My name's Nat and this is a wonder of life.
Before getting comfortable,
Please make sure that your phone is switched to do not disturb and that if you're in a room that the door is closed.
If anyone else is around you,
Ask them kindly to not interrupt you or ask them to join you.
This is your time to relax and to wonder about life from a place of peace.
Make sure you're comfortable and warm and cosy.
Get yourself settled and relaxed.
We're going to tune in to the breath.
We'll do the first breath using only the nose.
But before taking your first breath,
Please be aware that when you breathe in with your nose,
Your stomach should inflate.
If it doesn't,
It means you need to correct it.
Breathing through the nose deep into the stomach will relax you.
So breathing through the nose,
Watching the belly rise and then lower is the way to do it.
Let's start.
Breathing in through the nose.
And out.
And again.
In through the nose.
And out.
One more time in through the nose.
And out.
You're now ready to wonder about life.
Today's subject is about loving yourself.
Now,
For many years,
I didn't really understand what that term actually meant.
I now know the term I thought was loving yourself is now widely known as being narcissistic.
It's the need for attention and admiration and an overinflated sense of importance of yourself.
That's definitely not loving yourself.
The words loving yourself have been used in the wrong context for many years.
And that's why people struggle with the idea of when they come on to their path of looking to love themselves more and be kind to themselves.
They actually think,
Oh,
I can't love myself more.
You know,
What will people think of me?
But actually,
Loving yourself is something completely different.
Loving yourself means that you have to accept all the parts of you good and bad and appreciate who you really are at the core.
Learning to love yourself means you have to learn how you're not loving yourself first.
And many times the opportunity to see this is when we're in relationships.
The way we allow people to do things to us or to treat us in certain ways is a clear sign of how much you love yourself.
How do you allow people to treat you?
Do you allow them to be physically abusive?
Do you allow them to be emotionally draining on you?
Do you allow them to talk to you without respect?
Because if you do,
These are all signs that you're not loving yourself.
It's also good to find out how we talk to ourselves.
If you find yourself saying,
Oh,
My God,
I'm so stupid,
Or I can't believe I did that,
Or that person just doesn't like me,
They hate me.
Oh,
My God,
I'm such a horrible person.
These are all ways to know that you're not loving yourself.
You're not seeing all the good in you.
You're just seeing what you class as bad.
When someone gives us a compliment,
Our response to that compliment is a clear,
Clear sign of how we can accept love as well and how much resistance we have to love.
If,
For example,
Someone says,
Oh,
My God,
You're amazing at that.
Well done.
And you go,
Oh,
No,
No,
No,
It's nothing really.
No,
No,
No.
And you push that compliment to the side because it makes you feel uncomfortable.
You don't love yourself.
You're not willing to accept someone else loving you either.
And you block it.
Any attention that you get on yourself sometimes when you feel,
Oh,
I don't like this person looking at me,
Or can they stop,
Or why are they giving me so much attention?
If you get that feeling,
You also don't love yourself.
If anybody giving you attention or a hug make you feel uncomfortable,
You are blocking love.
Love tries to come to you from everywhere,
But you wouldn't believe how many times we think we can't see love in our life.
Every moment of every single person's life on this planet,
There is an opportunity for you to choose love.
But we don't know that.
We choose fear instead because naturally that's what we've been doing for so long.
But now studies have shown that every single opportunity or problem we have in our life is based in love or in fear,
And how much of either one you're living in.
Sometimes choosing to have a candlelit bath is an act of love.
Some people will think that sounds crazy,
But it is.
A bath with yourself in quiet with music and candles is an act of self-love.
Taking the time out from your life to sit down and read a book is an act of self-love.
And choosing to stay in instead of going out to somewhere you don't really want to go out to is also an act of self-love.
Quite often we will allow someone else to push us into doing something we don't really want to do.
And every time this happens,
It is literally an act of us choosing the other person over ourselves.
And the more times we do that,
The worse it gets,
The more pressure we feel.
Over the last few years,
I've become really good at saying no.
Most people who live in Ibiza,
Who know me quite well,
You'll know that I say no to going out more often than most people.
And it's not because I don't like the parties and it's not because I don't like the people,
But it's because I'm consistently choosing myself.
I'm consistently choosing to stay in and read,
Or to watch a documentary,
Or to work on my business.
I'm consistently choosing myself because I have to.
I needed to build up my lack of self-love.
And in order to do that,
I wanted to fully understand who I was.
I needed to study about myself.
I needed to look at all the reasons I block love.
And there was a lot.
A hell of a lot.
But that's another story.
There are many books out there that you can read,
One of which I highly recommend is called Loveability by Robert Holden.
Loveability for me explains what love really is.
And it really helped me to see how much I lacked self-love,
How much I consistently wanted to love someone else and I wanted them to love me.
But I was unwilling to love me.
I was so scared of choosing me in the beginning.
I was scared of what that would mean or what people would think of me.
It was all bullshit.
I promise you,
When you start to choose you and you really understand that you are the most important person that there is because without you,
Your world doesn't exist,
You'll start to comprehend how important you really are.
No matter what room you walk into,
No matter who is in that room,
You are quite simply the most important person in there.
You need to know how amazing you are.
You need to know how incredible your mind is.
How amazing your life could be.
You need to know what your talents are,
What you like and what you don't like,
How you feel when you're around people.
You need to know what's good and what's bad for you because the more you get to know yourself,
The more you get to love yourself and the more you understand yourself.
And understanding yourself and why you are the way you are gets rid of the anxiety overall.
It's the awareness of who you are that solves most of your problems.
Because quite frankly,
If I didn't know I was a bitch before now,
I would never have stopped being one.
I used to be an idiot sometimes,
But without knowing I was an idiot,
I would have always been one.
I probably still will be one at some point.
But I'm okay with that because I love myself and I always make mistakes.
I'm not perfect.
As a matter of fact,
I've recorded this podcast three times already because there were three mistakes.
It happens all the time,
But I accept those mistakes and I'm okay with those mistakes because I love myself at the end of the day and I'm happy with myself.
I wouldn't want to be anybody else,
But I didn't really know who I was until I stopped drinking.
That's when it really set in.
When I stopped drinking and doing drugs,
I very quickly got to see who I was and what I was like.
I really did start to see things about myself that I could improve on.
The reason I'm doing the podcast on self-love today is because I was talking to one of my friends and we were laughing about who we used to be and when we used to go out and what we used to get up to.
It was pretty shameful.
Life is embarrassing sometimes and awkward sometimes and we do have to embrace all the crazy things we've done.
But I've learned so much from those drunken nights and shameless moments.
I can now see every part of my life and why I acted the way I did because I know myself.
Getting to know and love myself is hands down the most important thing I've ever done.
With that did come struggles.
There was awkwardness.
It wasn't easy and there's been drama.
But wow,
What you learn on the other side of that is incomprehensible.
Now imagine if you met someone that you really fancied or that you were in a relationship with someone that you really loved.
Imagine if you weren't getting back what you wanted from the other person.
If your needs weren't being met or there was no respect or there was a lack of communication,
How long would it take you until you actually said something about that situation?
How long would it take you to air your true feelings and to make an ultimatum?
Because you can allow things in your relationships to fester and to continue without any communication.
But choosing to love yourself would be choosing to have that conversation,
To face up to that awkwardness or that lack of communication or that lack of trust.
And to say,
This is how I feel.
It either needs to change or we break up.
If you can have that conversation,
You know that you're willing to walk away from a connection that doesn't serve you,
That isn't for your highest good and that isn't meeting your needs.
You know if you can walk in that direction,
You're choosing you.
If you're not choosing you,
Then they're not choosing you either.
And it's that lack of love that hurts even more.
I have an idea and I want you to write down with a pen and paper 50 reasons that you can love yourself.
I know that sounds like a lot,
But just 50 reasons of why you are you and why you can love yourself.
It's going to really help you to see that there's more than you think about you that is worth looking at and worth discovering even more.
When I did this in the beginning,
Trust me,
It wasn't easy,
But it got easier and easier the longer I took the patience with it to understand what are all the good things about me.
And don't worry about how long it takes you.
Just relax.
Good things are there to be seen.
Being able to do that and to write down 50 things that are good about you is a good place to start.
Because I promise you,
No matter how crappy your life is,
No matter how big your debt is,
No matter how angry you are in your loving relationships or in life itself,
There is a good side of you.
There's a part of you that you haven't even bothered to explore yet that is going to blow your mind.
If you can stop with the drinking or do less drinking or you can keep choosing you consistently,
You will see your life turn around.
You need to have your boundaries and you need to have self-love.
It's the only thing that will get you through the next years of your life.
This world is going crazy and the only sanity that we can really,
Really harness is the one within ourselves.
And it all starts with learning to love yourself and to know that it's important to do so and it's okay to love yourself.
The more you can become accepting of yourself,
The more you can become accepting of others as well.
And learning to love yourself unconditionally,
No matter what you do,
Is the greatest achievement you will ever have in your life.
I promise you,
There's nothing better than learning self-love.
Thank you for listening to the wonder of life.
