(12:31):
themselves.
We really need to parentourselves in a way in which we
can forgive that inner child ofours and we can really see the
love and intention behind them.
So here's three ways I want youto be a little bit kinder to
yourself.
First was that permission.
The second is I want you tospeak kindly to yourself.
(12:54):
Now, a lot of people useaffirmations which I think can
be great, but there's a lot ofways in which we use
affirmations that aren't ashelpful as we think they are.
For me, at least, one of themis when I say I am magnificent.
Right, that might be a reallygreat affirmation.
However, for a long time, whenI wasn't giving myself self-love
(13:18):
, I really had this hard partabout putting these magnificent
claims out there.
These big claims.
Right, if I'm not feelingmagnificent, it might feel like
I'm lying to myself.
Right, that I'm like foolingmyself and just saying words,
and then people repeat them overand over and over again and the
(13:40):
words start meaning nothing andbringing nothing to me.
And so, instead of that, I wantyou to be honest with yourself.
Right, you don't have tobelieve the statement 100%, but
there has to be some credibilityin there, some ability to go.
Oh, I can go with that.
So if saying I am magnificentfeels too big, one way we can
(14:04):
give ourselves compassion is Iam curious how magnificence will
show up in my life today.
I'm curious as to my ownmagnificence.
I'm open to seeing my ownmagnificence.
Our eyes are at least pointedin the right direction and we
might be open to seeing more ofit.
(14:24):
So, affirmations we want themto be true if you're going to
use them.
We want to feel that, so thatit doesn't start feeling like
just words that we're repeatingto ourselves.
We want to really breathe themin and feel them in.
We also need to let go ofperfection.
(14:46):
I know we love it, gen Xersespecially we just somehow think
that perfection is attainable,achievable.
I remember one time when I wasin the suffering spiral, my
husband was like I was saying oh, I'm doing terrible as a mother
, as a wife, I'm doing terribleat work, my friends, you know I
(15:07):
went in that whole sufferingspiral.
My husband asked me Christina,who's getting this perfect?
Name me one woman, look aroundand tell me one person on this
planet who's getting it allright.
All at the same time.
I really thought for a longtime and I was like holy cow,
(15:29):
everybody's got something wrongwith them.
Right, everybody's got a thing.
And so we just want to be awarethat we're often comparing
ourselves Like I'm comparing mymothering to a woman who I see
as perfect, and she probablysees me as perfect because we
(15:50):
have different skills and wejust see we cherry pick right,
we just see the parts that we'relike oh, I really want that,
that's how I want to show up andI'm not doing that.
So I must be doing it wrong.
But we're not really tuninginto the magic and the gifts
that we actually have.
We're just comparing our flawsto other people's highlights and
(16:11):
that's not really fair, is it?
So we're going to showourselves a lot of compassion
and remember that humane is hard, even if we don't think we have
a hard life.
All humane is hard, all of it.
And so we can give ourselvescompassion, give ourselves that
permission for compassion.
(16:33):
The second key that I wanted totalk about to self-love that I
believe there is is curiosity.
This is a huge one, and theseare things that we can practice.
Even if we don't really connectwith self-love, even if all
those warm, gushy, fuzzyfeelings aren't showing up for
(16:54):
us, we can at least start withthe keys, so we can start giving
ourselves permission to becompassionate.
But we can also give ourselvespermission just to open our view
, and that is what curiosity isall about For me.
Again, my inner critic can comeout, my wounded child can come
out and all of a sudden, I'm sojudgmental.
(17:17):
Oh, I'm so stupid.
Why do I do that?
I'm lazy, right, we come upwith all these negative
descriptors.
I'm an idiot.
Why would I trust people?
Why would I trust myself?
Why don't I ever stay committedto myself?
Right, we can get so judgmentalwhen we put ourselves in this
like negativity box and we canget stuck there.
(17:40):
But curiosity is the cure forjudgment.
Curiosity is the cure forjudgment because when we're
being curious, our mind startsopening to possibilities and the
definition for curiosity incase you're curious like I am
the desire to learn or more knowabout anything.
So when we are desiring tolearn more or know more about
(18:05):
things, we haven't made ajudgment completely on it right,
we don't have one-sided opinion.
We are open, we want to learnmore, we want to see it from
different angles, from differentfacets.
Right, we want to be able todiscover more.
And when we're discovering more, our brains need to be open,
(18:25):
right?
Because if not, cognitivedissonance would come in and go
nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.
If you are in a nope mood,that's a really great indication
that you're stuck in woundedchild or inner critic.
Because I got to tell you whenI'm really wanting to be mean to
myself, I don't want to see anyother possibilities, I don't
(18:46):
have curiosity, I just want tohave judgment and some damnation
for whatever it is that I'vedone.
Right, punishment Society issaying well, maybe there's more
to the picture, maybe I couldstay open and curious, maybe I
could figure out what else istrue about this, right?
So, instead of going into thisjudgment mode, which doesn't
(19:09):
help, you know, callingourselves lazy or stupid or
mindless none of that is reallyhelping us become a better
person, it's just punishing us.
But instead of doing that andthen bringing up all the
evidence right, because we loveto gather evidence during our
lives, I have so many differentpieces of evidence as to how I'm
(19:29):
not enough or too much, right.
Going back to that, and whathappens is I can remember all
the way back to oh, rememberwhen I was eight and I said that
mean thing to my friend.
Or when I was 12 and I messedup that dance recital, right,
like I can go into thatsuffering spiral.
So instead of getting there andgetting stuck there, we want to
(19:51):
just build new evidence.
There's so much evidence outthere to your magic and gifts.
The problem is that safetyfeature in our brain isn't
looking for all of our magic andour gifts, it's just looking
for all the pitfalls, right?
It's looking for all the risks,all the ways in which we can
hurt or embarrass ourselves orsuffer discomfort.
(20:13):
So instead, I would love us tostart celebrating ourselves and
really looking at our own giftsand magic, being more curious
about ourselves than judgmental.
Yeah, maybe I messed that up,but what are five things I
actually got right today and Ipromise you, you make more than
a hundred decisions in your day,so I'm sure that there are some
(20:36):
decisions that are perfect andmagical and work out just right.
We just don't notice thembecause we're so good at them.
But we want to start doing that.
We want to start building thatpile of magnificence here is my
pile of magnificence, right andif I balance that pile, start
(20:58):
balancing those two piles ofevidence versus, you know, the
critical, versus the gifts andthe magic then we start getting
a more balanced judge on theinside and the inner critic kind
of has to shuffle away,especially when we have
compassion for that inner criticpart of ourselves.
So curiosity is how we're goingto cure the judgment.
(21:22):
So, when we are feeling all ofthis criticism coming up, I want
us to start asking ourselvessome really great questions
Because, again, we want to beable to decipher what's unsafe
versus uncomfortable.
This is a very good curiosityquestion, right, what's unsafe,
what's uncomfortable, unsafe?
(21:44):
Obviously we want to take careof most of the time.
Most of the time today, we'renot running from bears or doing
other physically fatal thingsright, so we're pretty safe.
It's really about ourdiscomfort, and again,
discomfort is where our growthedge is.
(22:04):
It's always uncomfortable togrow, otherwise we would just
have grown that part alreadyright, but it's the discomfort
that keeps us from that.
So we want to make sure thatour brain is giving us data and
not just these made-up storiesof what might go wrong, could go
wrong, and so what I want us todo is start with some really
(22:26):
delicious questions and goodquestions help us again open up
and see more possibilities.
Otherwise, we can get veryblack and white.
I can see there a yes or a no,and usually in situations
there's a ton more opportunitiesthat we're not exploring.
So great questions Is it unsafeor uncomfortable?
(22:49):
We want to ask ourselves thatright away, because as long as
it's just uncomfortable, we cancalm down that nervous system,
take a deeper breath and startgetting curious about well, what
are the possibilities right,instead of feeling the fear as
if it's a real thing and as ifit's actually going to
(23:11):
physically hurt us.
So bringing down the nervoussystem with is it unsafe or
uncomfortable?
The second question that I gotfrom a sales trainer many, many
years ago was what if theopposite is true.
This question has opened up somany possibilities.
(23:34):
So if I'm thinking to myself,christina, you're such a mess up
, you always mess up.
What if I asked if the oppositewas true?
Do I always mess up or do Ioften get things right?
Well, often I get things right.
It's just these parts that I'mnot expecting right, or the
(23:56):
perspective that I'm having atthe moment right.
I didn't want this to happen.
So suddenly it comes.
The worst thing, rather than wedon't always recognize when
we're using the best parts ofourselves, we kind of expect
that to happen and don't reallyquestion it.
So what if the opposite weretrue?
So if I'm thinking about thefuture and I'm like, oh, what if
(24:18):
nobody listens to this podcastor gets anything out of it?
Or I can start asking myself,what if people get a lot out of
this podcast?
What if they really starttuning in and asking themselves
these questions, putting theirinner critic in linemen right,
healing that wounded child, sothat we don't have to act from
that really over-emotional partof ourselves?
(24:40):
What if the opposite is true?
The third one is a questionI've been asking myself for 15
years.
It's not about a silver lining,but it is about asking
ourselves.
How can I love this?
Everything's got pros and cons.
I'm not saying that we shouldalways just make the pros so
(25:04):
extraordinary that we don't seethe cons.
Of course not.
We couldn't make really gooddecisions if all we looked at
the good stuff, right.
But what I'm saying is, how canI love this?
Sometimes I love it by saying,wow, I'm being challenged, this
is a good thing.
I'm gonna grow some.
That might be the only thing Ican love this.
But can I love about this?
(25:25):
I am brave enough to take onthis challenge, that I am brave
enough to keep trying, eventhough I've failed.
Right, that's how I can lovethis.
We make it about the gifts inourselves, that we keep trying,
that we're consistent, that wedid our best, that we even tried
in the first place right,that's how we can love it.
(25:49):
How can I love the situation?
Wow, maybe there's a situationthat's really teaching me how to
communicate in a better way.
Maybe there's a situation thatI always believe that conflicts
among people can be really greatopportunities for deepening
connections, not separating them, and so I can start getting
(26:12):
curious about how can I lovethis?
Wow, after I have this conflictwith my friend, I might have a
closer relationship if I startmoving forward in a way that I
feel good about right.
How can I love this?
The last piece is what can Icelebrate about me which might
be part of our?
How can I love this, too?
I celebrate that I'm tryingthis again, even though it
(26:34):
didn't work out the first time.
I'm celebrating the fact that Ihave I just cried out and moved
right on.
I'm celebrating myself forreally showing up with courage.
I'm celebrating myself fordoing the thing that I said was
hard and I did it anyway.
Celebration is one way that wecan get more curious about
(26:57):
ourselves.
What can I celebrate aboutmyself?
And this might be hard at first.
So I always suggest to myclients go tell someone in your
family something awesome thatyou did that day or something
awesome that you're proud aboutyourself for right Doesn't even
have to be from that day buttell them about your gifts.
(27:17):
Celebrate yourself, because Iknow that in other worlds, when
we were growing up, to celebrateourselves was showing off or
bragging.
But how do we really step intoour fullness without celebrating
who we are?
How do we allow other people tostep into their fullness if
we're not willing to show themhow to celebrate themselves.
(27:39):
I really think celebration is ahuge part of being curious,
right Starting that new pile ofevidence as to our magnificence,
rather than always depending onthat old pile of evidence that
tells us how we're not enoughfor too much all of the time.
And these are the first twokeys to unlocking self-love.
(28:01):
It's a half-day experience thatwe do once a year with my
clients, and if you join in tothe modern midlife mentorship
now for the introductory priceby October 31st, if you sign up
on November 4th, we will begetting together and spending
half a day together as a smallgroup to really talk about this
(28:23):
self-love, to give you anexperience of self-love.
So if you're not sure exactlywhat self-love is, I hope that
you'll join us then.
If you have any questions,please let me know.
Otherwise I will see you allnext week with a couple more of
our keys.
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