Rewire Your Self-Worth: A Daily Self-Love Practice

So many of us were taught that love had to be earned — through good grades, good behavior, or constant achievement. Over time, this belief quietly disconnects us from our true worth.

This practice helps you rewire that old story.

Through two powerful daily exercises — one connecting with your inner child and the other reshaping how you relate to others — you’ll begin to restore a deep, unconditional sense of self-worth.

Ideal for parents, leaders, and anyone healing from people-pleasing, perfectionism, or fear of not being enough.

Let this be your reminder: You don’t have to earn love. YOU are loved.

Transcript

I want to talk about love,

But not the Hallmark card version of love.

I'm talking about diving deep into the generational patterns of conditional love,

The kind of love most of us grew up receiving,

The kind of love we may still unconsciously offer,

And the kind of love that can quietly erode our relationships,

Our confidence,

And our capacity to lead others and ourselves.

And I want to start off with a story,

My story.

I was adopted,

And for a long time the word adopted,

It carried this invisible weight.

Even as a child I didn't realize it.

It's more in my adult years I've come to understand it.

And this weight I carry not because I wasn't loved by the family that raised me,

But because at the very beginning of my life,

During relinquishment,

Love came with a condition.

You are only loved if you belong,

If you're chosen,

If you behave,

If you don't make it too hard.

And for those of us who were adopted,

There's this foundational rupture that many people don't understand.

Even if you grow up in a loving home,

And I did,

With a mother especially who worked so hard to provide,

There's this invisible script that gets written inside you.

If I was given up once,

I could be given up again.

So the subconscious mind does what it needs to survive.

It says be good,

Be pleasing,

Don't be a burden,

Don't get too angry,

Don't get too sad,

And whatever you do,

Don't give them a reason to leave you again.

And that's where it started for me.

My dad wasn't really around.

He worked a lot,

Long hours at the factory,

And when he wasn't working he was often lost in a bottle of alcohol.

So my mom raised me with two grandmas.

And though my mom and my nanas,

That's what I called my grandmas,

They did their best,

I learned quickly that being the quote good boy earned me more ease,

More warmth,

More affection.

I wasn't trying to manipulate.

I was trying to survive.

And my sense is a lot of you listening could relate to this story,

Even if you're not adopted.

This is something I hear from men and women throughout the world.

Now as I got older,

This type of conditioning turned into deep wiring.

I embodied the belief I have to be exceptional to be safe.

I have to be impressive to be loved.

Now it turns out that this is more common than I thought.

Love as conditional.

It's so deeply embedded in our culture that most of us don't even see it because it's quote normal.

But it shows up everywhere,

And now that you're becoming even more aware of it,

You're gonna see it everywhere.

In the way in which people act,

In the systems that we govern ourselves,

In how we parent,

How we lead,

And how we love,

And how we relate to ourselves.

For many people like myself,

We become aware of this pattern much later in life,

Yet it is baked in from the start.

You get attention when you get A's.

You get smiles when you impress.

You get gold stars,

Praise,

And sometimes affection,

Not for who you are,

But for how you perform.

So what does that teach a kid?

That love is earned.

That worth is conditional.

That if you mess up,

You might not be safe anymore.

And it teaches us to chase achievement not out of passion or purpose,

But out of fear.

We lose intrinsic motivation.

We stop learning because we're no longer curious.

And we start learning because we're scared not to.

So what exactly is conditional love?

It's when love,

Affection,

Connection is only given when you meet a certain standard.

Whether that's behavior,

Success,

Obedience,

Or emotional performance.

I love you if you behave.

I'm proud of you if you win.

I'll be close to you when you're happy.

It's subtle,

Very subtle,

And it's often unspoken,

But it runs deep,

Really,

Really deep.

And here's the thing,

Most parents don't even realize they're doing it.

It's not usually malicious.

It's just what they learned.

It's the model they were handed down.

And unless we name it,

We unconsciously pass it on as a generational pattern.

Many parents,

Like myself,

Grew up in homes that didn't have space for emotional expression.

They didn't hear,

I love you no matter what.

They heard,

Toughen up,

Or don't cry,

Or be grateful you have a roof over your head.

And even if these words weren't explicitly stated,

They were implicitly communicated.

Love was often practical,

Transactional,

Tied to obedience or performance.

So it makes sense that they would pass this pattern down,

Not because they're bad people,

But because they were never taught a different way.

But there's a cost.

It creates adults who are constantly scanning the room,

Asking,

Am I enough?

Am I doing enough?

Will I still receive love if I stop performing?

It creates leaders who grind themselves into burnout because their worth is tied to results.

It creates fathers who shut down emotionally because they never felt safe expressing vulnerability as young boys.

It creates marriages where connection is transactional,

Where love is withheld as punishment.

And this includes sex.

And worst of all,

It creates a relationship with ourselves that is conditional.

We only offer ourselves compassion when we've earned it.

We can only rest after we have worked so hard.

For me,

The real shift came when I became a father.

Suddenly,

I wasn't just responsible for my life,

I was responsible for how love would be shaped in my child's nervous system.

Would I pass on what I learned?

Would I give my son the same invisible message I absorbed?

Or would I break the chain?

I remember a moment.

It was one of those cliche moments.

My son had just spilled milk all over the floor,

And he looked up at me.

His eyes were wide,

And he was waiting for a reaction.

And I had a choice.

Old programming wanted me to scold him.

New wisdom wanted to connect.

So,

I knelt down,

I took a deep breath,

I got on his eye level,

And I said,

It's okay,

Let's clean it up together.

Now,

That moment mattered.

It was very small,

But that moment mattered not just for him,

But for me.

Since then,

I've been on a journey of unlearning.

Of reparenting the parts of me that still believe I have to be perfect to be loved.

Of sitting with the fear of abandonment that still lives in my body as an adoptee.

Of building inner safety,

Inner resilience,

Real resilience.

The kind of resilience that doesn't require me to perform to feel whole.

And this isn't just about parenting.

You know,

This is the type of inner work that I often talk about,

And whenever I mention self-leadership or refathering,

The stuff that you hear me talk about in the courses that I teach.

This is about how we lead ourselves and others.

It's about how we partner,

How we live.

When love becomes unconditional,

First inside ourselves,

We create a ripple effect that can change generations.

Let me say that again.

When love becomes unconditional,

First inside ourselves,

We create a ripple effect that can change generations.

Just feel into the weight of that.

So,

Let's focus now on integrating.

Here are two practices I want to share with you to support this shift,

And I want to be clear with you and say,

This is steady work.

You know,

The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.

So,

The first practice is to engage in conversation with your younger,

Wounded parts of yourself.

This first practice is one that I return to often,

And I particularly enjoy guiding others through it,

Especially when we're out in wild land,

Because you do need to feel safe to be able to really explore this.

So,

This is really tender,

And you can do it in your home as well.

It's vulnerable,

And it's incredibly powerful.

So,

Here's how you do it.

Find a photo of yourself as a child.

Maybe it's you at three,

At five,

Or ten.

You pick the age.

Print it out and put it somewhere visible,

Or you can pull it up on your phone if you need to,

And take a few breaths and look into that child's eyes,

And then say out loud,

You don't have to earn love.

You are loved just for who you are.

You don't have to earn love.

You are loved because of who you are.

Let that land.

You may work with the language a little bit that more resonates with how you speak,

But spend a few moments.

Let that land.

This might feel really awkward at first.

You might look over your shoulder and wonder,

Are people looking at me?

What's going on here?

You might laugh.

You might cry.

All of this is entirely normal.

What you're doing here is reparenting yourself.

You're giving the younger parts of you a message that they may have never received.

Or maybe they did,

But it wasn't consistent enough where it landed.

It wasn't safe,

And it came with conditions.

When I first started doing this,

I realized how uncomfortable I was with it.

There was a part of me that still believed I had to prove something to be worthy of love,

But the more I repeated the phrase,

You don't have to earn love,

You are loved,

You are loved,

The more the younger parts of me began to soften.

And here's the beautiful thing,

Right?

When you start to love yourself in this way,

You begin to relate differently to the world.

You stop looking for approval in every room.

You start really sharing your authentic voice.

You stop performing just to be seen,

And you start showing up whole.

So that's the first practice.

The second practice is about how we love others,

Especially our kids,

Our partners,

And our teams at work.

It's about breaking a common trap that I like to call the praise-perform cycle.

And here's how it works.

Someone does something great,

Say your kid gets an A,

Or your employee crushes a deadline,

Your partner manages to juggle three things at once,

And we say,

Wow,

That's amazing!

I'm so proud of you for doing that.

And this sounds good,

And there's nothing wrong with this inherently,

But if that's the only time that we offer praise or affection when someone performs,

We unintentionally teach them the same thing that we were taught.

You are loved when you perform.

You are loved when you succeed.

Instead,

Try shifting your phrase here.

Don't just affirm the outcomes,

Affirm the process.

So when your child brings home a report card,

For instance,

Instead of focusing just on the grade,

Say,

I noticed how hard you studied.

I'm proud of your dedication.

You kept going even when it got hard.

That takes a lot of courage.

Or my personal favorite,

Throw it back on them.

How do you feel right now?

With your partner,

You might say,

I see how much you're holding today.

Thank you for staying grounded through all of that.

I see how much you're juggling right now.

And that alone,

Especially for men,

That often lands.

With your team,

It might sound something like this.

Hey,

You showed real creativity in that project.

And be specific too about what you thought was creative.

That kind of thinking,

That's what changes the game.

How can we bring that more into the next project?

So in short,

What you're doing here is you're affirming who they are,

Not just what they do.

Because that's what unconditional love sounds like.

So these two practices,

They are incredibly simple because they're foundational.

But don't let their simplicity fool you.

This is the deep daily inner work of breaking cycles and building relationships that are rooted in love,

Not fear.

So just to recap,

The first practice is to speak to your younger self.

Remind them you are loved just for who you are.

And then second is to break the praise-perform cycle by not only rephrasing the praise that you give,

But also when you give it.

Not just at the end,

But also during when someone is in the process.

Affirm effort.

Affirm presence.

Affirm essence.

Not just for results.

And I want to be clear and say I have done this with executives at some of the biggest companies of the world and this changes the game.

Employees show up not just to perform well with their KPIs and their OKRs,

But they show up with deeper presence.

And it creates such a powerful workplace where yes,

You get results and people come home happy and fulfilled.

So if these land for you,

Try them out this week.

And if they move something in you,

Share this with someone who might need it too.

And of course,

Let me know how this lands for you.

I want to hear from you all.

So a few questions to leave you with as I wrap up.

Where in your life did you learn that love had conditions?

Take a moment,

Reflect on that.

And likely that time period,

If you could call to mind that age that you were,

That's likely the age where the first practice,

Speaking to your younger self,

Would be really helpful.

The second question is,

How is that belief still operating today in your leadership,

In your parenting,

In your marriage?

And what might change if you began to believe that you are worthy even when you're not winning?

Remember,

This isn't surface-level work.

This is the legacy work and it takes tremendous courage.

But it's the kind of work that changes everything.

And if you're doing it,

Even just by tuning in here,

Know this,

You are not alone.

There's a whole community of people that are doing this.

And you are already breaking the pattern.

Thank you so much for joining me.

Look forward to connecting with you further.

And remember,

Lead with love.

Not because you've earned it,

But because it's who you are.

I'll see you next time.