Latest / How to Be an Adult / How to Love Yourself, Too (Ep. 14)

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How to Love Yourself, Too (Ep. 14) · How to Be an Adult

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Once you bring your attention to these things,
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then the love is felt much more readily.
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It's not a performance. You're not pretending to
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have self love or presenting it to an
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for nobody else's real benefit in that way.
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You can only love the car, the spouse,
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or the dog you do have. You
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can't look at
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the car or the spouse or the Welcome
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to How to be an Adult, a podcast
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created by the practitioners at the Morpheus Clinic
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for hypnosis in Toronto, Canada,
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where we make hypnosis make sense.
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This is a show for people just like
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you who've inadvertently become adults and don't know
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what to do about it. I'm Luke Chao.
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And I'm Pascal Langdell.
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And this we see as the trail guide
0:42
to life.
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That whether you're 18 or 80 or a
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180, it's the trail guide you were never
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given by your parents when you became an
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adult. So we democratize
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what we know and put it out there
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to help you become
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a better adult. In today's episode, we're gonna
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talk about how to love yourself
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too.
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All of us know we ought to love
1:04
ourselves
1:05
too in addition to how we love other
1:07
people, friends, neighbors and so on. But seldom
1:09
do we actually get specific
1:11
guidance
1:12
as to how.
1:13
And it's kind of like if
1:16
the other kids in your neighborhood grew up
1:18
with a piano and their parents showed them
1:21
how to play the piano and that you
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didn't have one so your parents couldn't show
1:24
you how to play the piano. Then as
1:26
an adult, if someone says, well, let's hear
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you play.
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How could you even be expected to know?
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And then if you've gone to your therapist
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and, you know, they just ask you, well,
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how does it feel to be unable to
1:37
play the piano? Look, can you tell me
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about what it's like to not be able
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to play the piano? It doesn't actually give
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you solutions. Yeah. So today we intend to
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fill in that gap for you and give
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you some stepping stones, some principles as to
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how to be self loving.
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I think some of the challenge probably also
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comes from,
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you know, when you grow up, depending on
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what generation but also depending on parents as
2:01
well.
2:02
If you were in a situation
2:04
where you're being loved was anyway conditional,
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then
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you
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wouldn't have developed
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this underlying feeling of being loved regardless of
2:14
the circumstances or the context, which is
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really
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I would suggest is one of the parents
2:21
main roles in raising
2:23
a new person Mhmm. Is to be able
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to say, you know, okay you may be
2:27
screaming at me and we may even be
2:29
screaming at each other but you are still
2:31
loved. You know,
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the degree to which emotional affect
2:35
makes somebody feel,
2:37
less than or shame. And so, you have
2:39
to modify modify your behavior. That has a
2:41
really big effect on
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on that underlying sense of self worth that
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really should be inherited from your parents attitudes
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and relationship with you. And if you don't
2:51
get that, and let's face it,
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not a lot of us do.
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Then when it comes to your learning the
2:56
piano analogy, sometimes it's the case where you're
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going, I don't even know what a piano
3:00
is. I don't know what music is. I
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have no idea what you're talking about. So
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in some ways, for some people it's like
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you're starting from, you know, a base level,
3:09
a fundamental foundation point.
3:12
So let's get into the principles for how
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to love yourself from first principles. Yep. The
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first principle
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is that
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love as an emotion, as a feeling
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is a positive sum pursuit and not a
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zero sum or worse. Not a negative sum
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pursuit.
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So that's a fancy way to say that
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if you love yourself too
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you're adding to the whole amount of love
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that exists in this world and in this
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universe. You're not like allocating some love you
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would give to someone else for yourself and
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then robbing them of the love you would
3:44
give to them. It's actually
3:46
that kind of like, you're baking more cakes
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because you have the capacity to do so
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rather than taking just a finite amount of
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cakes and then dividing it up between you
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and then other people.
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This makes it
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morally
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permissible
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to to love yourself
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too? It is and I suppose you could
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say, well, if, if I have a glass
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of water, for example, and we're both thirsty,
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then it's fair for me to also have
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some of that water. There's no
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and in fact, in in in your case,
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the water is constantly replenished. There's no
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just because I don't have some doesn't mean
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that you necessarily get more, if that makes
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sense. Yeah. Like everyone
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in this world can bask in the same
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sunlight when the sun is shining without putting
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anyone else in the shadow. Mhmm. All of
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us can breathe as deeply as we need
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to or sleep as completely as we need
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to, and it's all good
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with no downside.
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Yet we often see the world in these
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zero sum terms where it's like if we
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love ourselves it is in stead of loving
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others
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rather than in addition to loving others. That's
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why the episode is titled How to Love
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Yourself 2.
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And why do you think that
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I mean, there is
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I've come across this where there is a
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almost instinctual rejection.
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It's not really instinctual, I would argue. But
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there's a reflex, I should say, a reflex
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rejection of the idea. When you sit when
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you ask somebody, well,
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so here's a good test. You say, well,
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how would you describe yourself on your dating
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app?
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And it stumps a lot of people because,
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so, okay, list the good qualities, list those
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things that you like about yourself.
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And a lot of people are stumped. And
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I'm curious as to what you think is
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the what are the predominant causes for that
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resistance?
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Like
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most limitations
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that our adult listeners have,
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these kinds of limitations in thinking highly of
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yourself or thinking positively of yourself
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go back to what was instilled in you
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when you were a child.
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And if you heard things like well don't
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get too big for your britches or if
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you heard things like that you can't be
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too happy because then a bad thing's gonna
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follow or good things don't last.
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Or if just simply through the withholding of
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love you got the idea that love is
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scarce as opposed to a continually
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replenished
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feeling or resource. Well, then unless you're kinda
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corrected in adult life, you just keep believing
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what was shown to you. I mean, part
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of the reason we put out this message
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is to help our listeners
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to understand that what they grew up with
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is not all that there is. That there
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are other points of view that in your
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adult life you might actually assess to be
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a better modeling of how your emotions work.
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Is there an influence
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from, for instance,
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advertising, commerce, marketing,
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in the sense that if you see an
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advert, it is implicitly stating that you are
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not enough unless you have this thing. Is
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there a cultural aspect to
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this resistance to a sense of self worth?
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Is there there's something cultural going on as
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well?
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I think that a lot of the perpetuation
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of this conditionality
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around a person's self worth or lovability
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comes from
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those who kind of wanna maintain power over
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others. So so so, like, for example,
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you're suddenly gonna hear from a so called
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human resources department
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that you are worthy independently of your job
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performance.
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Right? Because they wanna kind of exert power
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over you, extract productivity from you, make sure
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that, you know, you make back your salary
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times some multiple.
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So they they have no incentive to instill
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a sense of lovability and innate worth. They
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instead have the incentive to
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suggest that your value is dependent upon their
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assessment of you or your KPI's
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or your recent performance or your productivity.
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We can see that economic
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incentive.
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But but the commercial sphere isn't all that
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there is and it just barely begins to
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encapsulate a human being once, you know, we
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we look at just numbers or salary or
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KPIs.
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If you kind of recognize your valuest
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life as a living human being then that
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in itself is the worth you have at
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baseline.
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That leads to our second principle
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which is that when it comes to
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what conditions
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should be met before we allow ourselves love,
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I am suggesting
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that the only condition really is that you're
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a living human being and that's intentionally a
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very low bar.
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So that is, you know, defacto. There are
8:19
no conditions
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for you loving yourself. As long as you
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can raise the question, you know, 5 years,
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10 years, 20 years, if you can raise
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the question,
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you're categorically
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a living,
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breathing
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human being with at least at baseline, the
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worth and the lovability of 1.
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So, one of the challenges to that would
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be well, if everybody has innate and viable
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worth,
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then there's
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a value there, deserving respect, deserving rather, and
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so on. So, we might turn it, yes,
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but what about Pol Pot? What about these
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hot these, you know, horrors of human behavior?
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Mhmm. Are they
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as of equal worth as me?
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When I suggest that there shall be no
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conditions placed upon a person's worth Mhmm. I'm
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not really trying to quantify
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one person's value against
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another's. Right. I am instead trying to recognize
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a common humanity
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that we all have.
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Now we would fault someone
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like Paul Pott or any tyrannical murderous dictator
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for actually having humanity and then not using
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it. For actually having
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the capacity to do moral reasoning
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and using it to to kill his own
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population.
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But when we put to trial
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such people,
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we would be right
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to respect and maintain their human rights. In
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other words, we would be right
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to recognize that they have a common humanity
9:51
with us.
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It would be a mistake
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to say okay well you murdered a whole
9:56
bunch of your countrymen
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therefore you have no rights anymore. That would
10:00
be a degrading of our
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morality and our civilization.
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I'm not trying to precisely quantify, like, your
10:07
value versus Pol Potts,
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but I am saying there is a common
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humanity that you and I and Pol Pot
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and Stalin Yeah. Etcetera,
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all have such that any of us should
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be treated as a human being if we're
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facing,
10:22
international
10:23
criminal justice court. But I I'd also say
10:26
the same.
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It's not to excuse our flaws and it's
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not to excuse
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our inattention or
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for wants of a better word, sin meaning,
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you know, not achieving the correct goal. Mhmm.
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The way I also see it, I'm I'm
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I'm on I'm on board
10:43
with the idea
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that life is life,
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period. Full stop. That's it.
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Just that very fact. Now within that, there
10:51
there is a fundamental truth that nature's read
10:53
in tooth and claw as well. There is
10:55
also
10:56
power of 1 over animal over another. There
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is also
11:00
the difference between humans and animals as well,
11:02
which there is a difference.
11:04
And that's when you begin to come across
11:07
thoughtful agency. And then I think
11:09
we're in the same way we're saying, look,
11:12
somebody's behavior and what they do with that
11:15
gift of life, with the worth that they
11:17
have, their potentiality for worth, what they do
11:20
for it is separate from that worth itself.
11:22
Because by saying that, we can also therefore
11:24
say, it does not matter what you do
11:26
or what you say. It does not matter,
11:29
what anybody else says or does. This is
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a fundamental truth. You are life that has
11:34
worth.
11:35
Mhmm. Full stop. The the reason I make
11:37
this kind
11:39
of appeal is that I think most of
11:40
our listeners intuitively
11:43
feel that life has value.
11:45
In other words
11:47
you don't have to think too much about
11:48
it to feel that if you're gifted a
11:51
living plant as opposed to a plastic plant
11:55
there is much more value in the living
11:57
plant. If you're house sitting and there's a
12:00
real
12:01
parrot as opposed to a stuffed parrot
12:04
then of course a real parrot demands much
12:07
more care, attention,
12:09
and fulfillment of its needs because life does
12:12
have needs.
12:14
So there's this intuitive sense that we treat
12:16
life according to very different rules
12:19
by which we treat just mere things that
12:22
lack life.
12:23
And perhaps another thing would be to say,
12:25
well, that being true the only time that
12:28
it may not be true is if you
12:29
forget that
12:30
fact. Exactly. Which is why I don't want
12:32
to get too sidetracked by you know any
12:34
anything that takes our eyes off the fact
12:36
that our listeners are alive. They're definitely alive.
12:39
I know I don't know who they are
12:40
or what their faces look like or what
12:42
the names are. You're alive. You have
12:44
worth no less
12:46
than the guy living across the street whose
12:48
name I also don't know but who I'm
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gonna treat like a human being if I
12:51
run into him.
12:52
The third principle that I want to introduce
12:55
is the idea that it's when you turn
12:57
to your own heart to find a loving
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feeling that you're gonna find it most dependably.
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If you feel like you have to turn
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to another to find a loving feeling then
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they might or might not be using their
13:09
hearts even if they can.
13:12
When you turn to your own heart, even
13:13
if you have to kind of
13:15
like try a few times,
13:17
which is the next point.
13:19
But when you turn to your own heart,
13:21
that's where you could look as long as
13:23
you have to, as deep as you have
13:25
to. And you're also turning then to the
13:28
one person who watched you grow up as
13:31
a kid
13:32
even when your parents were not around. And
13:34
you're turning to the one person who's definitely
13:36
gonna be there even if one day you're
13:38
a 120 years old. I mean something I
13:41
often say, I've said this in other episodes,
13:43
it's that what you have with yourself
13:45
is it's like a marriage. It's in sickness
13:47
and in health till death do you part.
13:50
And
13:51
that's guaranteed. Even if I meet a really
13:54
good woman,
13:55
she can't, in in all honesty, promise to
13:57
me that if one day I'm a 120
13:59
years old, that that she's going to be
14:01
there
14:02
even if she wants to be. So
14:05
the the the the point again is is
14:06
that the most dependable,
14:08
reliable, faithful
14:10
source of of you feeling loved and by
14:13
someone who counts
14:15
is you.
14:16
Now, just going back to the piano analogy
14:19
at the beginning where you said some people
14:21
are taught to play piano as kids, and
14:22
then you're not. And then,
14:25
you have to explain why it is that
14:26
you don't know how to play the piano
14:27
kind of thing. Yeah. So some people are
14:29
starting pretty much from scratch.
14:31
Right? So this has not been a habit
14:33
of mind.
14:34
And I think that's what I would point
14:36
out to is that it is a habit
14:38
of mind in the sense that, as we
14:41
mentioned earlier, you can forget
14:43
that you have fundamental worth and you can
14:45
forget that you are worthy of self love,
14:49
but you can also remember it. And it's
14:51
in the act of remembering that you have
14:54
this
14:55
ability to dip into your own heart, to
14:57
actually find love for yourself in there.
14:59
That it may be something that
15:02
that doesn't come naturally, it may be something
15:04
that
15:05
is hard at first. Like the first time
15:08
you actually do that, even if you get
15:10
this much,
15:11
that's like an exponential step as far as
15:14
I'm concerned. Because if you've gone from not
15:15
knowing anything about music and then you have
15:18
essentially played a single note on a piano,
15:21
that is a huge step.
15:22
And so I think there's often a a
15:25
tendency to think that self love is something
15:28
you can just click on, you know, or
15:30
that a lot of these things are things
15:32
that you can just either be and totally
15:34
be or not. Mhmm. Whereas
15:36
I think that for a lot of people
15:38
it's a process of learning
15:40
by repetition of opening up to the idea
15:43
even that it is possible.
15:45
An idea that actually you are worthy of
15:47
self love. And that with that idea comes
15:50
the first try and sometimes maybe not a
15:52
lot comes up. But with repeated
15:55
inward looking to what is good and lovable
15:58
in you,
15:59
that becomes easier. And it it might take
16:01
time. It might might not take any time
16:03
at all, but it might also take time.
16:05
And I would say that any effort and
16:08
any small incremental increase,
16:11
to me, is a huge step, particularly if
16:13
you're starting from scratch.
16:15
A salient point is that
16:17
self love,
16:19
it's not just a noun.
16:21
It's not just the the this thing that
16:23
that is or isn't. It it is a
16:25
process. It's a verb.
16:27
It's something you do.
16:29
So the reason you can kind of
16:31
look a few times in your heart for
16:33
for where the love is or what is
16:36
lovable about you
16:37
it's because it can take a few moments
16:41
between
16:42
starting to look and then eventually
16:44
finding the feeling that we call love or
16:47
self love.
16:49
Now
16:50
we do this sometimes for our friends. So
16:52
like if our friend is drunk
16:54
and they're being a total idiot, right, at
16:57
first
16:59
you might not quite like what they're doing
17:01
or saying in the moment and then if
17:03
you give yourself a few moments beyond that
17:06
then you can love your friend again and
17:08
then like pick them up from the floor
17:10
or whatever.
17:11
So even when it comes to loving another
17:13
it's not always something that either is or
17:16
isn't.
17:17
It's worth looking into your heart a couple
17:20
of times to then pick the drunk friend
17:22
off the floor.
17:24
If you just kind of go with whatever
17:25
feeling comes to you first and you're thinking,
17:28
oh not again.
17:29
Then I mean you could give up on
17:31
the other friend too easily.
17:33
Now it doesn't take
17:35
that much effort usually if you have an
17:37
established relationship with a person or or you
17:39
know, of course with yourself
17:41
to to then arrive at a feeling
17:44
of love or to to bring your attention,
17:46
you know, not to how they're in a
17:48
puddle of their own vomit. To bring your
17:50
attention to how they are the person who
17:52
you've dined with a 100 times before. So
17:55
once you bring your attention to these things
17:57
then the love is felt much more readily.
18:00
So,
18:01
I I I want to extract that point
18:02
which is that, even though it's often
18:05
used as a noun,
18:08
self love is better understood
18:10
to be a verb or a process.
18:13
Yes. So I'm I'm I'm gonna just bounce
18:15
off that very quickly and say because it's
18:17
a verb and a process, then it's not
18:20
a performance. You're not pretending to have self
18:23
love or presenting it to an for nobody
18:25
else's real benefit in that way. Mhmm. And
18:28
it's not really incentives also not practice either
18:30
because practice is well, there's different kinds of
18:33
practice, but basketball practice is the repetition of
18:35
a particular singular thing.
18:37
Whereas
18:38
learning, I suppose, is there are many different
18:41
ways to accept self love and to see
18:43
evidence of it and being open to those
18:47
those ranges of things
18:49
is much a much more accurate idea of
18:51
what that process is
18:53
rather than a singular goal or even the
18:55
repetition of just the same mantra, for example.
18:58
Mhmm. Well, that's a good segue into
19:01
the next principle.
19:02
Principle number 5
19:04
is that we're gonna find love or
19:07
self love
19:08
in where the glass is half full.
19:11
Not by looking at where the glass is
19:13
half empty. Now, this is sort of a
19:15
metaphor I've been playing with for only the
19:17
past few weeks and it seems to resonate
19:20
universally with all of my clients in their
19:23
multitude of problems.
19:25
Now often a view of the glass being
19:28
half
19:29
full
19:30
and a view of the glass being half
19:32
empty are presented as
19:34
equally valid. Mhmm. And I'm gonna make the
19:37
argument that a view of the glass as
19:39
half full is actually the correct view. I'm
19:43
gonna put all my weight behind the view
19:45
of the glass as half full and here's
19:46
why.
19:47
When you're looking to where the glass is
19:49
half full, when you're looking at the water
19:52
in the glass you're looking at the actionable
19:54
information. Because when you're looking at the water
19:56
you're seeing the substance that you could then
19:58
water a plant with or hydrate yourself with
20:00
or you know you could give that glass
20:02
to a friend and they're not gonna be
20:03
insulted because there's water in the glass.
20:06
Now let's say instead you turn your eyes
20:08
away from that actionable information
20:11
and you look to the emptiness
20:13
in the other half of the glass.
20:15
Well you're not seeing anything of substance. You're
20:18
not seeing anything you could hydrate yourself with
20:20
or water a plant with. And if you're
20:22
only looking to where the glass is half
20:24
empty, you don't even know if you can
20:26
give that glass to a friend without insulting
20:28
them. So
20:29
I am speaking against cynicism and pessimism and
20:32
and, you know, chronic negativity here.
20:35
And to tie this back with the self
20:38
love topic and to maybe make this less
20:41
abstract and more practical,
20:43
the exact same metaphor could be stated as
20:46
you can
20:47
only make a meal with the ingredients
20:49
you do have.
20:51
You can only love the car, the spouse,
20:55
or the dog you do have. You can't
20:58
look at at the car or the spouse
21:00
or or the animal
21:02
and wish they were some other way
21:04
or nitpick and criticize them and then find
21:08
a path to loving them
21:10
through
21:11
that thicket
21:12
of criticism
21:13
and negativity.
21:15
I think in this world there often is
21:18
I'll say it, an overvaluing
21:19
of negativity and criticism and cynicism and an
21:22
undervaluing of appreciation and love. I wanna bring
21:25
balance to the universe.
21:28
So I am putting my weight behind
21:31
an appreciative view of what is because that
21:34
is a path to love and happiness.
21:37
Even if you have like this ratty
21:40
beater of a car,
21:41
but it's your car
21:43
and it's taking your places
21:45
and you've like had made make out sessions
21:47
in the back seat of that car before
21:50
and no other car,
21:52
well, that's your path to loving that car.
21:55
If you have, like, the body you do
21:57
have and the mind you do have, and
22:00
the career you do have, and
22:03
the upbringing you do have, and the wealth
22:06
you do have,
22:07
and the spotify playlist you did make,
22:11
I am suggesting that in all of that,
22:15
that's where you're gonna find your lovability.
22:18
It's not gonna be and turning away from
22:21
all that is to look at what isn't
22:23
or what could have been or what should
22:25
have been.
22:26
That there's no path to loving yourself
22:29
or loving yourself as you are that goes
22:32
through where the glass is half empty. You
22:34
have to flick your eyes away
22:36
from where the glass is half empty
22:39
to look at
22:40
what is, to look at where the glass
22:42
is half full. That's your path
22:44
to self love and that's your path to
22:46
happiness.
22:47
Self love is also
22:49
instrumental as well. It's, so it's something on
22:52
this next point is saying that
22:55
you can apply
22:57
love to wherever
22:58
you need it. As in, you can apply
23:01
it like a salve to whatever's hurting, whatever
23:04
is damage, whatever is needing attention.
23:07
One of the the ways that I often
23:09
express this is that if you injure yourself,
23:12
right, there's this there's this Japanese saying that
23:14
pain is like 2 arrows,
23:15
right? There's the first arrow which is the
23:17
pain and then there's the second arrow which
23:19
is what you do with that.
23:21
And
23:22
what I think
23:24
would be the ideal response is you have
23:26
that first arrow of the pain And the
23:28
second arrow should be one of compassion and
23:30
love,
23:31
not one which is of anger, angst, resentment,
23:34
and bitterness, or, or, you know, clenching or
23:37
resistance, you see what I mean. But,
23:39
that actually the
23:40
fairer response, if you are self loving,
23:43
to anything which
23:45
hurts or
23:46
needs attention
23:48
or even needs or a relationship that needs
23:50
correction,
23:51
the proper
23:53
and probably the most
23:55
effective response
23:56
is one of compassion and love.
23:58
I mean, physically at least, we know that
24:01
this actually makes a difference to healing rates,
24:04
for example, and speed of recovery, and
24:06
and so on. So we know that that
24:08
feeling of self love to what where you
24:10
are physically injured actually has a material effect.
24:13
So I I believe it's the same emotionally
24:15
as well. Why not? All of us can
24:17
probably remember to when we were kids or
24:20
if you're a parent you can remember when
24:22
your kid might fall off their bike, they'll
24:25
skin their knee.
24:26
And then they need not just antibacterial
24:29
ointment,
24:30
they also need a kiss on the knee
24:33
for them to feel a little bit better.
24:35
They they need a hug
24:37
in addition to the wound being cleansed
24:40
in order to feel
24:42
better. So so so yes. That that that's
24:45
like the 2 arrows. The the the there's
24:46
the physical wound and there's also the emotional
24:49
wound, and you take care of not just
24:50
the physical wound, you take care of the
24:52
emotional wound with an application of love. As
24:55
adults, we can't just really run to our
24:57
parents all the time if we have the
24:59
adult equivalent of skinning our knee on the
25:01
sidewalk.
25:02
So we kind of have to reach in
25:04
our own hearts
25:05
to define our own love which is called
25:07
self love. We find it within ourselves and
25:09
we take that and we spread it as
25:11
a self upon wherever it hurts or wherever
25:14
it's tense or wherever it feels empty. And
25:17
this this is a recommendation
25:19
of an an action that you can actually
25:20
do, whether it's physical, whether it's emotional, is
25:23
you take a moment to identify where the
25:25
source of the pain is. And if it's
25:27
emotional, it may even have a place in
25:29
your body, it might be a tension in
25:30
your chest or your your belly or whatever.
25:32
And you take a moment to,
25:35
breathe
25:36
and then you send deliberately send love to
25:38
that area of your body, love and compassion
25:40
to that area of your body. And whether
25:43
it's physical or whether it's emotional, it's is
25:45
as you say, it's like a salve. It
25:47
allows you
25:48
to
25:49
not be hijacked by the emotion, not be
25:52
hijacked by your your panicking cortex,
25:55
but instead,
25:56
sort of have
25:58
an accurate response to what's happening,
26:01
to allow you to behave accordingly.
26:04
So many of our wounds
26:06
that that we suffer, there is no physical
26:08
component. It's only
26:10
an emotional wound. And in that case,
26:14
self love
26:15
and in addition to any love you might
26:17
get from a pet animal or from a
26:19
partner or from a friend,
26:21
love is the top tier solution.
26:25
Our last and 7th principle
26:27
is that
26:29
if in all of this you end up
26:31
treating yourself
26:33
as you would a friend
26:35
or a brother or a sister.
26:37
That then, when you've reached that height of
26:40
inclusivity,
26:42
that's when you're doing it correctly.
26:44
If you're still kind of treating yourself differently
26:47
than a friend or a sibling, if you're
26:49
treating yourself
26:51
differently
26:52
than you might treat
26:53
other forms of life that that's under your
26:55
care then you still have a ways to
26:57
go. But our endpoint
26:59
in this
27:00
is for you to be treating yourself in
27:03
your own head and heart and in the
27:04
actions you take towards yourself and also what
27:06
you will and will not permit from others
27:09
If you finally are treating yourself
27:11
as you would a friend
27:13
or any other loved one, that's the end
27:15
point. That's when you're doing it correctly. That's
27:19
when you're upholding a universal standard for how
27:21
you treat people.
27:23
Just to concretize that a little bit more,
27:26
let's say that
27:28
you're asked to give a presentation at work.
27:29
It's an important presentation
27:32
and you show up and for some reason
27:34
you start having a very strong panicked reaction.
27:39
Your hands are shaking. You get red in
27:40
the face.
27:41
Maybe you have to excuse yourself halfway through
27:44
and then 2 minutes later you go back
27:47
and then you stumble your way through the
27:49
rest of the presentation. Now any listener with
27:51
a fear of public speaking is probably feeling
27:53
terrified right now. But let's say that's that's
27:55
the situation.
27:57
Now the lens to see yourself through, right,
28:00
is not how would HR see me?
28:04
It's
28:05
how
28:06
would I treat a loved one in the
28:07
same situation? So let's say you have like
28:09
a younger sister. Right?
28:11
And they go through exactly the same sequence
28:14
of events. They have an important presentation. They're
28:16
at the front of the room. They get
28:18
red in the face. They start to get
28:19
panicked. They they leave the room for a
28:22
few minutes.
28:23
They had to go back and they stumble
28:24
their way through the rest of the presentation
28:26
and they they they get it completed.
28:28
So probably you would give that that sister
28:31
credit for completing the presentation
28:33
as opposed to faulting them
28:36
for where they had to leave the room.
28:38
Probably
28:39
you would not heap
28:42
extra blame
28:43
on top of how they're already self criticizing,
28:47
probably
28:49
you would be looking
28:50
within that situation
28:52
for where the glass is half full. So
28:54
the reassuring truths. So if they kept their
28:56
job after it you would probably bring their
28:59
attention to the reality that, you know, however
29:02
badly
29:03
they might assess themselves at least they kept
29:05
their job.
29:06
And I could keep going. But this is
29:08
what I mean by having a universal standard
29:11
for how we treat people because
29:13
the same conscience
29:15
that has you be compassionate
29:17
as opposed
29:18
to blaming or ridiculing
29:20
of a sibling.
29:22
That's conscience that allows you to be compassionate
29:24
towards yourself
29:26
rather than to heap insult upon injury.
29:28
I could give another example as well, which
29:30
might resonate with a few people, which is
29:33
when you're
29:34
doing something new, when you're learning something, when
29:37
you are outside your comfort zone,
29:39
it's it's very easy to be your own
29:41
worst enemy because you're holding yourself up to,
29:44
I don't know, the comparisons
29:46
about people who are already performing at their
29:48
highest. You know, public speaking is a good
29:50
example. You compare yourself to the finest speakers,
29:52
for example.
29:53
And it's interesting because if you take a
29:56
moment and
29:57
pretend that you are your own friend, you'll
30:00
probably get more accurate
30:02
assessment of your position
30:04
than any part of your worst imaginings and
30:07
self flagellating criticism could ever provide. Yeah. It
30:10
would be it's much more useful in fact
30:12
to turn around and as a genuine honest
30:15
friend be able to say, look, you're outside
30:17
your comfort zone. You are learning. You're not
30:20
at the peaks of Olympic performance in public
30:22
speaking or or computer
30:25
coding or animation or medicine or whatever it
30:28
is that is your particular challenge. You're not
30:31
a master yet. You you are still a
30:33
learner. And that the friend would be there
30:35
to say give yourself a break,
30:38
and also your friend will also be there
30:40
to encourage and say, and keep on working,
30:42
and keep on aspiring, and keep on accepting
30:45
that that you will
30:46
fall short from this great height. So you
30:49
don't need to look at that, just take
30:50
the steps. They'd be the encouraging friend that
30:53
would also be
30:54
calling it out when you were being lazy,
30:56
calling it out when you could do better,
30:58
but in a compassionate and loving way and
31:01
not some horribly self flagellating
31:03
evil brother, you know.
31:05
In all of this, I I wanna say
31:06
that one point we keep coming back to
31:10
is that if our listeners
31:12
look
31:13
inside themselves
31:15
and they find their best thoughts,
31:18
there's enough there already
31:22
for them
31:23
to to then start loving themselves.
31:25
To start getting accustomed to fostering those thoughts
31:28
that lead to the feeling we call self
31:30
love.
31:32
Here, I'm kinda contradicting the idea that a
31:34
person has to be a dramatically different person
31:37
or that you have to heal from every
31:39
childhood wound or that you have to attain
31:41
some kind of status of perfection or whatever
31:43
other criteria on first
31:45
before you love yourself. In fact, for for
31:48
my hypnotherapy clients, one thing I've often been
31:50
saying recently is I'm not actually,
31:53
even trying to alter you. I'm actually seeking
31:56
to to describe
31:58
you in a clear and positive light so
32:01
that you can see yourself as you are
32:03
today. And then you're not gonna delay in
32:05
loving yourself or accepting yourself. You can start
32:08
doing it right now.
32:10
So I say the same to you, the
32:12
listener.
32:13
Looking to where the glass is half full
32:16
within you, looking at the heart you do
32:19
have, looking at the kinder thoughts you do
32:22
have, looking at the accepting compassionate thoughts you
32:25
do have,
32:26
That's where you'll find what you need to
32:28
love yourself now
32:29
and without delay.
32:32
Thank you for listening. We've made this podcast
32:34
and we're putting it out there for free
32:36
so that more people than just our private
32:39
clients here at the Morphis Clinic for hypnosis
32:41
are able to benefit from our thoughts and
32:44
our ideas and our vision for how humanity
32:47
can be.
32:48
If you are in a position to pay
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