Episode 2: What does self-love look like?

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Welcome to In the Rising podcast. I'm your host, Bettina Brown. And this is the platform from which I talk to you about living a life without the captivity of guilt and regret, so that you can use yourself or to live in empowered, independent and free life. Let me start off by saying that I am not a licensed counselor, psychologist, psychiatrist. But I am a student of life in a health care professional who loves to research and talk about topics of living, our best self version and living our best life the way it's intended to be.  

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This is Episode two, and what we're talking about today is what does self-love look like? How often have we heard you have to love yourself more? You have to care about yourself more. Or if you would just put yourself first than blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This wouldn't happen. That would happen. And these are many phrases of self-love and self-care that we see everywhere on Pinterest, instagram, Facebook. And I know this because I have pinned them like them, Save them, printed them off. But what exactly does that mean? And is getting a massage on a regular basis. What self-love should look like is ensuring that your shoes match your pants. Match your accessories. Is that self-love? But it doesn't seem like that, really, is that either? So what does self love look like to you? And I wasn't quite sure, so I looked it up. 

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I go with my research, and I found a really interesting article by psychologist Deborah Khoshaba, and I hope I'm not messing that up. But I have ah linked to her side in the description below. And she has seven concepts, seven actions of what self love is. It's basically not a noun. It's a verb. These are things that we do. And number one is that self-love starts off with being mindful and aware of how you're feeling. Not how others say you're feeling not of what you think you should be feeling. But how you really are in that exact moment.

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moment. Are you feeling that your life is on track? Are you feeling complacent? Are you feeling intentional? Are you feeling like things are going to be okay and that you're going to be okay or somewhere deep in there? Do you feel like a fraud, even though you're doing exactly what you're supposed to be doing, even if you're doing exactly what you thought you wanted to be doing two years ago, five years ago?

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But the number one thing is stop for a moment and just be aware of what your own body is telling you. Number two is acting on what you need versus what you want. And wow, this one hit really close to home. You know, recognizing what you need for your life and that can be emotional, psychological, spiritual or physical, as opposed to just what you need for an instant gratification. And the delayed gratification is something a lot of us are struggling with. I mean, we have microwave this, and Amazon is delivering sooner and sooner, and if they don't do in two days, were upset. But what about things that take time? Yeah, for example, the things, our goals in life. If you want to be a doctor, that is not something that will happen within the year, and it won't happen within the end of the week. What about if you want a deeper connection and a real soulful relationship that tends to not happen within the 1st, 2nd  to 4 weeks of knowing someone.  

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You may really, really like someone and they know how to love your money and spend your money. But somehow leading them is hard because the idea of being single is harder to swallow than the idea of being broke. You may want that everything is okay because what you want is so important. But what about what you need and when those are in conflict? That's when a lot of our physical ailments come up feeling like our chest is on fire, having constant diarrhea or constant constipation, something is off. Number three is taking care of your basic needs, and she talks about basic needs, including sleep. There's healthier nutrition options, exercising with some frequency and consistency, and that does not mean two hours at the gym. It means getting out and walking. He's walking your dog. Your poor dog wants some exercise, just movement in general and then also realizing that one of your basic needs is actually intimacy and deeper connections with people around you.  

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And intimacy is not equivalent to sex. Intimacy is someone described it this way, and intimacy is into me. You see someone that can look at you and not just see that mask the hairdo, but can see into you sees and feels with you and knows you deeply Not superficial acquaintance relationships and not just being friends with everyone, but really someone that you know. You can't. You can't pretend around them. They just know. And what was interesting is that there is a study called the Framingham study, and it was initially designed to examine heart health and as well studied and known in the health care community for that for that piece, heart health. But what a lot of people don't know is that this study actually added other components that they didn't right into the design.  

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They learned some other components. And maybe some of you have heard this. I had heard this well, that you are kind of the average of the five closest people around you. So that, you know, goes back to you are you hang with, but that you know, if they make X amount of money, then you probably make him x amount of money. If they are on average, underweight, then you're probably underweight. If they like such and such music, then you probably like such and such music. But that's not actually the case. It goes deeper than that. This Framingham study found that the average of your five people yeah, that that's important. But the people that those five people hang out with makes a difference.  

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For example, if you're closest five people that you hang out with are all obese, then you're probably all B's. But what about if all of the five people have? What is you know, the National Institutes of Health says is a normal B M. I. But all of their friends are obese. You have a 20% chance of being obese, so we are not just isolated little islands that we definitely have a lot of interactions, and the deeper and more aware of we are with our interactions, the better off we'll be. So number one was self Love starts with awareness. Two is learning to act on what you need versus what you want. Number three is taking care of your basic needs and number four setting boundaries. For a long time, I was like, What is a boundary? I mean, I know that fences make good neighbors But what exactly is that?  

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So Dr Henry Cloud, Dr John Townsend have entire series of books about boundaries, and I have maybe read them once or twice. But how you recognize that on Lee you have control over yourself is a boundary. So there's blame. Will. You did this. So therefore I did. That is nonsense. Well, they did this, and because of those situations that I I can't do anything. That's a boundary. Someone's crossing your boundary, but making you try to feel like you are to blame for what they're doing. But you have to realize where your control is in life and it's not another people. And we really try to do it with manipulation, whether it's out of the goodness of our hearts, true, genuine good intention or through bad intentions. But we need boundaries. We need toe, not overstep our own, and we need to not let other people step over ours.  

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This goes into number five, where she mentions protect yourself, removing your enemies and your frenemies. Sometimes the friend, What is that? The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Sometimes that works, but there's still a lot of tension in that and it just adds onto your life. Like protect yourself. Put a boundary, go back to number four. Number six is forgive yourself. And Ah, this one's really hard. You know, um, we hear it often. I've said it. I've heard it. I'll never forgive you for this, and I'll never forgive myself for that. But the bottom line is, it holds on to guilt and anger. And holding on to that means that we're holding on to punishment. And holding onto a hot stone doesn't help us in any way.  

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And, you know, pulling up instances of your past. Either someone else. Are you doing it? You're not doing yourself any favors. Yes. Maybe you knew better. Maybe they knew better. Maybe they did this mistake over and over again. But there is this concept. It's just crucial to understand that you are human. Just like the other humans we interact with. And forgive yourself for your awareness. Lack of awareness, your action, lack of action, regardless of someone else Still holding your feet to try and hold your feet to that fire. You gotta let it go. It does nothing for you. If it did something for you wouldn't be number six on the list and number seven is live intentionally. And so you don't have to know the exact purpose and pathway of of how you wanna live.  

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But living willy nilly isn't gonna make it. Either have the intention to live a healthy and meaningful life back to the one without regret, without guilt. You know, life isn't a math problem with a definite answer. It's a process. And that process means that you may have to go through number one through number seven again. Back to number four back to number five. It really is a journey. Not just this is the salvation. This is that this is how I figured it out. Not at all.  

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So Number One is living with mindfulness being aware.  

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Number two is acting on what you need versus what you want.  

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Three is taking care of your basic knees from sleep to healthier food options. Love your body and your mind and your soul.

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Four is setting boundaries.

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Five is all about protecting yourself.

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Six is a huge one in forgiving yourself and seven is using all of those things to live intentionally live intentionally make the choice staying in your in your spot there made the choice to live the life the way you want to live

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live. You always have a choice of who you can listen to, and I totally appreciate you're listening to the podcast today. If this is the kind of subject that you find valuable, go ahead, leave a review and subscribe on this platform. You can also email me at Bettina@intherising.com, and I look forward to hearing from you and you guys have a great day.