We all talk about #selflove– but what really is it? A rose petal CBD bath? A face mask? In this episode, I discuss what self-love truly means—and how to cultivate it in an authentic way.
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Transcription
Episode 169 – What is Self-Love Really with Sahara Rose
By Sahara Rose
Namaste. It’s Sahara Rose and welcome back to the “Highest Self” podcast. A place where we discuss what makes you your soul’s highest evolvement. And before we get started, check out these brands that make “Highest Self” podcast possible.
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There is so much talk about self-love. There are people who are self-love coaches, books that are about self-love, programs, and it’s a beautiful thing, it’s amazing that 2018 will forever be marked down as the year that we started to really celebrate self-love. But I think that most of us still don’t quite understand yet what it means. And we often confuse self-love for the acts that we believe are related to self-love, and that’s not the actual point, so let me explain.
So most of us when we think what’s self-love? A rose petal bath comes to mind, or a face mask, or a massage, or crystals all over our bodies, or something like that, something that happens to be very Instagramable. And those things are all great, I’m all about baths, I’m all about doing face masks, I’m all about taking care of your physical body, but that’s not what actual self-love is.
You can be in that bath with orange slices that you cut up in there, and magnolia flowers that you picked from your own Hawaiian tree, and still be sitting in that bath hating yourself. And that self-hatred does not always come in the voice of, “You’re stupid, you’re dumb, you’re fat, you’re ugly.” But it can come in a more subtle voice. “Oh, well once you drop those ten pounds then you’ll be able to wear that outfit that you really want to buy. Oh well, once you’re in a relationship then you’re gonna find the type of friends that you want to be friends with. Oh, once you hit this certain achievement, you’re a best-selling author, or you have this type of income, or you have this many Instagram followers, then you’ll be worthy of the life that you want.”
So we’re sitting in that bath telling ourselves that we are not enough as we are. And I don’t care how many essential oils you put in that bath, it’s not what is going to heal you. When I really sunk in on what self-love is, what came to me is that self-love is just the abandonment of shame. Self-love is just the abandonment of shame. When you were no longer shameful of your appearance, your family life, your intellect, your income, you naturally love yourself. You see, it’s our shame about who we are that is holding us back from true self-love because self-love is just self-acceptance.
So when we are constantly repeating the narrative in our minds that what success looks like is this, this one created persona. And for some of us, maybe it’s our bodies, you know once my thighs are skinnier, then I’m gonna really love my body. Once my love handles disappear, once my acne goes away, once my hair gets more thick, a lot of us—especially for women—it’s about the physical appearance.
But have you ever met women who are just strikingly “perfect” in every way? Like they look like exactly what society tells us to look like and had a conversation with them? Are they the most self-loving, confident people in the world? No. In fact, most of the time they are the least because their entire life has been identified around their physical appearance, and they’ve constantly been scrutinized about it.
“Oh, you need to drop five pounds if you want to be in this show. Oh, your lips are too thin, you need lip injections. Oh, your look is no longer in anymore, now it’s about that look.” That they actually are the most uncomfortable in their skin of all. So here we are thinking that you have to look a certain way to be confident when the people who look that way are some of the least confident people in the world.
So we are cultivating a practice of “self-love” that is taking us to a direction that is faulty. Even if you do that workout and get the after results that you’ve been seeing on Instagram, you’re still not gonna be happy. Happiness comes from acceptance, and acceptance comes at this very moment.
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Now a lot of us we feel shame about our family lives. Maybe you have a parent who was a drug addict, or they went through a divorce and they were known as the parents who were fighting, or there was sexual trauma in your life. And for us, the shame comes around, opening up about our families that we don’t have that picture-perfect suburban family with a white picket fence, and the dad who’s a lawyer, and the mom who’s a stay at home mom who comes to every bake sale, and a brother who’s on the lacrosse team, and not everything is perfect. We don’t live in the Stepford Wives community.
So because of that we have shame. Shame that no one will want to marry me if they know about my family life. People won’t want to be my friend. I didn’t grow up with as much money as other people. So we hold onto that shame, and this is shame around something that absolutely cannot change, you cannot change your past, nor were you meant to. So you can do all the face masks, but that’s not going to change the fact that what you need to do is to come to terms that your family life was the greatest gift that you could have been given, no matter how traumatic it may have been. Because it has taught you the exact lessons that you needed to get to where you are right now.
And we all know people who’ve had perfect family lives, and guess what, a lot of them are still miserable. A lot of the child of these socialites, they depend on drugs. A lot of them want to just feel something. They feel like nothing interesting has happened to me in my life, so they create trauma. So there’s no one that just had a perfect life. You’re gonna search the rest of your life looking for this person, you’ll never find them.
So having shame that you did not have a “normal” childhood, which is actually the norm, is pretty much ignoring the truth that you already know, the truth that no one has a perfect life. So you’re holding yourself up to a standard that doesn’t exist. And a lot of us have sham around our intellect. Maybe you didn’t go to college, maybe you didn’t finish college, maybe you didn’t finish high school. Maybe your vocabulary is not a full as other people, maybe your grammar isn’t perfect—you need Grammarly, who knows.
But guess what, it doesn’t freaking matter, because the people who are running this world are clearly not the people with the most intellect. And we’ve moved past the paradigm that you need a Ph.D. to open your mouth and say anything about any subject. That’s gone. All you need to speak about something is your experience and a voice. That’s the only qualification that you need. Your desire to help makes you enough.
So no, you don’t need to get your Masters in it, or get your doctorate in it. You can do those things, and that’s great, but having shame over the fact that you don’t have as much education, or intellect, or vocabulary as someone else is ignoring the fact that most people in the world do not have those things, and they’re living beautiful lives.
And others of us have shame around our income. “Oh, people won’t want to hang out with me cause I’m too poor. I can’t do the type of things that other people want to do. I can’t go out and get dinner with people. I can barely afford my bills.” So then we create this narrative, “I’m poor, I’m worthless, I’m broke,” and that just propagates this reality for us. All it’s doing is affirming to the universe, “I’m broke, I’m broke, I’m broke,” and opportunities for abundance will never present themselves.
And guess what, anyone who’s created wealth has had to experience not having wealth. Most people who are millionaires and billionaires are self-made. In fact, oftentimes when you were given money from someone else, that can actually act as a handicap for you because you don’t have that same drive as that person who experienced scarcity. That actually works in your favor. If you’ve always had all of your needs met, you’ve never had to struggle, and you know you always will, well you’re probably not gonna bust your ass for a period of time to get shit done.
So the fact that right now you are in scarcity is the perfect opportunity for abundance. And instead of repeating a paradigm of victimhood, “I’m broke, I’m poor,” instead say, “Yes, I’m gifted this incredible opportunity to create anything it is that I want. P.S. everyone who has what I want—abundance—has had to go through this too, and now it’s my turn.” There’s nothing to be ashamed about. You’re just in the beginning stages of your memoir.
Imagine if all these people out there who have brilliant memoirs said, “Oh my God, well, the beginning part of this memoir is too shitty so we might as well not continue.” There would be no Martin Luther King, there would be no Andrew Carnegie, there would be no Warren Buffett, there would be no anything. Everyone had to begin somewhere, and this is just the story that you were born with. And now you have the pencil in your hands, and you can change it, and erase it, and create it however you want moving forward. It’s up to you.
So having shame about our circumstances literally doesn’t make sense. And I believe that self-love comes to thinking about what that thing is you have shame about and realizing what a gift it is. I don’t believe that self-love just comes from massages, and face masks, and whatever else social media is telling us to do these days. These things are great, these things can be acts of self-love, these things can create the space that you need to cultivate self-love, but they in themselves will not bring you self-love.
Because self-love is just a result of being proud of yourself. And being proud of yourself is just a result of being who you are. So if you just accept who you are, and you start to work with what you got, and you start to create what you want, self-love is just a natural occurrence. So instead of searching for self-love like it’s some zebra out there that we have to go find, let’s realize that self-love is something that we have total control over, and we can begin today.
I hope that you enjoyed this episode. And if you loved this episode, I would love to share with you the first half of my unreleased book, “Eat Right For Your Mind Body Type,” which is different from my book “Eat Feel Fresh.” It is my unreleased, never to be released book because it is now part of my “Eat Right For Your Mind Body Type” program. I would love to send it to you absolutely free. All you gotta do is leave me a review in the iTunes store, take a screenshot, and email it over to me at [email protected]. Again, take a screenshot of the review and email it to me at [email protected] and I will send you the first half of my unreleased book, “Eat Right For Your Mind Body Type.” Namaste.