Self-Love

The person we think we are and the person we think we need to love are both created from the same conditioned thinking. They are not real or solid. But underneath that is something special. Underneath our thoughts, feelings, and behaviours, that's all there is love and when we start to see this, we experience that more of the time. We don't need to add more thinking but seeing through it is transformational.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Calmcast,

A time to feel calm and think clearly.

I'm Claire Downham,

The Queen of Calm,

A Transformational Life Coach.

I was a burnt out headteacher who finally made the journey to calm after years of trying and I want to prevent you from having to do the same.

The Calmcast is a series of short explorations gently guiding you back to your natural state,

Which is calm and clarity.

Just listen like you would listen to music with an open mind and curiosity.

There's nothing else to do.

Now let's relax into today's episode.

So today I've been inspired to talk about self-love.

I've got a bit of a history with that concept.

I remember when I first started my journey into moving from being a H I was considering my niche and one of the niches I considered or one of the ways of branding myself up,

I suppose,

Was to be a self-love coach that I could help people to love themselves because I'd kind of got the idea that that was a thing to do.

It made sense.

It made sense from so many different perspectives.

I mean,

One of the things that I thought definitely was the case around weight,

That if we love ourselves,

We'll eat proper food and eat healthily and look after our physical body.

So it looked like that was really good advice.

Learn to love yourself and then you'll just have a better experience of life.

And I did all sorts of things myself.

I did affirmations.

I definitely did the old Louise Hay mirror work,

Looking at myself in the mirror and telling myself,

Saying,

I love you to myself.

I think I started with I'm learning to love you and went on from there.

So and it's well often,

It's often spoken about,

Isn't it,

Self-love?

It's the idea that it's the thing to do.

And it makes sense,

Doesn't it?

Makes sense that if we,

When we love something,

We take care of it.

I used to use the analogy of a car.

If we got a brand new car,

We really do like our brand new car,

We might even love it if we're into cars.

We would really look after that car.

We get it cleaned.

We look after it well.

We take it to our services and things like that to look after it.

And I guess that's the concept that kind of looks like we can apply to ourselves.

But I'm starting to see this in a really different way now.

If when we think about the idea of you loving yourself,

If we've got a sentence with the word you in it twice,

It seems to me that there's something,

This you,

This,

This self,

This thing that we think we are trying to love itself.

And but then there's something about understanding that that is the same collection of thoughts.

It's the same old conditioned thinking.

And I suspect that's why it's really,

Really hard to learn to love yourself.

Yeah,

I'd love to hear from you if you've tried it.

You tried learning to love yourself.

You've tried to force that to happen.

I got to a stage where I felt that if I stopped doing all those tools and techniques,

The affirmations and the mirror work and all the other things I was doing to try and make me love myself,

That I would,

It would all just fall apart.

So it was kind of there,

Kind of felt better about myself,

I think in general.

But it felt,

It felt like I was hanging on to it with my fingernail ends that if I,

If I even thought about stopping doing those things,

The whole thing would come crashing down.

Because I suspect it would have done.

I suspect it would have done.

Because I think my old conditioned,

Not loving myself thinking would have just still been there.

And I still would have believed it.

Because I was just replacing one set of conditioned thinking with something else,

Which is has to be still conditioned by the same set of experiences that I've had in my 51 years of life,

But probably mostly in the very early part of that.

So what else is there if we're not going to make ourselves love ourselves?

Well that there's,

There's one thing,

There's some things to know that I think are helpful.

The first thing to know is that,

Is that you're made of love.

When you're doing affirmations and all sorts of other things and you're looking for it outside of you,

You're looking in the wrong direction,

Completely the wrong direction,

Because it's all actually inside you and always has been.

And when you look into the eyes of a baby,

You'll see that.

It's beautiful to see,

Isn't it?

That it's this,

It's innate,

That love.

We're made of love,

We come from love.

We're a miracle because,

You know,

That little sperm had to reach that egg in that moment to create you.

So wow,

You know,

How amazing you've come from that amazing start.

So that's one thing that I think is helpful to know.

You're not just made of love,

You're made of,

You know,

Everything that love brings into the world,

Calm and wisdom and resilience and confidence and all those other things.

They're all part of who you,

They're all who you really are.

And I see that as solid.

I see that as diamond,

Titanium,

Whatever hard things that are indestructible you consider.

It's an indestructible core of who you are.

And then there's this thing called the self that we try to develop and love and everything else.

That's a collection of thoughts,

Conditioned thoughts that have just been there,

Been,

Been learnt,

Not,

Not explicitly learnt,

But kind of subconsciously,

Unconsciously learnt.

And when we do things to try and make ourselves,

You know,

Try and make ourselves love ourselves,

There,

There's just more thinking.

There's more,

Because there's activity,

There's behaviour,

There's doing things and that's all thinking.

And that then becomes another layer.

It's another step further away from actually who you really are.

It's like we're fumbling around in the dark,

Trying to find something,

When we've got a torch in our pocket all the time.

It's in there,

The light is in there.

It's inside you.

It's not out there in the world.

And so I think what happens as we start to change our relationship with that which passes through our heads,

As it begins to be held a little more loosely,

As we get curious about it,

As we start to question,

As we start to read our feelings more accurately and we experience the sense of feeling something and knowing that that's coming from some,

Some thought in the moment,

Not from,

Not from us being broken or not from the outside world.

As we start to understand this system and how it works,

There's a natural falling away of that which is stopping you connecting to,

To love,

Which is who you really are and what you're made of.

I think it's like,

It is like shining a light on it.

You know that phrase,

You can't unsee that.

Once you've started to see the,

The,

The cracks in this noise in your head,

Once you've started to see that it's actually got no truth in it about you,

Falling into a space of love of not just of yourself,

Not just of you,

But just,

Just it,

But not needing to be specific.

It's just this feeling of love that can be there in,

In every aspect of your life because you're connecting back to your essence,

Back to who you really are,

Back to love.

But that is harder to do if you're looking in the wrong direction.

If you're adding more and more thinking and things to do and everything else into your head,

Then it does become increasingly difficult to see and connect to,

To love.

But it's possible when we start to see who we really are.

Thank you so much for listening.

There's nothing to do now,

But bring some awareness to how this is working out in your life.

Learn regularly to experience longer and longer periods of calm.

This has been The Calm Cast with Clare Downham,

Queen of Calm.

Take care and keep listening.