HOW TO LOVE YOURSELF & INCREASE YOUR SELF ESTEEM

Hello and welcome again to Transformation Tuesday. We had a week off last week, welcome back. Hope you\’re doing well. Give us a shout out as you\’re jumping on. Hope you guys are doing really well. Love to know where you guys are tuning in from, how your week\’s been. And tonight we\’re going to be diving, again, very, very deep into one of my favourite topics which is self-love. This is a powerful topic. This is one of the most… I believe this is one of the most important topics every human being should be very, very intimate with, very confident with, and every human being should make this one of their number one priorities in life, which is to love themselves completely, to have full self-acceptance. Hey Monica, good to have you here. This is something that I wish I knew about in a lot of depth when I first started my journey. Actually, I wish I knew a lot more about when I was born. So this is a topic I\’m incredibly passionate about bringing to you guys tonight and to all the clients that I work with because this is the genesis. This topic is the most powerful pillar of experience. This is, there\’s nothing more important than the topic of self-love. Everything else in your reality, all your results, your happiness, your emotions, your sense of meaning, your contribution in the world, it all starts with self-love. When I say it\’s the most important thing in your reality, I really do mean that. This is the genesis of everything. Hey Heidi, good to have you here. Hope you\’re really well. So I\’m going to start by saying that this topic, as I said, is really, really, not only is it really important, but it\’s critical that we have an understanding of how this is playing out in our reality. And what I mean by that is this is a topic where just kind of like gravity, this is happening. This is playing out whether we\’re aware of it or not. So whether you\’re aware of how this topic is playing out, it\’s affecting it. And I recommend understanding how this is playing out because as soon as you understand it, you can use it to your advantage. You can completely transform your life and your reality and everything within it. So the reason why this topic is so important is because our perception of our reality really is a projection. And for those that have been to some of my trainings before, you\’ll know what I mean when I talk about the concept of perception is projection. Everything we perceive in our reality is a projection of our internal self. Well, what does that mean? Let me give you a metaphor that demonstrates this. Our ability to love others and to accept others and have love for life, for family, for friends, for our job, our business, everything is determined on our ability to love ourself. How does that work? Well, picture it like this. Imagine that you\’re about to walk into a dark room, a completely pitch black dark room and you\’ve got a flashlight. The intensity of that flashlight is going to determine the degree to which you can illuminate everything in that dark room. So think of the intensity of the flashlight as your ability to love yourself. Now, when you flash that flashlight around in the room, what do you get? You can illuminate parts of that room, you can see it. So the ability for you to love yourself determines the intensity of that flashlight, which determines your ability to actually see things and appreciate things. So if you don\’t have this self-love for yourself, if either you haven\’t accepted yourself, if you haven\’t, I\’ll go through the six major pillars of self-love in a moment, but if you haven\’t accepted yourself completely, then it\’s like you\’re walking into that room with a tiny little laser pointer and you can\’t possibly appreciate everything that\’s in that room. So, by you cultivating the highest level of self-love, it\’s not only turning up the brightness of your laser pointer, I\’m sorry, of your flashlight, but when you can create incredibly powerful deep amounts of love, it\’s like you can flick on the light switch and you can see everything for what it truly is. So you get a grander perspective, you can appreciate truly what\’s in that dark room, so you illuminate what you previously couldn\’t see. And this is a classic phenomenon is people want to experience love in their relationships but if you can\’t love yourself, how could you possibly love someone else? If you can\’t have compassion for and you can\’t have a deep sense of gratitude for all parts of you, how do expect to be able to have compassion and gratitude and acceptance of all parts of someone else? So it\’s almost like if we haven\’t cultivated deep sense of love, then we can living by double standards because we\’re going to be wanting to love ourself but if we haven\’t actually loved ourself, well, we can\’t possibly love anyone else. So this is a deep concept and it drops to many, many levels of awareness and as you learn more of these competencies, as you learn more of these concepts. So I want to share with you, the six major pillars tonight of what\’s required to love yourself. And the benefit of learning this is that not only do you improve your general well-being and your mood, you\’ll improve your ability to enjoy your life, you improve your ability to handle challenge, you can overcome stress, you can really strive and you can achieve so much more because you\’re in a higher mood, you\’re in a greater state of being. So when you love yourself and again, there\’s so many myths around loving self. I just first of all want to dispel the first myth, which is there\’s a lot of people that think that loving themselves is arrogant. Now, loving yourself is not arrogant. Arrogance is when you perceive that you are better than someone else or more worthy than someone else, all right? All human beings are equal, in terms of their worthiness, in terms of their ability, their worthiness of love. Now, just because you love yourself, doesn\’t mean you think you\’re necessarily better than someone else. And a good example of this is if you look at someone very, very close to you, if you look at say, the person that you love the most in life. Now, just because you love that person, doesn\’t mean they are better than anyone else in life. So you love them because you have an affinity for them, you know them very, very well and you have a history with them, you\’ve got a bond with them, you\’ve got a connection with them. So you have a very, very intense level of love for that person, doesn\’t mean that that person\’s better or worse than anyone else in life, it just means that you have a connection with that person. Well, you want to cultivate the same phenomenon, the same feeling of affinity with yourself. Love yourself wholly and completely, knowing that it doesn\’t mean that you\’re putting yourself, or elevating yourself as better or worse than anyone else. All right? We are all even in terms of our worthiness of love, we just simply have a greater level of affinity for ourself. Why? Because we know ourselves better. So I would think it\’s a very fair assessment for us to have a deeper level of love for ourself, simply because we\’re inside our mind, we\’re inside our consciousness, so it\’s totally reasonable and totally expected that yeah, we\’re probably going to have a greater degree of affinity and there are degrees of love for ourself to begin with. So this is some, I trust you guys get that this is a very, very deep topic and obviously if I was to share everything I knew on this topic, it would probably would be a 20 day course. So I\’m just going to give you what I believe is some of the most important elements and I\’m going to go through the six pillars of the components of what is involved in loving self. I got your question now, Heidi. What do you feel when you hear someone being described as selfless? When we\’re talking about selfless, it depends on how you define that. So it should mean when you say selfless, it depends on how we define it. For some people that are selfless in terms of generous, that are giving, that are always giving, it depends on how you say that. It could be resourceful or it could be unresourceful. Before you\’re flipping it to the other side which is selfish. Well, it\’s someone who is, again, this is another thing, is how do you define selfish? Well, selfish would be over-exposure, or too much attention on self at the expense of someone else. Now again, it all comes down to how you define these terms. A key distinction in all this is the element of the ego, which if you haven\’t tuned into any of my previous episodes, I would definitely recommend going back and looking at episodes where I\’m talking about elements of the ego because when there is ego present, which is judgement , it\’s diminishment, it\’s fear-based expressions inside us, that\’s the key thing to be aware of. So Heidi, with your question, you really just take that concept and understand is there any fear present inside of it? Is there any resistance inside that? Is there judgement ? Is there diminishment? Is there some kind of ego element operating within that concept? And that will tell you all you need to know in terms of is it resourceful or is it unresourceful? So I\’m going to through then, and let me if you have any other questions and I can touch on that further, Heidi, but I\’m going to go into the six dimensions of self-love. And when you access each of these six dimensions, it\’s like you light up all the lights on the Christmas tree and you can activate the whole spectrum and it\’s a really powerful combination when you activate these six pillars. So let\’s dive in. So the first of these pillars, I\’m going to go through the six pillars, I\’m just going to go through them one by one and then I\’m going to dive into them in a bit more detail. The first one is self-expression. The second one is self-acceptance. Third one is self-esteem. The fourth one is self-trust. The fifth one is self-belief. And the sixth one is self-care. All of the six form a bit of a tapestry. They\’re all interconnected, they get overlaid over one another. They all flow from one to the other and you can\’t look at any of these in isolation without considering all of them together. So the first one here that we really need to tap into is self-expression. Why is self-expression important? Well self-expression is you expressing your truth. You being the greatest most authentic version of you. It is being authentic, it\’s being honest, it\’s asking for what you truly want. It\’s expressing your true desires. It is expressing your boundaries. It is communicating what you want, what you need. It\’s being radically honest, right? It\’s not hiding from anything. It is trusting in when we follow and when we adopt the principle of truth, we have ultimate freedom, we have ultimate empowerment, we are expressing our sovereignty. Our sovereignty meaning no one has any right to rule over us as an individual. The whole purpose of this experience in life is to express our sovereignty. Hey Tamara, glad to see you here. The whole point of this life is to express our sovereignty, so these are core concepts of truth, sovereignty, expressing our truth and communicating what we truly want. Now, that is self-expression. Now, every year I go to, for those that are familiar with this, I go to Burning Man. Burning Man is amazing festival, gathering, music, dance, culture, art, celebration of life in a desert for eight days and the whole premise of that, one of the principles at the festival is radical self-expression. That\’s where you give yourself permission and that imaginary permission in your mind, to be radically self-expressed or wear crazy costumes, to put yourself out there. There\’s some people walking around naked, there\’s people doing all sorts of things. So it\’s another one of these opportunities to embody this principle, one of the six pillars, which is self-expression. When you embody that pillar of being completely self-expressed, what\’s the benefit of that? Well, the benefit is, you teach your own conscious mind, you teach your habit, you teach your programming, you teach your conditioning, you rewire your conditioning, that it\’s okay to be me. I can be my authentic self. I can truly communicate who and what I truly am without any shame, without any resistance, without any fear of anyone else judging me. Self-expression is a principle which when you practise it, you condition a habit of being authentic. Pretty powerful habit. And I recommend demonstrating this and setting this as a principle that you can live by and this, another principle that I like in this too, which is one of governing principles of my reality, is the principle of truth, be the expression of your truth. And very, very quickly you will work out when you compare your truth with other truths, how accurate is it? How reliable is it? How does it stand if you\’re evaluating different principles and different truths, how does it stack up? And when you express your truth, you have an opportunity to evaluate it, you can compare it, you can contrast, you can feel into it. If you suppress your truth, well, you don\’t really have a very solid, solidified understanding of how that actually stacks up against other principles. So self-expression is incredibly important. The second major pillar is self-acceptance. Now, self-acceptance is your ability as the name suggests, is to accept yourself or parts of yourself. Now the trick here is there is so many parts of a human being which over time we get taught, we get conditioned into believing, unfortunately we go through a series of traumatic experiences, negative emotions, negative belief systems, the ego starts doing its job. Hey Caz, good to see you here. The ego starts doing its job and it infuses belief systems around a perfect newborn child when they come into this world, and then what happens is we now start to develop elements of shame, guilt, feeling like things are broken, feeling like things are wrong with us, and then over time, we don\’t accept things about ourselves. We think that we\’re broken. We think that we\’re faulty. We think that something\’s not right with us and so what happens is we develop this protective mechanism where we\’re now on guard, we\’re now putting up a mask to try and protect ourselves from anyone finding out that we now are not perfect. So the thing about self-acceptance is recognising that self-acceptance, it\’s a journey to get there to the point where you have forgiveness, you have non-judgment, you have compassion, you have kindness and ultimately get to a place of gratitude for all the parts of ourself that we get taught that are not noble, that are not right, that are not good. So what happens is, and this is a good metaphor, is imagine that when we are born, when we come into this world, we are like a perfect polished floorboard, right? It\’s just perfect, there\’s no blemishes in it. Now what happens over time, is when we go through experiences like our parents shouting at us, or maybe you\’re maybe five years old and you\’re running in a cross country school carnival and maybe you come last, maybe you go and ask a girl on a date and she says no. So a series of these factors happen and then all of a sudden, we now think there\’s something wrong with us. We feel shameful, we feel guilty, we feel like, \”I\’m broken.\” And so what now happens is that beautiful polished floorboard starts getting scratches, it starts getting blemishes, it starts getting dirty. Now, that\’s a metaphor of in our mind we now think, \”I\’m tainted, there\’s something wrong with me.\” So in our mind, and this is all just a figment of our imagination. This is all of our belief systems that are playing out. So now, our perfect floorboard… Now imagining that we\’ve got scratches, we\’ve got imperfections in that. So now what we do is because we feel like there\’s parts of us that are broken, because we haven\’t accepted those parts of ourselves, we now feel like we\’ve got to cover them up. So we feel like we\’ve got to cover them up. Now, what do we do? Well, the metaphor I\’ll give you, is now we feel like we\’ve got to paint the floorboards, \”Way too many scratches on it, I\’ve just got to cover it up.\” Now that\’s what a lot of us do. So the way that this works, is that if we are now covering up our blemishes, what we\’re now doing is we\’re not inauthentic, we\’re now hiding from letting anyone know about who and what, and Carl Jung calls this the shadow, which is the parts of ourselves that we\’re not proud of, that we are shameful of, which are all just constructions, they\’re illusions of the mind. So now, we\’re wanting to cover up the shadow with a mask which is the paint over the top of the scratches of the floorboard and now we\’re just painting over the top of it to pretend like the scratches were never there. Now in that process, what\’s happening? Well, we\’ve now covered up the floorboard completely with paint to try and hide the blemishes and now, what are we left with? Well, it\’s completely inauthentic. If we were truly authentic, we would have the pure floorboard, but now we have paint over the top of it. We\’re hiding from it. We\’re trying to pretend like we are something that we\’re not. Now, that mask or that paint, that mask that we wear, it\’s playing out for every human being. It\’s just a matter of are you aware of it and to what degree are you aware of it? Because very rarely, will you find that some human being and myself included, this is something I\’m still working through, is that no human being is openly vulnerable to 100% pure unconditional vulnerability about all of their flaws. Right? There is always micro-elements of shame that have been imprinted from the ego that are still present with us. And so this is why this journey to self-love, this work around self-love is a journey. It\’s a journey of peeling away layers. It\’s a journey of recognising that we can peel off the paint, we can get back to the floorboards, we can sand everything back, and we can get back to our pure authentic way of being and knowing that that\’s okay, that we are enough. So any belief system that we\’ve got around not choosing to accept ourselves, feeling like we are shameful, that we are dirty or nasty or broken or not good enough, that\’s just an example of our ego over time playing out. Which has given us the impression that we\’ve got scratches on the floorboard and we need to cover them up. When it\’s not the case, right? We just need to apply one of the major sub-pillars of self-acceptance. There are sub-pillars under each of these six major categories. One of the sub-pillars which is one of the most important principles to live by, is compassion. We have got to have compassion for ourself. We\’ve got to recognise and understand it\’s okay to have flaws. It\’s okay to not be a perfect human being that succeeds 100% of the time. We\’re not expected to have infinite skill, knowledge and experience and be completely flawless in every project that we execute. It\’s not possible to be perfect in every interaction in life and that\’s okay. So when we have this super power of compassion and when you apply this to self, it overrides any of the guilt, the shame. This is the override switch. It\’s like nuking the judgement . When you have compassion for self, you get rid of the judgement , you override any of the negative self-talk. So cultivating the skill and the way of being, of being compassionate for self is another great way of being compassionate for other people. In fact, compassion and love, it\’s always an inside out process. This whole thing that we\’re talking about is an inside out process. The degree of compassion and love you have for yourself will project onto others, the degree of love and compassion that you have for anyone else. So this is a powerful override switch when you adopt the principle of compassion which is understanding and kindness and acceptance and non-judgment and the highest level of self-acceptance is actually gratitude. When you can have gratitude for the parts of yourself that are not perfect. I like to think that human beings are perfectly imperfect. We\’re perfect in the sense of, well we are who we are, so celebrate that. We are a perfect human being in terms of we\’re alive and we are imperfect in the sense of we can not expect to execute 100% of our activities in life with perfection because that\’s just not realistic. So to believe that we are perfectly imperfect I think is a very, very resourceful and a very empowering belief system. And I think it helps with this whole conversation. So, the next major pillar is self-esteem. Now, self-esteem is your ability to like yourself. It\’s the degree of affinity that you\’ve got for your personality and it\’s not only is it having a sense of liking for and affinity and appreciation for all parts of ourselves that we resonate with, but it\’s also developing a sense of gratitude, appreciation with the parts of ourself that we don\’t particularly like. And this is where you can hack the game of life. When you can have gratitude for the parts of yourself, the shadow, the parts of yourself that you don\’t particularly like, that you\’re not particularly proud of, well you can have gratitude for that. That\’s how you can flip it on itself. That\’s how you can reverse the judgement because what you\’re now doing is, you\’re now being grateful for something that you don\’t particularly want to be present. Now, that cancels it out. That cancels out the judgement , that cancels out the negativity. Try it on. Pick anything in your life right now and if you think really, really hard and if you contemplate this really, really, really, really closely, you\’ll find that you can generate gratitude for nearly anything for anything about yourself, anything in your reality that you don\’t desire. You can generate some element of gratitude just by your perspective, by how you\’re choosing to see it, right? So, for example, and this is a stretch, I just want to give you one example of how I apply this to myself in the context of self-love. So whenever I discover something about myself that I don\’t particularly like about myself in terms of, hmm, I\’ve got an attribute or a character trait that I wish that it was maybe something different. Now, for example, when I first started this journey, I wasn\’t particularity confident on camera. Now, I\’ve developed my confidence over time, but when I first started out, I was really beating myself up about, jeez, I\’m no good at public speaking, I\’m not really very funny, who\’s going to want to watch me? Now, I realised that I had some skill to work on. I realised that I had some things I needed to improve on. Now, I can actually be grateful for, okay, you know what? I\’ve got some gaps in my presenting skills. Great, I\’m grateful that I\’ve got gaps in my skill, knowledge, experience, my ability to communicate, because when I go on that journey, I\’m going to be able to have far more compassion, I\’m going to be far more relatable to people that have started out on the journey where I was, that weren\’t necessarily natural communicators, and I\’m going to learn something incredible about myself. So, I flipped and I said, okay yeah, I can be grateful about this because of what I\’m going to get from it. So it\’s flipping it on its head. So this is a really powerful strategy for anyone, for any of you guys that are tuning in that are wanting to ask the question, well how do you like those parts of yourself? How do you get to a point where you appreciate your shadow? And that\’s where you\’ve got to really, really, sometimes this takes a lot of hard work, deep internal work to go, \”How can I get grateful for that? \”How can I celebrate that aspect of myself?\” When you can celebrate it, when you can generate gratitude for those parts of yourself that you\’re maybe not accepting of, well that\’s how you can hack your reality, that\’s how flip it, that\’s how you turn it around. The fourth pillar of self-love is self-trust. Now if you remember a couple episodes back when we did the episode on confidence. Now, confidence and self-trust and self-belief are a bit of triad that come together. Self-trust, self-confidence, self-belief, they all go together. So I\’ve included them in this model. There\’s pillar four and then self-belief is also pillar number five. But self-trust is your ability to know that you can handle life. It\’s your ability to follow through. It\’s your ability to have integrity to know that when you commit to something, that you\’ll have a crack at it. You\’ll do it to the best that you possibly can. And here\’s the thing. We are always cultivating habits, and we need to make sure that we are cultivating habits that are generating the feeling of self-trust. So what do I mean by that? Well, if you commit to something, for example, a new years resolution, so if you commit to wanting to achieve something, and then you halfway through just decide, \”It\’s all too hard. \”I want to do it \”but I\’m just not going to follow through on it.\” Right? So to a degree, you\’ve actually kind of let yourself down in a way because you truly want to pursue it, but you\’ve either given up or dropped your standards or you just simply haven\’t honoured or haven\’t had accountability or responsibility for following through on something. Well, what can happen is, we now unconsciously are now training our mind, our patterns, our habits, our belief systems that we can\’t be trusted. What can happen is, we go, \”I\’ve broken another promise. \”Okay, I\’ve done that again.\” So what can happen is if unsupervised, when we break our promises or don\’t follow through on our word, which is essentially when our actions don\’t match our words, we\’re out of integrity, then if we don\’t now have compassion for self and follow that up with radical compassion, ultimate compassion, then what\’s going to happen is we are now going to programme ourselves with the feeling of I can\’t trust myself. So we now need to recognise, well anytime when you\’re out of integrity, you\’ve got to have forgiveness, compassion for self, and you\’ve got to recommit to doing it better next time, \’cause otherwise it will create a habit and a pattern of, \”I can\’t be trusted. \”Here we go again, \”I\’ve just set myself \”another new years resolution, another goal, \”I\’m probably just going to bail on this one as well.\” So we need to start to recognise and catching ourselves out on where we are making promises that we\’re not keeping our promises and this is where the sub-pillars of self-trust come in which are things like integrity, accountability, responsibility, actually following through on making sure our actions align with our words. When our actions align with words, that\’s a powerful combo because it teaches your unconscious mind, \”I\’m integrity, I can trust myself.\” That is a journey as well. So I\’m going to leave it there on self-trust. As I said, there are sub-pillars to each of these. So there\’s six dimensions, there are sub-dimensions within each dimension. So it\’s a matrix within a matrix. So I\’m just giving you the quick snapshot for now that we can dive into more of these concepts later on. The fifth concept is self-belief. The fifth pillar of self-love is self-belief. Now this again, is an inside job. Your degree of self-belief, your ability to trust yourself, your ability to believe in yourself and what is possible for your life. We\’re talking about hacking your mind completely. We\’re talking about choosing to believe in something before you see it, rather than waiting to see it and then you believe it. We all know about the power of belief. We all know that, and the classic story of Roger Bannister who was the guy that ran the four minute mile for the very first time. Now, prior to that, no one had ever done it, no one believed it was possible, and then as soon as he did it, there\’s been thousands of other people that have done it shortly afterwards. So what happened? Well yeah, people believed it was possible. So the power of belief is real, just like the placebo effect. There\’s a documented scientific phenomenon that happens, when you believe in something, it increases the probability of it happening. Your whole reality conspires in your favour when you believe something. So you\’ve got to be very, very aware of all the beliefs you\’ve got about yourself. So, this is now where you undertake things like belief hunting, you understand what you believe about your identity. What do you believe about your ability, your skill, your knowledge, your experience. What do you believe is possible for your life? How much do you believe you can earn? What sort of partner do you believe you\’re capable of attracting? All these things are just simply perspectives, simply belief systems that you\’ve been cultivating from the moment you were born to the moment that you\’re existing now. By a series of experiences that have unfolded and that have conditioned your sense of what is possible for your life. So you can look at all of your sense of possibilities for yourself and you can look at them and go, are they limited? Or are they expansive? Are they coming from a place of infinite possibility? I can create anything in this life or are they coming from, \”Nah, that\’s probably not going to happen. \”Who am I? \”What\’s the chances of that happening?\” Now, if we are relying on our past to predict what\’s possible for our future, that\’s limited thinking. That\’s linear, lineal, limited mind-based thinking, as opposed to your infinite expression, infinite possibility pouring through you. So you can recognise any moment and you can do this when you\’re driving around. For example, you might be looking for a car park. You\’re looking for a car park and if in mind you\’re going, \”Probably won\’t find one, \”it\’s getting towards peak-hour traffic, \”probably not going to find a park.\” Well, you\’re probably not going to find one. You\’re probably going to delete it from your experience. You\’re not going to manifest that. However, if you\’ve got the opposite, which is, \”You know what, I can get a park. \”There\’s going to be a parking somewhere. \”I can create a park.\” A different reality that you\’re going to create. Now, I\’m just giving you the example of car parking, but substitute anything. Partner of your dreams, career of your dreams, business of your dreams, the dream home that you want to live in, the amount of money you want to be earning, your physical condition. If you\’ve tuned out and you\’re not operating from a linear, limited mind-based historical based belief system which is simply programming from the past, it\’s going to limit what you believe to be possible for your future. So you\’ve got to go eliciting where are the belief systems that you\’ve got coming from? Are they coming from an infinite expansive perspective? Or are they coming from a limited linear, previous history, historical experience belief system that\’s now limiting what\’s possible for your life? Now, that in itself, when I uncovered this and when I now started practising this, it changed the game because I just realised so much of my reality I was walking around with limited thinking. I was thinking, well what\’s the probability of that? That\’s a classic question of limited thinking when people ask, \”What\’s the probability of that?\” When we ask that question, what\’s the probability of something happening? Well, how are we determining that probability? We\’re looking to other people, we\’re looking externally for validation to know is this something I should pursue? We\’re looking externally rather than internally. We\’re looking to trust someone else, rather than trust ourself. So this is a powerful concept when you can recognise where you\’re outsourcing your desire, your truth to someone else, that\’s limited thinking. That\’s your ego at play. That\’s covert ego taking place, which is limiting your experience. Call it a night. The sixth major pillar of self-love is self-care. Now, this pillar is, I mean, it\’s important, but it\’s not the be all and end all. Self-care, I\’ve defined as things like meditation, it\’s things like making time for yourself, holidays, it\’s nurturing yourself, it\’s healthy mind, body, spirit, making sure you\’re hydrated, eating healthy food. Now, there are some cosmetic elements to this, which is some people think that self-love is just self-care. It\’s not just self-care, but it\’s one of the major pillars. So yes, you\’ve got to take care of your mind, your body, your spirit, you\’ve got to exercise, flexibility, hydration, all those elements, because if you\’re not on your game, if you\’re not taking care of your vitality, how can you possibly function at your best? How can you possibly direct your attention and your energy inward to cultivate and work on the rest of these five other pillars? So self-care, it\’s really about taking care of your own needs, it\’s about making time for you and it\’s about making sure that you are the number one priority in your life, to work on you. Because if you\’re not prioritising yourself as number one, then how can you possibly take care of everyone else in your life to the highest degree? You\’ve got to be number one. Now, it might seem, and this is a limiting belief that a lot of people have, a lot of people feel, \”It\’s selfish for me to put myself as number one in life.\” No, it\’s not selfish. You\’ve got to take the oxygen mask first for yourself, before you give the oxygen mask to other people. That\’s what prioritising yourself first means. It\’s not selfish, it\’s actually the intelligent, very wise thing to do, because it means you now have more energy, more impact to give more to the people around you. So if you are giving, giving, giving, giving too much at the expense of yourself, well you\’re going to suffer. Which means, in terms of sustainability, longevity, the amount of impact that you can make, as well as your contribution, the amount of money you can learn, it\’s going to be limited and I don\’t know about you guys, but for me when I think about making a contribution, I always reflect back to the best way to help underprivileged people, or people that don\’t have a lot of money is not to become one of them. And that\’s said with the utmost love and respect is if we want to help people, then it\’s our duty and it\’s our responsibility to elevate ourselves internally, in terms the amount of love and the amount of impact in our skill, knowledge and experience so that we can become leaders and give back so that we can make even more of an impact. So it\’s about doing what\’s responsible and sustainable, not being a mat, and not just giving for the sake of giving. We need to look at sustainability here as well. So those are my six major pillars of self-love. And as I\’ve said, there are sub-pillars within each of these dimensions that we then need to master. And I\’ll be doing more training courses, I\’ll be doing more pop up videos like this as we go through the journey to expand into more of each of these dimensions and you\’ll see how they\’re all connected. It\’s like a spider web where they\’re all connected. And if one of them drops out, you\’ll notice that all of them drop out. So you can just look at one in isolation. I recommend that you focus on all of these dimensions. You have to focus on all of them, concurrently, and if you drop any one of them, then you\’ll notice the impact in your life. You\’ll notice that something feels not quite right. You won\’t necessarily know what specifically, you might just feel maybe you\’re in a low mood, and maybe you want to know what it is. So now that you\’re aware there\’s six pillars of self-love, you can start to be aware of, okay, well how are you meeting each one of these six pillars? How are you tracking in each one of those? You can actually rank yourself in each of these dimensions of self-love. You can then rank yourself in the sub-dimensions of each of these pillars. So this is a very holistic model for loving self that I\’m building and developing that I\’m excited to share with you guys. So one of the questions I want to leave you with, or give you a couple of questions that I want to leave you with is home play, as tasking that you can focus on which is going to illicit some of the areas of pillar number two that maybe you are missing. So pillar number two was self-acceptance. So self-acceptance is your ability to be non-judgemental. It\’s the ability to be kind to yourself. It\’s the ability to have compassion for the parts of yourself that maybe you want to change, maybe you\’re not necessarily satisfied with. So having self-acceptance of that doesn\’t necessarily mean that you\’re going just be complacent. Self-acceptance is not complacency. Self-acceptance is choosing to have compassion and understanding for why things are the way they are. So that we release the judgement , we release the negative charge. Doesn\’t mean that we are complacent in terms of we don\’t want to change, we don\’t want to become better, doesn\’t mean that. Self-acceptance is the first step in letting go of the judgement . So in order to develop an awareness of what parts of ourself we are not accepting, you want to ask yourself this question first: what am I choosing to not accept about myself? That\’s the first question. What am I choosing to not accept about myself? And that might mean your financial situation. That might mean your ability as a leader. That might mean the results in your business, or your career. That might mean the way that you look. You might look in a mirror and go, \”I don\’t accept… \”I don\’t, jeez, I don\’t accept the way that I look.\” All right? Maybe you\’re carrying a couple of extra few kilos, you might go, \”I don\’t accept those extra kilos.\” Well, that is judgement , that is your expectation around the way that reality should be and it\’s clinging on to that reality so tightly that if you\’re ideal reality deviates from your actual reality, then it creates judgement . It creates tension, it creates negativity. And so a key there is to recognise where is non-acceptance. Where are you not accepting your reality? And specifically what parts of yourself are you not accepting? What that then will eliminate is the judgement . It will eliminate, well, what are you now judging about yourself? So that\’s the second question. As a result of that, how are you judging yourself? You might be looking at yourself in the mirror and saying I\’m carrying too much weight, maybe you\’re not carrying enough weight, maybe you haven\’t got enough muscles, maybe you\’ve got too much muscles, whatever it is, you\’ve been looking at yourself and judging yourself and that\’s when you\’ve got to look at how is the judgement playing out. And the judgement is like… The judgement , I describe it as like, it\’s like picking up a piece of shit and it\’s like throwing it at something. That\’s what judgement is doing. It\’s just negative energy that doesn\’t serve anyone or anything. It\’s a diminishment, it\’s criticism, it\’s just negative energy that just gets thrown around that just doesn\’t do anything. So you want to swap out the judgement with acceptance, with compassion. Compassion and judgement are like… Compassion is the kryptonite for judgement . So if you want to collapse the judgement , have compassion. Have compassion for that element of self. That\’s the starting point. Compassion that leads to acceptance, forgiveness, tolerance and then ultimately you get to gratitude. So there\’s some hierarchical levels of concepts that you can move through to go from judgement to go to acceptance. And compassion is one of those major pillars that has sub-elements within it again. So they are the questions I want to leave you with now. This is the thing, you might\’ve thought and you might be thinking this, you might be wondering, \”Chris, I thought you\’re this positive guy. \”I thought you\’re this positive thinking guy, \”that\’s all about, let\’s be positive.\” Well, the thing about the positive thinking movement, is that it\’s great, but it only gets you so far. And what I mean by that is it only gets you so far, when we hide behind the positivity and we are not radically honest and truthful about what\’s actually going on. So yes we can lie to ourselves and we can pretend like everything\’s all good, but if underneath the surface we have judgements, we have expectations, we have non-acceptance, we have limiting beliefs. You can be the most positive person in the world, but eventually, all that stuff is going to come to the surface. It\’s almost like being positive without rectifying all the unconscious limiting beliefs and perspectives. It\’s almost like sweeping water up a hill with broom. You\’re sweeping water up a hill to try and keep it up there, it requires so much energy and as soon as you stop sweeping, it\’s all going to come back down again. So the key to making a masterful, transformational change in this area is going a level deeper. It\’s looking at the judgement , it\’s looking at the expectations you\’ve got, it\’s looking at the parts of self that we haven\’t accepted, that we are not loving. It\’s not just about being positive and just ignoring it. That is ignorance. That is not actually looking at the true nature of what\’s going on and we\’re not dealing with and we\’re not taking responsibility for our reality. So yes, I\’m generally quite a positive person, however this is one of these situations where we got to look into all the dark corners. We got to look into the deep, dark, darkest corners, the most uncomfortable elements of our reality and we have to shine light on that because unless we shine light on it, it will remain there, dormant and it will still be affecting us but we simply won\’t have awareness of it. So this is where courage is required. Vulnerability is required. You\’ve got to be willing to have the courage to go and look at what is not necessarily comfortable. It\’s not about comfortable, it\’s about doing what is required to resolve and dissolve the challenges, the limitations and the parts in ourself, the shadow parts in ourself that we\’re not particularly proud and get to a point where we have total self-acceptance of those parts of ourself. Anyway guys, I\’m going to finish it up there. Those were the six major pillars of self-love. As I said, this is giving you a very, very small snapshot of the overall model. This is about 2% of the overall model that I\’ve developed and I\’m going to be sharing more of these models with you and the sub-elements, there\’s diagrams and there\’s labels and there\’s lists and there\’s so much to this. And I don\’t say that to overwhelm you, I just say that this is a powerful topic and when you get into this, you\’ll start to see the tapestry, you\’ll start to see all the connecting pieces and the pieces of the puzzles all start to fit together and it\’s powerful and it\’s one of the most important things that exists in this world. As I said, I wish I knew more about this earlier. I\’m starting to master it now and when I share this with my clients, it\’s an absolute game changer for these guys. And their lives are transforming very, very rapidly as soon as they start adopting these models. And you might think, \”Well, how is this going to affect me and my business?\” Well, when you start to love yourself, you start feeling better. You\’re all about your mood, you become more confident. You put yourself out there, you take more risks. You\’re now able to communicate more confidently, you\’re able to lead your team better. When you wake up in the morning you have a skip in your step. You have a greater sense of purpose. You can now tap into a greater sense of vision. So this is the most important foundational pillar for every human being and from this, this is the launching pad to then elevate and transform all other parts of life and it makes a powerful difference. You\’re going to earn more money. You\’ll have more energy. You acquire quality relationships. It just transforms and unlocks a whole new level of mastery in life. Anyway guys, I\’m going to leave it there for tonight. Thank you for tuning in. I trust that was enlightening, useful. I trust you got some pretty cool questions to work on between now and next week. As always, thanks for tuning in guys. I love you guys heaps and I\’ll see you guys again next week for another episode of Transformation Tuesday. And if you haven’t already subscribed, please click the link below. I\’m going to add the link below. Subscribe to my YouTube channel. I\’ve got a podcast coming out as well on iTunes. Obviously, I\’m on Instagram, and I\’m on Facebook, I\’m also on LinkedIn. I\’ve got a mailing list as well for those that want to keep up to date with my events, special offers, products. I\’ve got some amazing offers, bonuses and transformational tools coming out very, very shortly. So if you haven\’t already subscribed to my VIP newsletter, jump on my website and get yourself on the list there for that. Much love guys, have a great week and I\’ll see you again very, very soon. Bye for now.