The Dance With Self Love

In this episode, I go into the journey of self-love and how I have learned to dance with it. I discuss what it is and what it is not and the key to understanding how to allow the love in for self through self-compassion and understanding.

Each day is a new opportunity to start again and learn what you recognize in your daily living. Start to befriend yourself as you are getting to know you. Start to see the subtle shifts and praise yourself with each small or big step you take.

Please note: This track may include some explicit language.

Transcript

Welcome to La Vejom,

Living Change with Colleen St.

Michael's.

I'm an intuitive development expert sharing the tools and the information to partner with you as we enter this new era of inspiration,

Motivation,

Growth,

And healing.

Welcome to Episode 5,

Learning the Dance of Self Love.

And I call it a dance because there's so many steps.

And this was not a dance that I was fluent in.

This was not a dance that I was excited to learn.

Or even,

I could say,

I was resistant in learning self love because it would really call me out on a lot of the choices that I was living.

It was calling for me to own my shit and it was calling for me to show my self compassion and forgiveness and respect and peace.

And so this has been a topic that was ongoing and is ongoing and that's why it is a dance and has many steps.

As I work with clients every day in my private practice as an Angel Intuitive,

An Intuitive Development Coach,

And a Medium,

There's one common thread that is available in each of these niches that I work with.

And that is self love.

It literally is the foundation of building every relationship in your life from.

Every single relationship in your life is built off of the strong foundation of self love.

So now we know what the ending is,

Let's talk about the messy parts.

And so I'll tell you a little bit about myself.

So I was in an unhealthy relationship for many years and I was the poster child for someone who did not exercise any self love but had great love for others.

And a therapist friend of mine called me an enabler and I can identify with that now but at the time when she said it to me I was like,

No,

No,

No,

You are so wrong.

I'm not an enabler,

I just love the people in my circle with a territorial,

Compassionate,

Loving,

Accepting,

Unconditional way.

And I make excuses for their bad choices and I willingly allow myself to come second.

And to say that out loud it just sounds ridiculous but that is what I was living.

And so it was maybe 15 years ago I was speaking with my friend and again she's a therapist and she's magnificent and in a general conversation that we were having she spoke about me having abandonment issues and rejection issues.

And I thought to myself,

What is she talking about?

No one has left me.

I'm looking at my childhood,

My mom and dad are still together,

My father now has passed but at that time it did not sit with me as rejection and abandonment were triggers.

And so I said to her,

I don't know what you're talking about and she said,

Yeah,

You have severe crazy abandonment issues.

And I said,

You have to explain more of this to me because it's just not processing.

And my angels have never told me I have rejection issues so entertain me with your diagnosis.

And she said,

Colleen,

You have abandoned you.

It is not for anyone else in the physical world to leave you because you have abandoned yourself and you have abandoned the respect for yourself.

You have abandoned love for yourself,

You have abandoned your morals and things that you hold so sacred and you've allowed them to be mistreated and depleted.

And it was literally like a punch in my gut.

Because I knew she was right.

And,

You know,

I was kind of living in this over the top kind of way.

Whereas,

You know,

If I thought positively,

Then I just thought everything was fine.

Or if I didn't,

You know,

Complain or I didn't,

You know,

Acknowledge the reality that I was living in that everything was fine,

And I could just be positive.

Whilst inside,

I was feeling very badly about myself,

I had an enormous amount of weight on my physical body,

Which was,

You know,

A mental catastrophe every day and you know,

We can't avoid life with mirrors.

And it was consistently a mental warfare.

And,

You know,

Food had become my weapon in my frenemy,

I guess you could say because the food was not even the issue.

It was really the emotions I was not allowing myself to feel through that were using food to stuff them down,

Because I had no voice.

And in this process,

I became curious with what she had said to me.

And I became curious as to a follow up question where I said to her,

What what does that mean?

Like,

What does that look like?

You know,

I,

You know,

I understand what you're saying,

But what is the flip side of that?

And she said,

You have to love yourself.

And,

You know,

This was not something I was taught directly as a child.

This was not something that I was taught,

You know,

In the school system,

This was not something I was taught with my peers,

It was,

It was like I was hearing something for the first time.

And it made sense.

But it actually scared me.

Because I thought,

Oh,

My gosh,

Well,

If I actually spoke up,

If I speak up and say what I feel what I want,

You know,

How I feel about these situations that I'm in,

My whole life is going to change.

And who am I going to be on the outside of it?

Because quickly,

My pendulum swung to the opposite side.

Whereas I was living very,

You know,

Selfless,

I wasn't saying no to people,

I was the yes girl,

I was the people pleaser,

I was the person who was reliable and dependable and frustrated inside.

But on the outside,

I was really willing to just have acceptance.

So in my head,

Thinking about self love,

That pendulum swung hard to the other side.

And I thought,

Well,

Now I'm going to be selfish.

You know,

That's just selfish.

And so I sat and I studied and I read and I learned and I talked to therapists and I talked to spiritual advisors and I just read I engulfed my being in learning what was this thing everybody called self love.

And I felt like everybody knew about it,

And was living it silently and not sharing it like a lesson,

But they were just living it organically.

And then I learned that there was a ton of people like myself,

Who could easily validate their actions of doing for others as it makes me happy.

But there's a flip side to that.

And I'll share that with you later on in the episode.

But we have to understand that self love is not selfishness.

And I read all this information and I sat down with the angels and I said,

Please guide me in learning about this.

And Archangel Michael,

Who is the Archangel of strength and protection,

And he offers us assistance during any times of change,

Where we need that courage and support and love.

And,

You know,

I heard through my being,

He said,

Self love is on each and every beings life chart.

Because with self love,

We have a healed world.

And it was just like,

Boom,

Drop the mic Archangel Michael,

Because literally,

He said something to me that made so much sense here I was desiring to start a healing practice a spiritual practice.

But yet living with this recipe that I was not exercising the proper steps.

So I became the eager student I was like,

Well,

Teach me how like tell me what to do.

And I failed at it miserably,

Because I was again trying to fast pass this process,

I was just trying to get through it to get to the next chapters.

But I needed to understand that self love was not just getting my nails done,

Having the occasional massage or getting a pedicure or creating an exterior exterior appearance that was under the guise that that was self love.

And true self love is found within our being.

We are each and every one of us that are here are created in the likeness of the Creator.

And we are that perfect we are that perfect being,

Having an earthly experience.

And in each of our earthly experiences,

It is to be an accepted belief that we are worthy that we are enough that we are love.

So I was raised Irish Catholic.

So,

You know,

In the Catholic faith,

And I'm sure if you're not Catholic,

You've heard that where when you got punished,

You had to write something over and over and over again.

So like a good Catholic girl,

I didn't take it as a punishment.

But I really didn't believe the whole self love game.

So I thought,

Okay,

Fine.

I'm a stubborn Taurus.

So I was like,

Okay,

I'll try it.

And I'll try it again.

And I'll try it again.

And finally,

I was like,

You know what,

I'm going to write I'm worthy over and over and over and over and over again.

Every morning I got up.

And next to my bed,

I had a pen and pad and I just wrote I'm worthy,

I'm worthy,

I'm worthy when I was driving.

I would repeat that affirmation I'm worthy,

I'm worthy,

I'm worthy,

I'm worthy.

And it was so amazing to me,

Because I actually found peace because it quieted all the mental chatter,

Because at that point in my life,

Everything that I had known was,

Was breaking apart.

And it was breaking off in hunks.

It was not fragments of it.

So from that initial conversation with her,

This was about a two year process of dancing with this information.

And I felt if I kept myself busy,

And I was learning about it,

I didn't actually have to start practicing because I didn't really know what I'd be practicing.

It's another distraction technique that I was pretty fantastic at distracting.

So what I learned in writing I'm worthy,

And I'm worthy,

And I'm worthy,

It's that something inside of me shifted.

And it wasn't that I set memos out to the people who were in my life and said,

Hey,

You know,

Could everyone just be gentle with me,

Because I'm working on myself love.

But,

You know,

So you know,

Don't come at me or don't ask me for everything,

Because I really don't want to have to say no.

So and I didn't do that.

We can't send life a memo and say,

Hey,

We're making this commitment to ourselves.

Could you back off,

Right?

That's just not realistic.

But what's realistic is that you make that commitment to yourself.

And when you shift that energy,

And you make that willingness to be willing,

And that's the key.

It doesn't mean that you have to believe it.

But you have to believe that there's a starting point.

And that's,

I am worthy.

And if you are on the journey of self love,

You will understand that it has many highs and many lows and many highs and many lows.

And during that process,

It is not that we have failed any of the levels previously,

It is just revisiting and it is strengthening different levels that we now are moving into.

If you're new to the journey to self love,

And you know,

You've heard it before from people,

And you felt like you've heard it intuitively through yourself.

Let's start with just being gentle.

It's a practice every day is a practice.

And some days we practice great.

And some days we don't.

But every practice is an opportunity for you to learn.

Every day is an opportunity for you to gain knowledge on what is working,

What is not working.

So after about three weeks of writing this,

I am worthy,

I'm worthy and in the car,

And,

You know,

Everywhere I went,

I was just,

You know,

Affirming this strange things started to happen,

Like really strange things started to happen.

My phone would ring and instead of people telling me what I was going to be doing,

People were asking me,

Hey,

Kyle,

Are you open on this date?

Because this is what I was thinking.

And I would like it if you could help me.

Whereas previously,

It was,

Oh,

I'm having a party on Saturday beer at seven,

Because people knew that I would be the person that would set up and clean up.

And,

You know,

Be the martyr at the party where I would just spend the whole time in the kitchen is everyone was having a great time.

And I really was just very resentful that nobody has asked if I'm okay,

Nobody has asked if I would like to step out of the kitchen.

Well,

Now I understand that that was on me.

I own that.

It's like everyone's not a mind reader.

They see me in the kitchen,

If they run their lives by using their voices,

It wasn't their problem that I wasn't using mine.

That was my my owning of that to understand that most of my resentment was not necessarily at the experience that I was in,

But more so I was frustrated and resentful for myself,

Not standing up for myself.

So,

As I'm going through this process,

I was getting very frustrated.

And I was getting frustrated because I was starting to become very aware of,

You know,

People using the word self love.

And it's like,

Well,

You just have to have self love.

And you just have to have self love,

Almost as if it's like,

Well,

You just need to brush your hair with the hairbrush.

It wasn't that simple.

But it was that simple.

Once you understand the steps.

So I'm not saying this is going to be your cure all if you're struggling with the self love game.

But I can sure as hell tell you that this is a process that I've used with 1000s of my clients and myself and it has brought enormous,

Successful stories coming out of it.

And so self love,

After the I'm worthy just seemed so far away.

And it seemed like a destination that I just didn't know if I had the energy to commit to.

So I thought to myself,

Okay,

Call,

Break it up into pieces.

So what is something that you can do?

And one of the things I could do was I had the ability to get to know myself.

So I started off with meeting me,

I started off with almost like,

Asking me if I even liked myself as a friend,

Right?

You can't go to love if you don't move into like,

So self like was so much more attainable.

And I could totally grasp on to that.

And that's the beginning of the dance,

Where you sit with yourself and you ask yourself,

You know,

What is it about me that I like?

And what is it about me that I have heard others share about me?

What is it that I feel frustrated with?

What is it that I don't like about myself?

And here's why the don't likes are a good guide.

Anything that we know we don't like we're pretty fluent in.

And there's this magical arrow that you write your list and then take an arrow and draw it across the page and write the opposite of that.

Because you will start to gain information about yourself that you necessarily don't feel this way about yourself.

But it's been an influence of others opinions and influence of others behaviors.

It has been an influence of your upbringing.

It has been an influence of,

You know,

Co workers,

Careers,

Friendships,

All of these things that have aligned you with attracting people,

That support that lack of self love.

So as you start to befriend you,

You start to learn the first steps of the dance.

And another exercise that you can do is imagine a friend is coming to you and they are struggling with a problem.

And you will most definitely probably step up and offer them kick ass information to help them to feel better about themselves,

Support them,

Cheer them on,

You know,

Give encouragement and great guidance.

And it feels really good to do that for a friend.

Now,

You need to befriend you.

And in befriending you,

It's being observant of situations that you would have complete compassion,

Love and patience for with someone on the outside of you.

But yet are critical,

Harsh and judgmental to yourself.

Same situation,

But yet two very different responses.

So when befriending you,

I am not going to say I did not take this to the next level,

I gave myself a nickname as my friend.

And my friend name is Katniss.

And because at the time I was learning to shoot bow and arrow in the movie Hunger Games had just come out.

So well,

I guess it's around that time,

One of those movies.

But anywho,

Katniss was my friend.

So I would have things happening.

And I would write them out with Katniss his name on the top of the page.

And I would write it out as how would I help Katniss in this situation.

And then I would write Colleen's name on the page.

And how would I help Colleen?

My goodness,

It was way,

Way,

Way different support.

So as I learned that Katniss was nurtured,

And Katniss was loved and Katniss was forgiven and Katniss was given such awesome advice,

But Colleen was just put on the cross,

She was just put down,

She would beat herself up.

No one in the world needed to say a negative thing to Colleen,

Because I was already doing it fluently.

So that helped me to build the bridge of really embracing that compassion for myself and creating that oneness with the friend in me and befriending me.

So Katniss and I roll together now we are we are really tight,

We're one being and eventually you dance into that relationship as you move into that self like you move into that friendship,

And then you can take it to the next level and they start to commit a little bit more.

And as you commit,

You start to grow and in a deeper affection,

If you think about a relationship,

You just don't meet someone and then boom,

Fall in love.

And then the next thing you know,

You're just in this,

You know,

Fast and furious love relationship.

Everything that is worth while takes time and building and getting to know and nurtured.

So as you move from self like you move into a deeper commitment into that relationship.

And then you,

You find moments where you really love yourself.

And then you might find moments where old patterns appear,

And they need to be nurtured.

And that's the dance.

It's that self love is not a consistent destination.

It's a destination that we're consistently growing and evolving,

As we're evolving in our in ourselves,

We're evolving in the discovery of ourselves,

And finding that curiosity and wondering,

How is it that I can bring all that greatness that I know that's inside of me so deeply in my core to the surface,

And then out in the world to share.

And when you have self love,

You're not attracting people that disrespect you.

When you have self love,

You are not attracting situations that are painful.

By words,

You're not attracting people into your space that are not aligned with you.

And that is the benefit of having this brilliant relationship with,

You know,

The self like the self friendship,

The self committed,

The self love.

And we're all different variants of that,

That,

That dance at different levels of our growth.

And there's areas where I do absolutely awesome at loving me.

And then there's areas that I still need a little work.

But that's okay.

Because in the discovery phase,

We become compassionate.

And we nurture those areas that we need work in.

Previously,

I had just distracted myself from them.

I could validate,

Well,

I'm a hard worker.

I do this,

I do this,

I do this,

But there was a whole other part of me that was physically dying.

It was not nurtured,

Watered,

Fed,

It was just dying.

And as I started that journey into going in and meeting that girl who was hurting and dream,

She was really just the part of me that needed love.

And that's the journey and the dance to self love.

Reviews

This resonated with me so much, especially the part about abandonment. Thank you so much for sharing your insights and wisdom about self love, Namaste.

That was on point. Great insight. 🙏🏾