5 Practical Ways to Practice Self-Love Every Day

5 Practical Ways to Practice Self-Love Every Day 

Hello and welcome to In the Rising Podcast. My name is Bettina Brown and I am your host on this platform, and we talk about living an empowered. Full of grace, adventurous, awesome life without the fear of guilt and regret, and we focus on. Living that way every single day. So, I start every show by saying that I am not a licensed counselor, psychologist, psychiatrist, but I am a student of life and I am a person who loves to research.

I'm very nerdy and I love to, to figure out what makes us tick and what bonds us instead of divides us. So today I'm going to talk about planting the seeds of your. Self planting your seeds in your own adventure and how to love yourself with that. So every dream that you have today from the clothes that you're wearing, to the car that you're driving, all began with an idea, and quite frankly, they began with a desire.

You know, I had a desire for, as an example, a four-bedroom house. I didn't know why I wanted a four-bedroom house, and I never had four children, and I only gave birth to one, but I still wanted a four bedroom house. In fact, I bought that before I even had my son. And a lot of it is I wanted a hobby room, I wanted a gym.

I, I had ideas and. You know, that was something that came into real life. I did have a gym, in fact, I still do. I do have a hobby room and I have a lot of rooms, but it was something I really desired. You know, it's not, it's not a 5,000 square foot house, it just has a lot of walls. But it was a desire and all of these sort of desires, Are basically like seeds of life and we have them, we have them every day.

And a lot of our seeds kind of come from childhood and we know that, you know, those who've been supported throughout their life tend to, not always, but tend to move in a more positive way for themselves and family and society as they get to be older. And a lot of us that. Have had some struggles in childhood tend to kind of struggle with planting those seeds and, and living out our desires.

And sometimes there's some of us that have never really had a chance to plant those seeds until we are in our thirties or forties and some in their fifties and sixties. And by that, I believe all of us have an opportunity to keep planting throughout. Every single day that we're on this side, that we can totally plan and manifest a wonderful future.

So I do believe in self-love as self loves, basically, and believe that we can fertile our own soil basically. I guess this is an analogy written, podcast today, but we have that, we have that opportunity. We cannot just look to others and say, well, you didn't, you didn't really fertilize my soil. And we cannot continuously, as adults blame people, whether they deserve it or not, but we cannot continue to blame other people for what we are not now achieving.

Because when you are at a certain point in life, you know there's this thing called responsibility and we may, you know, there's another saying, my mistake your fault. Or your mistake, my fault, you know, something of that nature. But there is this personal thing that, you know, self-love begins with self, and no one can give that to you.

Someone can give you their love, but they can't give you love to love yourself. And that's where you can't even begin to love yourself unless you have a place to do that. So I'm talking about our own garden today, how to fertilize our soul and how to fertilize our mind and our body so that we can plant these seeds for greatness.

And I'm gonna talk about five different ways to do that. And before I get into those five ways, there are some questions that can be asked and addressed so that you can better figure out how to go from here. And these questions have been helpful for me, you know, and sometimes before you have an answer, you know, it's the, the answer isn't the answer, the answer's the question to really look at that.

Someone told me that they said it much better than I did, but sometimes we have to really look at, what is blocking us right now? Is it, is it our situation? Like, we're really happy, but we don't like our job. Or we really like our job and we're beyond grateful, but we can tell we're not fulfilled in it.

We're not living to our potential. Or is it our state of mind? Are we just like, you know what? My mind is not together. I'm not interested. I feel scattered. I feel frustrated. There's just too much on my mind. Which is often the case, or is it something from our past? You know, instead of being something in our present into something in our past that is blocking us from having that fertile soil to plant the dreams of our life, you know, self-love is self-evaluation and sometimes we really just find it better to listen to our body and listen to our, what our state of our body is and mind is right now, so that we can build a better future.

I mean, ultimately I have never been asked if my future plans were to have less and, you know, go on less vacations and earn less money and have. Worse relationships, you know that we tend not to hear those kind of answers. Our, our future, our desires, our hopes are always more or deeper, more, not necessarily in numerical, but as in a deeper connection with other people, a deeper connection with ourselves, and also then, yes, more, more income so we can retire a bigger house, more vacations, more time.

It's usually not less. So when we think of that and we think about our garden and how, or any garden, you know, you visualize a lot of green, green flowers, green grass and nature, there's a lot of healing there. So how can we get to that space where we can plant our garden? How can we jumpstart it? You know, I, I love.

That the idea that, you know, if you put in a lot of work and take your time, that you know, you'll see the fruits of your labor, but I don't always wanna have my little acorn and wait for it to be an oak tree. You know? I want to know. Okay. Something is gonna happen, you know, in 30 days I'm gonna feel something in, you know, the next two weeks or in two months.

And yes, that acorn can be there, but you know, I don't want that to be my end all. That's a long wait. So, there are five things I believe that can really get you a jumpstart. You know, five things in five days. To really get you going, and I'm taking these samples from other people and I'm also taking them from what I have down in the description below one book and, and one article.

So, the first thing that I've really liked, number one, is to take a selfie and don't delete it. I laughed out loud when I read this. You know, take a selfie, don't delete it, because how often do we do that? We look and the first thing we look at is what we see as a flaw. And we don't like this. I don't like my hair.

My, my face wasn't turned right. The light wasn't correct. I was wearing the wrong outfit. Half my collar was picked up. But we don't see our smile our eyes, how they're really bright and excited. We don't see our look of shock that we're taking a selfie that we plan not to delete. We're not looking at anything of that nature.

And what I like about the selfie is because many people will take a selfie with all of those filters, right? So that everything is just perfect. Or they'll do all the makeup and well, you know, with the right filter and the right makeup, I will look right. But we do that because we may not like the way we look, right?

You don't want to look at yourself that, well, I want to look a certain way, not realizing that that perfect selfie is not what we give to anybody around us. As in when you're done with your selfie, the person at the dinner table, or the person you're passing in the mall, or going, you know, that you see at the u p s store.

We don't look like that perfect selfie. We are what we look like. You know, I don't like the way I look. Well, you go out every day and you get people telling you hello and compliments on your posture and compliments on what your outfit is and wishing you a good day. And you don't need that perfect filter to get that.

And so that's what I believe is the premise of not deleting the selfie picture. This is what you look like and that's beautiful. Period, end the story. Don't worry about the filters and dare to keep it and dare to look at it because that is perfection right there. So, number one was take a selfie, don't delete it.

Number two, which I struggle with and I know I am not alone. I have a lot of friends and family in this, whether we know each other or not, is take the time for rest and relaxation, you know? There is this idea that rest is good for you. And I was not really sure about that for a long time. I'm like, no, no, no.

But I've got stuff to do and I like to do stuff and I like to be busy and I think I've mentioned this before, I feel like my spirit animal is the octopus. You know, having a little bit and everything, you know, eight projects at once and then if you know something happens, well, I grow another arm and do something else, but.

Rest and relaxation does more for you in your mind and your body, and you are more productive and can produce better results if you just chill out. And for me, I have to make a point to chill out, but I can chill out really well now. In fact, I usually chill and go straight into a nap. But I do feel like I'm able to.

Sponge up life events deeper. I feel that I'm more connected with everyone and including myself. If I relax, it's a thing, you know? And for those of us that do have a belief in the Bible, you know, at the end of the day there's always this, this, this, this was good, this was good enough, you know? And then the, the final day, day seven, and, and there was rest.

Maybe that wasn't for him as much. It was for the rest of us. You know, it's just to put that in our week is definitely, if you can't do a full day, do at least 10 minutes, nothing is going to fall apart. And I think that's our lesson in that if we're not here to do it, it may not get done. But nothing stopped.

If you're not there to do your job, someone else will. And if not, the company doesn't fall down because you're not there. You know? And, and your kids may not be completely dressed, in, in coordination, but they're still dressed and they're still fine. You know, just relax and rest. Give that to yourself.

So, I like number three as well, which is set the mood now. Their list had while cooking, which is not my favorite activity, but I like set the mood candles, lit music on while you're doing anything. So sometimes when I'm just cleaning my own bedroom, I've created a little sanctuary there with the right colors, like a a beach cottage theme.

With the blues and grays and I got the certain curtains and I have my incense I have going, and I just use that to set the mood for resting. I set the mood for changing my bed sheets. I love fresh bed sheets, you know, if I could do it every day instead of, you know, every other day, but that's another story.

But I set the mood and I enjoy that time and I enjoy that music and I don't. I don't feel that I'm just doing something to do it, to mark it off the checklist. I'm actually involved in that activity, and so with setting the mood while you're cooking, this is a great idea. If you get to cook with someone else or your kids, just to have it be an event, not just another thing to hurry through to get to the end, but to really be an event.

Another thing to self-love, you know yourself in five days. Number four is to compliment someone else today. I read somewhere that the most selfish thing you can do is to do something for someone else because you just feel good. You know, there are these little cards you can write someone, even a sticky note, Hey, you know, a true friend is someone like you.

 I did receive something like that and it meant the world to me. In fact, I still have that same sticky note four years later, and I will not take it off my computer. Because it meant so much to me and it was a sticky note. You know, the gifts don't have to be much. You can write a little card. You can actually just write it on a blank piece of paper and you can also say something.

Because when you don't know what that means to someone else, and what I like about a sticky note or any sort of note period is that it's kind of a permanent thing until someone else throws it away. But they can always look at it and, and they feel that feeling again. Like, wow, that was so nice. And it's that, that re repetition, that kindness that keeps going for that person.

So I love number four. It's just compliment someone else. And number five, then this goes for men, for part of it, and women for both is commit to doing your hair and makeup for a week. And this is another one that I struggled with and especially for my occupation. You know, I'm a physical therapist and, when I worked in the hospital, You know, I did not, I mean, I did my hair, I, well, I did.

It took me about 20 seconds to do because I pretty much bobbed it on the top of my head and wore those little bands to keep the whiffs of hair from the side of your head out of your eyes. And that was it. And I made sure my eyebrows, you know, were on my face and that was it. Put on some chapstick and I felt comfortable.

I mean, I didn't look like I just rolled outta bed, but there was no, there was no effort. There was no effort into doing any bit more. And part of that was because I felt like, well, I'm gonna be sweating and working. I need to have it outta my face. Um, and I felt like it was fine and it was, you know, but I didn't put effort into giving maybe my best appearance.

For two people, first and foremost myself. You know, there's, there's a saying that you should wear your sexy underwear even if you're wearing scrubs because it, you walk different, you feel different. You should just wear it when you're wearing your sweatpants to go to the mailbox, which I frequently do, at least the sweatpants part.

And then just feel cute. Feel yourself. Dress up for yourself, not for anybody else. Cuz you know, if they see it, that the dress or, or you know, nice shirt, polished shoes. You know, it just speaks to that. You did that for yourself. And if someone compliments it or it makes an impression, that's nice, but it's not for that.

And let's not forget her hair. You know, I love a cap like, like, I love a cap. I love a baseball cap, and I love those little beach hats. You know the ones that have feel like they go out 12 inches from the side of your head, but that does not mean that you really shouldn't do your hair either. And yes, that does take time and there's always these products that you can put in.

And if it takes your hair, you know, it takes you a minute or two depending on your hair length, or if it takes 15 minutes on some days, you know, commit to just doing that every single day and you will feel yourself kind of light up and glow. There's nothing wrong without, you know, going out into the world without makeup.

Not everyone is a, a believer in that not everyone may feel they need that, and we don't, we don't need makeup to hide ourselves, but we can use it to accentuate our current features and that is something for us. So, I'm going to recap number one, absolutely take a selfie and don't delete it. Number two, take time for rest.

And relaxation. Number three, set the mood while you're cooking. Number four is compliment someone else, and number five is commit to doing your hair and makeup for a week and basically remember that you know I am enough. I have enough, I do enough. Just keep keeping that in your mind. I am enough. I have enough.

And I do enough. And when we do things like this, like these five things I mentioned, of which there are like 40 more, but. When we do this, we're planting the seeds into our mind, into our soul, into our routine, and we will then be able to project this not only outward to other people, but also inwardly so that we can continue to be a light for ourselves and be a light for others.

So thank you again for listening to me today. I appreciate it. All of our time is valuable and I am so grateful for yours. And if you find this podcast valuable, leave me, um, a feedback as in an email or you can go ahead and rate it. You don't have to use words, you can use those little stars. I appreciate that and I wish you all a great day.

I'll see you next Tuesday and let's keep building one another up!