The Magic Of Self-Devotion | Embody Your Most Loving Energy

This is a very special episode of the podcast that was recorded LIVE on Insight Timer! I hope you enjoy the vibe of this episode and the magical energy of the Q&A!

Today’s episode is an invitation to become fully devoted to yourself — your energy, your desires, and your well-being.

This episode is a gentle yet powerful reminder that your energy shapes everything. This episode guides you back into deep self-devotion so you can feel confident, aligned, and excited about who you are. Learn how loving yourself first raises your vibration, improves your mindset, and expands your life.

Perfect for anyone craving confidence, clarity, and a fresh start.

A special thank you and shoutout to everyone who showed up live and made this such a magical experience! I see you, and I appreciate you.

If you liked this episode, please join the conversation in the Wild Free Well Space here on Insight Timer!

Transcript

Hello everyone!

I am really happy and I will be honest a little bit nervous to be here today but yeah I'm really excited to have this conversation with you today.

I am going to give people some time to get here and then we will get started.

If you're here if you could just leave a comment,

Say hello,

Say where you're from,

All of that good stuff.

Alright so I am really excited to be here with you today.

Hi Meg!

Oh yay,

Hello!

I'm really excited to be here with you today to have this conversation and I said this a little bit earlier but I will say it again a little bit nervous first time doing this so I will just ask for your patience and any good vibes that you want to send and yeah I'm just really looking forward to having this conversation with all of you and today we are going to be talking about,

Hello,

We are going to be talking about being devoted to yourself or becoming more devoted to yourself and what that means.

So the definition of devotion is love,

Loyalty and enthusiasm for a person or thing okay and I think that that's really actually quite lovely and we use devotion a lot in religious contexts like that's maybe where we hear this word the most but the conversation that I want to have today is all about you so it is about the way that you are devoted to yourself,

That you're devoted to your needs,

To your wants,

To your desires,

That you are devoted to your own well-being,

That you are devoted to the way that you show up in the world.

Your energy,

Your vibe,

Like there's so many I don't know if any of you listen to my content here on Insight Timer but I have this conversation frequently like these are such important questions to be asking yourself and oftentimes we are not having these conversations with ourselves right we are maybe kind of showing up for ourselves last instead of really allowing ourselves to to take of ourselves to show up fully to be our full whole complete selves in multiple situations not just in specific corners or pockets of the world right so I want to start by asking you a question when was the last time that you truly showed love to yourself and maybe while you sit with that question I want to maybe take this a step back maybe we need to begin the conversation by talking about what loving yourself even means for you because when we have these kinds of conversations about self-care or self-love it tends to be this really kind of abstract or vague sort of conversation where it's like maybe you haven't even begun that conversation with yourself of what it actually means to love yourself or what things you do to show love to yourself or the situations that you put yourself in where you feel really loved and maybe it's love from other people or love in external circumstances or external situations like when you do really well at work you know you feel really good about yourself or like when you do something kind for your partner for your family or for your friends and you feel really good about yourself and all of that is wonderful but all of the conversations that you will have with me in this space is will always be about how you show up for yourself first how you show love to yourself so I really want you to think about when was the last time that you really did something loving and kind for yourself when was the last time that you for example gave yourself something that you needed so that is an act of self-love like when you know that you need something when you know that you want something and you're able to fulfill that request within yourself and you're able to give that to yourself that is something that is really self-loving because you are meeting your own requirements you're meeting your own needs and you're not waiting for something else or in a lot of cases someone else to meet them for you right so that's one part of this conversation and I want you to sit with that and you know maybe you write these down because you may need more time like this may not be you know you may have an aha while we're here but you may need to come back and kind of like reflect on these questions more but when was the last time that you felt and I think this question is so special when was the last time that you felt truly enthusiastic about the person that you are okay about literally who you are as a human being and the magic and the unique energy that you bring to the world when was the last time that you allowed yourself to be excited about the person that you are like every tiny little thing that makes you you so all of the strengths and all the things that you're amazing at and all of the quirks and all of the flaws and all of the things that maybe embarrass you or that you kind of want to hide or that you don't really want other people to know about like when was the last time that you allowed yourself to love all of who you are and be really excited about the weird and unique mix of things that have come together to make you you because you were so special you're so so special you're so you're unique and then again just like everyone else I mean we're all unique obviously we're all special but that doesn't make any one of us less special like the person beside me being special does not make me somehow less special it's not an either or sort of thing right it's always both and not always I guess but it's often it is often both and and so when you think about all of these things like how you love yourself the way that you feel about yourself like showing enthusiasm and excitement for the person that you are I want you to really sink into this idea which is your energy matters so the things that you believe about yourself the way that you move in the world the energy that you show up in the world with it really really matters and it has a massive impact on all of the world around you really it has a massive impact on your friends your family but it has a massive impact on the barista that you run into every morning you know or the cashier at the grocery store or like the police officer the parking attendant like all of these people that we kind of run into in our daily lives it has a ripple effect that bleeds out so when you're excited about yourself when you are enthusiastic about your life your personality like the way that you move in the world the way that you're showing up that affects the people around you in a massive massive way so from this perspective it's like hella important that you really do choose to be devoted to yourself to show up to yourself because one okay you are the only person that will be with you from the beginning until the end like I mean as much as we'd like to not feel that way as much as we'd like to not believe that it's true we are the only people that we have you know and so it's really important to build up that habit and energy of having your own back and being really supportive of yourself and really learning to love and care for yourself like the magnificent wonderful human being that you are and then from there when you are in that space of devotion that devotion goes out and has a massive impact on every single person that you touch in your life it's incredibly incredibly powerful so I want you to take a second and analyze and I'd love to if you guys are interested in like leaving a comment below about this but what would it look like to give yourself that sort of love and attention I say this all the time all the time on the podcast all the time you are worthy of your own love and attention you are deeply deeply worthy of your own love and attention and you need to be the person that gives it to you first so we have a habit in society in general I would say of looking for love approval and whatever else outside of ourselves we are constantly kind of seeking approval validation whatever it is permission sometimes right we're sometimes looking for permission sorry about the light we got a very heavenly glow kind of going on here but we tend to look for those things outside of ourselves but what would it look like to give yourself that love and attention your own love and attention and let's break this down a second farther the love and attention that you probably so often so keenly and so freely give to other people whoa sorry we got like a whole lot there's a whole lot happening here right now but what would it look like to give that to yourself first what would it look like to really show up for yourself and if anyone wants to I would love to hear your comments about what that would feel like I'm gonna give you guys a second to like think that through and then if anyone wants to comment then I will kind of respond to that before we move on all right we're gonna move on to the next question which is what would it feel like to be enthusiastic like I mean and I mean deeply deeply enthusiastic about who you are as a person it's really really funny while you guys are thinking this over I'm gonna share a story because I think it's relevant so it's really funny when I begin having a conversation in this realm whether it's on the podcast or whatever it ends up coming up in multiple spaces I'm never having this conversation just once I'm always having this conversation over and over again and so it's really interesting because this live was planned ahead of time but last night I had a call with a client and we were talking very much about this about this idea of being really genuinely excited about life and allowing yourself to be excited about life giving yourself permission to be excited about life because one of the things that often comes up is when we are in a moment of being really really happy we often feel or we can feel sorry I should say we can feel somewhat guilty about feeling happy about our lives if we are surrounded by people who are in one way or another struggling now we never want to negate or deny someone else's experience and we certainly don't want to be there bragging or being kind of like overly in people's faces about the good things that are happening in our lives if somebody else is having a difficult time but the point here is more about not diminishing our own light our own happiness our own excitement about ourselves or life or enthusiasm for ourselves or life because we know someone somewhere who is struggling of course we do and it's not us today and it might be us tomorrow and like that's okay too but that's not necessarily a reason for us to make ourselves smaller and I'm pretty sure that if you are here having this conversation with me right now you are not the kind of person that would have any interest in your friends making themselves smaller or your partner or your family or whoever it might be you would not have any interest in them making themselves smaller in order to make you feel better and what happens when we do that by the way is we actually rob someone of the opportunity to experience an energy that is different than the one that they are currently living in so we rob people I'm sorry I'm trying to move my camera because the light has never been quite so special as it is today but we rob somebody of the opportunity to really sink into another experience a different energetic experience than the one that they are currently having so we basically to some degree make their experience even harder by hiding our joy and by diminishing the way that we feel about ourselves in our lives because we are not giving them an opportunity to sit in and feel the ripple effect of that energy you're playing small really does not serve anyone ever at all and least of all least of all you it really just does not serve you and so I would encourage you to really sink into this question what would it feel like to be truly enthusiastic about who you are as a human being what would that look like what would that feel like like what impact does that have on your life and all of this kind of bleeds into our next kind of question as well how would you move differently in the world if you truly felt that way about yourself so if you were truly enthusiastic about the human that you are and the energy that you bring to the world and the vibe that you embody and the work that you do and the partner that you are and the friend that you are and all of these aspects that like take over every area of our life right how would you move differently in the world if you genuinely were excited about the human that you are think about that for a second what would shift what would you do maybe in brackets differently what would you do differently or maybe it's just something what would you start doing what would you give your yourself permission to do and of course you guys can answer all these questions to in the chat if you feel called to and then the last kind of question would be what would you stop doing and that sometimes despite the fact that it seems kind of negative that sometimes is the most important question what is it that you would stop doing if you were genuinely excited and enthusiastic about the human that you are maybe you would stop playing small maybe you would stop denying that niggling that you have that you need to do something go somewhere be someone make a change or whatever you know that voice you've all experienced it you have it maybe it's in your gut maybe it's in your heart maybe you hear something maybe you see something maybe you feel something maybe you just know that this is true but what would you stop doing and I want to give you guys all a second to respond if you want to to that question and I'm gonna have another sip of water because I can it's exciting being live it's just a thrill so in the chat we have an answer that says that we would someone would respect their time more amen amen oh I just realized that I had to scroll down in the chat thanks for your patience guys so someone said I became aware I was giving away my time so freely and not using it to take care of my needs I'm shifting that now so good yes yes yes yes it not can be really difficult when we're I mean cuz giving our time away sometimes and like not prioritizing ourselves and it's and I would argue especially not prioritizing ourselves in whatever way that looks like for you because everyone is different but not prioritizing ourselves and kind of the constant negotiating the constant what's the word I'm looking for not the constant negotiating but the constant kind of there's a word I'm looking for it's not coming to me but the idea of you giving away so much of yourself and not prioritizing yourself is really you not owning your power it's really not it's it's about you not fully being in that energy of like I am good enough and I can prioritize myself and I can do the things that I want to do and I need to do and because I'm worthy of that and it's not about justifying I don't want us to begin having that conversation here that is not it we are not ever in a space of like justifying the things that we do or feel or anything like that but it really is about just remembering that your point of power does come from that meeting of your own needs like I need this thing and I'm giving it to myself and I'm not waiting for permission or somebody else to do it for me like I'm taking self-responsibility if you've been here for a while you will know what I'm talking about gonna talk about it every week so you're taking self-responsibility for the things that you want you need and you're giving them to yourself and you are not waiting to be quote-unquote saved and a lot of us have been there at one point or another we may be there again in the future but we know this experience of like waiting for somebody else to come in and give us the thing because we're not giving it to ourselves and we need to be willing to give it to ourselves first so just catching up on comments here guys been sitting with what what if it all comes down to self-esteem self-respect and self-love I would shed the things step fully into my shine oh my shine I love that and dance the world with my family I really love this because it does like okay if I had to break this down I would say that everything really boils down to mindset what I mean by that is the thoughts that we think the emotions that we feel the beliefs that those emotions and thoughts create and the actions that are influenced by all three of the private previously mentioned things so when we're talking about self-esteem self-respect and self-love all of that is really just a mindset it's really just a choice to just like we're slowly shifting friends with son here it's all a choice right to learn to think thoughts that are more self-loving more respectful towards yourself more about building your confidence in yourself right so like I think that mandate found starting again I think that mindset is the foundation of everything and everything we do think believe live in our lives is because of our mindset and everything that we want to incorporate in our lives begins with with our mindset with the way that we think and speak and feel and move in the world like about ourselves right the things that we believe to be true about ourselves someone else here said I would set boundaries with other people yeah I mean totally absolutely absolutely love and attention often looks like no as a full sentence there are times where the way that we really learn to love ourselves is by yes prioritizing ourselves and then how do we prioritize ourselves we prioritize ourselves by potentially learning to say no to other things and really honoring when something is a full yes and when something is a no and when something falls in between giving ourselves time to sit with that and really allowing the answer to come to us so not forcing an answer there's a lot of people that say maybe is a no I don't know that I I don't know that I personally subscribe to that in all honesty I don't really believe that that's true I'm the kind of person at least I think that for some people maybe is probably a no if if somebody has built up a habit of people-pleasing I can see how maybe is a mechanism that people use to avoid saying no but for me personally and the way that I move in the world maybe for me means maybe it means I need a hot minute to think about the energy that I have available to me this week this day this month whatever it might be whatever the time period is to be able to show up for this thing properly so like I am not sorry guys I just wanted to bring myself back into focus I'm not saying no because the answer is not no and I'm not saying yes because the answer is not yes then the maybe is the getting into energetic alignment with what I need in order to be able to give a yes or no response to this thing so yeah boundaries are fundamental but also honoring yourself we're always honoring ourselves sometimes honoring ourselves is the yes sometimes it's the no sometimes it's the maybe and the taking a step back and really giving ourselves time and space to to assess the thing to analyze what we really want and what we really need before we give somebody an answer and I will also say just really quickly because I think that this is something that's really difficult in in today's world you do not owe anyone an immediate response there is something about the tech that we live with and the the social media environment that we live with where people are expecting like I've texted you and you cannot take time to like text me back I need an answer right now and I do not do not buy into that you take the time that you need no one deserves an immediate response from you except for yourself okay unless it's like an emergency obviously like fine okay there's like circumstances where blah blah blah but in general like no one should be expecting an immediate answer from you you are allowed to take that time to assess what you need just in case that is helpful okay last comment we have here is I'd stop thinking I'm being too much oh I love this as a former I'm too much person I do not subscribe to that anymore but as somebody who has lived in that space who has been there yeah I totally get that and enthusiasm for yourself and like really really showing up and being devoted to all of who you are means saying things like so what so what if I'm too much then I'm too much and I'm too much for the people who are not able to match me in my muchness or my enoughness okay and that's okay you do not need to be palatable to every single person on the planet you won't be even if you try to be you won't be it is an exercise in futility and there is nothing good that will come from that because it will just keep you playing small but it's really interesting because I'm gonna give a side note to this story because I definitely did feel like I was too much and I have moments of where I feel sometimes perhaps but it really happens so infrequently now and I feel really really grateful for that but let me give you another example which has just flown from my mind give me one second no I had such a good example that was relevant to this oh yes okay I spent most of my youth like really way too long way way way too long having conversations about how low maintenance I am okay because for me the apex of getting a man of like being in a romantic relationship was like men don't like high maintenance women and thus I must be low maintenance to find a man this was a story that I had when I was like way way younger like this was like in my 20s we're talking like 15 years ago which is crazy it feels like I don't know how I'm how it's possible that I can even say something like 15 years ago but it's true and like it took me a while to kind of unravel and unpack this but like I have gotten to the point where I am very much like there is nothing low maintenance about me nothing I am NOT easygoing unless I'm traveling when I'm traveling I am like the chillest human in fact I think that that that travel tends to bring out the best version of me but in general in my daily life there's really no part of me that is low maintenance and so what and so what why do I have to be why does anyone have to be why does anyone have to be something that is palatable or pleasing to someone else now this is not a call to go around behaving like a jerk and I don't think that that would be true for any of you anyways because you wouldn't be here having this conversation for me with me if that was something that you spend a lot of your time doing in the first place like you wouldn't be occupying that space to begin with so I don't think that there's a fear of you taking this too far in the other direction but we do not need to be pleasing to people and we are not able to be pleasing to all people the people who are going to love us are going to love us no matter what the people who will really love us and the people who only love us when we are being a certain way when we are behaving a certain way I mean they don't it's probably not that kind of true authentic love to begin with you should not need to bend or morph or change yourself in any way in order to be worthy of being in a relationship with anyone and I mean that romantic I mean that at work I mean that with friendships I mean that with family it does not matter you should not need to change anything about who you are to be accepted but there's a caveat to this there is an asterisk to this you need to accept yourself first before you go out into the world expecting other people to vibe with who you are you need to be really really really clear and okay with who you are as a person you need to know and love and own your vibe before you can ask other people to know and love your vibe that's just kind of how it goes so yeah are there any last minute questions does anyone else have anything to say oh thank you love your owning high maintenance yes yes I mean I'm not high maintenance in like an intense kind of way and it's not about like material possessions but like I'm not easy going so I don't know what the opposite of not easy going is not you know what I mean so yeah does anyone else have any last minute questions before we kind of close this out I'd love to hear anything if you've had oh and also any aha's if anything has kind of like come up and you're like mmm damn I never thought about that before I'd love to hear that too and also a quick sorry I wasn't sure how long this call would be and I know that I had said that this would be only 15 minutes and it's now 30 my apologies I hope it was valuable I hope that you got something out of this yeah so if there's anything that you want to share you're welcome to I am going to move into the closing aspect of this but we will if if anyone pardon me if anyone shares anything then I'll get back to that so basically the last thing I want to say is that the decisions that we make today matter we are always kind of waiting for this mystical magical moment in the future where we do the thing or things feel good or it's right or it's you know the this right time doesn't exist but the decisions that we make today matter the way that you show up for yourself it really really really matters it's really important actually the way that you show up it is the most important the way that you show up for other people is probably if you take a second to analyze it is probably the way that you need to be showing up for yourself the love and attention that you are giving to other people is probably a huge part of something that you need to give back to yourself first and whether or not we want to believe this we are indeed having an impact on the world and us and the people around us as well and you know I believe that you want that to be a positive impact and that positive impact really does begin with showing yourself this love first okay because it all starts there it really really all starts there so I'm gonna give a few more minutes for comments I see that there's another question so I'm just gonna answer that one but if anyone else has any other questions I'm happy to answer them okay how do we totally accept ourselves I mean okay I'm gonna be honest with you I think that there is no one right answer to this and I think that my answer is this isn't that why we're here isn't that the work of a lifetime that we are here to learn and to do to learn to love and accept ourselves and hasn't there been a moment where in your life in the past where you've done something that maybe you know it was awkward or was uncomfortable or maybe it embarrassed you a little bit and you managed to move past that and forgive yourself and then in the future you did something totally different you know there was another experience where you felt like oh yeah that could have gone better I could have avoided doing whatever that thing was and you know you learned to forgive yourself like a little bit faster and I really do think that that's what it is it is about the learning over time to accept yourself more and more accepting that you are flawed accepting that you are still wonderful accepting that you're going to make mistakes over time that no matter how much personal development or spiritual work you do you are still gonna screw it up you're still gonna put your foot in your mouth at some point like there's always going to be that lived experience of of making mistakes and kind of not feeling like you have it all together and maybe you go through seasons to where you accept yourself more in one season than less than another I mean there's so many sides to this I don't think that it's not how do I explain this it's not one and done it's it's the work of a lifetime so if I was to get into the how it really looks like taking the things that you like the least about yourself and finding a way to see the positive in that so for example me not being like low-maintenance or me being high-maintenance what is the positive in that it actually makes me like absurdly organized I am absurdly organized because one of the ways that my high-maintenance energy comes through is in me wanting to know like it just generally what the hell is going on like I want to know where we're going to go what we're doing and how we're getting there who's coming and I want to like plan in advance for that thing and so I think that being high-maintenance in the end of the day is actually me also being organized and going back to the other comment right about like being too much well me being too much I think actually makes it so I I don't know if I feel this way necessarily I do no I do okay I also do I think that me being too much or viewing myself as too much for a long time made me fearless to a certain extent because if I was already too much and my existence literally my existence was already pissing people off because I'm just too much like if that was a story that I was telling myself then like I mean there's nowhere to go but up so I think that that kind of made me want to like showcase what that looks like and like you know the fact that being too much is okay and I think too that I made the choice to surround myself with other people who also view themselves or have viewed themselves in the past as too much and like really allowing myself to just kind of follow in their footsteps being too much also I still think honestly like by standard definition like if we look at like the average I would still say that I'm probably presenting as too much I just stopped caring to be honest with you I really did I stopped caring and and I will say to you I know that that's not a how and and that it's really hard to answer this like without knowing more about like your individual story but I will say that on the other side of accepting myself for who I am so many things have opened up because I have found people in the world whether that be friends whether that be partners whether that be clients and I have seen shifts in my relationship with family because those people have obviously known you forever so they knew you pre acceptance and now they're gonna know you post acceptance right so like those people like I have seen shifts in those relationships because I just kind of owned it after a while and and you I think you have to after a certain point I think you just need to kind of get there and be like okay like I'm done with this I am no longer playing this game or as I say you know as we say all the time on the podcast like we don't do that here anymore we just simply do not do that here anymore so like I'm no longer here I am no longer available for not accepting myself or for accepting some kind of external slash projected like self-projected idea that I might be too much for other people like we're not here for that we don't do that anymore we don't accept that anymore and every time you make those micro decisions every time you make those micro decisions you move closer towards that level of self-acceptance and I'm going to say something else new levels new devils so you are going to get to a level of self-acceptance that matches the level that you're at in your life right now and then when you move to the next level there's going to be some other thing that comes up and that like I don't know if you guys are Harry Potter fans but that like it's kind of like the glass bumping up against mr.

Dursley's head there's gonna be something else that comes up that you bump up against right that is going to ask you to heal it and to give attention to it and whatever and that's going to be every single time that's going to be every single time you move forward every single time you come up to something like to a new level every time you integrate a new belief there's gonna be another new belief that's like hey yo pay attention to me like there's always going to be something that's that's all I have to say about that there's always going to be something and sorry that's not all I have to say about it and you are capable I mean 100 million percent capable of dealing with that thing when it does present itself because you've already done the work to get to that point and you are fully capable of achieving or moving towards whatever feeling or a thing it is that you want from there on you've got it you did it up until now you have all of this proof of a life survived and a life well-lived to know that like whatever comes up next you're gonna be able to manage it so yeah okay I hope that this has been helpful and I would love to connect with you more so there's ways that you can do that I have a group here on insight timer where I share things like just like I don't even know inspiring posts I guess I don't know I don't know that I would have necessarily called them that but sure that's what you know there is and you can find a ton of my content on here I have some meditations more forthcoming and like episodes of the podcast and stuff like that and if you liked this then yeah I hope to connect with you further in the future to do more lives because now that I've broken the ice we are in we are ready we are going and it's gonna be good yeah and I think that's kind of it I mean is there something else I'm supposed to say oh if you liked this I suppose you can donate and that would be cool and yeah just honestly thank you for being here and to those of you that left notes and thank you for saying that I'm relatable by the way I really appreciate that that's the goal that's the goal we're all walking the same path we're all kind of moving through life together right and no one is ahead we're all beside each other we're all just side-by-side walking forward through this game called life so thank you to all the people who wrote comments and participated and are here just thank you I just mean so much and this was like a really interesting first experience and I hope it was useful to you and I know it was definitely useful for me so I hope to see you on lives again in the future and yeah if you need me you know where to find me here on the inside timer so yeah take care everyone bye