Embracing Self-Love and Acceptance

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So do you have an inner critic that's constantly in your head, having a go at you, like telling you

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and knocking you down? And when you think about self-love, that inner critic's like, well, who are you to love

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yourself?

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That's a bit narcissistic. That's a bit overconfident, isn't it? Do you have that voice inside of your head?

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Well, on today's podcast, I want to talk about that. I want to talk about how we embrace self-love and

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how we dismantle that inner critic. and we have more of a life of freedom and maybe live a life

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of purpose. So that's today's podcast. Embracing Self-Love, Dismantling the Inner Critic for a Life of

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Freedom and Purpose.

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I'm Steven Webb and this is Stillness in the Storms and it's a podcast that just helps you to see

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life a little bit differently to hopefully have a little bit more inner peace in life. Now then don't forget

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I've got a different podcast called Inner Peace Meditations where I will link to it in the show notes, but

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basically it's just meditations that will help you to have more inner peace and more joy and just more

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calmness in life and we all want that in this busy crazy world at the moment? Just seems like there's

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no let up constantly. If it's not the if there's not the external world constantly barraging us with something,

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it's social media, it's work, it's something's going on, There's no let up. I I long

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for the days when news was just half an hour in the evening and work was just a so many

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hours a day and you had so much downtime. Whereas now there seems to be no let up anywhere. And

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that's not talking about the inner mind. So the external world doesn't let up. And the inner mind certainly

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doesn't let up. You know, you lie down at night for just five minutes to go to sleep, and then

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the inner mind starts. So yeah that's what we're talking about. So just before that I want to thank a

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couple of people that have treated me to a coffee. You are absolutely awesome. Let me just go over there

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a moment and have a look.

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And there has been a couple of anonymous people and Paulo and Alicia and Mia. Thank you very much guys.

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You are awesome. You guys help me to host this podcast to get the podcast edited and to

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well get the equipment and things like that to up my game. You guys are absolutely awesome. And if anybody

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else would like to support this podcast, just head over to thankyousteven.com and you can support the podcast. If you

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don't have the spare money or anything like that to donate a coffee, you can always support the podcast just

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by leaving a review. That makes a huge difference as well. So thank you guys. You are awesome. But let's

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get straight on with today's podcast. Let's talk about self-love. What does it mean? How can it make a huge

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difference in your life? And as always on my podcast, I'll share my story of how I learned to love

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myself and how I still find it difficult now sometimes to love myself. So let's get on with this.

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One of the biggest challenges I think in today's world is is our inability to love ourselves. It's almost like

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we've got to love everybody else and we've got to give our love out to everybody. We've got to have

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empathy, we've got to have caring, we've got to have compassion, you know, be kind, that whole mantra in the

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world. But when we turn it on ourselves, we're often judged as narcissistic or overconfident and things like that.

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But is it really that bad to love ourselves? You know, there is a real low confidence, there's too much

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overthinking. There's so many struggles now, we struggle with meditation, we struggle with the relentless inner critic. You

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know, stick your hand up, you know, I don't know what you're doing, you may be driving or something, you

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may not be able to um but sticking I think you might go on a public train or something, stick

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your hand up and everybody will wonder what you're doing. Anyway,

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just metaphorically stick your hand up if you've got that inner critic that if you try to love yourself it

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turns it all back on you you know No look I'm trying to love myself I'm trying to have a

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little more acceptance for who I am and then it just goes yeah but look at you see what you

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did last week see what you like And here's why I think it's so difficult to love ourselves. It's because

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we have inside information, don't we? We know what we're really like, we know what we really think. You know,

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we know what's going on inside of our heads. Whereas it's easier to love somebody else, because you only see

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the highlights in their life. You know, you see social media and you see these other people, they're doing these

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wonderful things and all that. You know, it's easy to love somebody else sometimes, much easier than it is to

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love ourselves because we have all that inside information. I know what I'm thinking sometimes and my thoughts are

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not always that nice. You know, if I see somebody walk past me and I'm like, my my

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mind I'm trying not to do it now, but my mind might jump to something that's not that positive about

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that person. Because that's what it does. It thinks things up. The mind is designed to think scenarios up to

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protect you. It doesn't mean you're a nasty hireable person it just means your mind's doing what it does. But

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because that happens, it's so difficult to then look at it and go, well, do you know, I am a

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loving, caring person. Because it's really hard to push that aside, isn't it? And my personal experience, I didn't

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have a family that said, I love you. And I can't remember ever saying to my mum that I love

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you. You know, I'd never felt not loved for my mum, but we weren't a family that did that as

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children.

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I don't think I really had that other extreme that we had to be stiff upper lip and we had

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to be really strong and all that. I don't think I had that either on the other hand, but I

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certainly don't remember feeling like as if I could express my love for myself

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growing up.

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That makes any sense?

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So when embarking on a journey of self-love and acceptance of who I am, my critic

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just gets louder and louder. So

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it's really really difficult. And how do you do it? Do you sit down and practice self-love? Do you like

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stand in front of the mirror and go, oh, I love myself and I love my scars and things like

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that. You know, I don't really know. But the way I've learned to love myself is just by been less

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harsh on myself. You know, if a child came to me and they're talking about

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some of the things they did wrong, I'm like a little kind to them. I'm like, don't worry about it.

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It'll be fine. We all make mistakes. Let's look at it differently. But I don't do that with myself. When

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I make a mistake, I'm really, you shouldn't have done that. You know better, how dare you do that? And

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I think that's where self-love comes in. It's realising that you don't have to be so hard on yourself, that

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you're human, you make mistakes. Things, it's not the end of the world when you make these mistakes and everybody

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does it. But we just don't see it, do we? We think we should be better, we think we should

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be perfect. And the reality is, we're more accepting of other people than we are ourselves.

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And that's really difficult. And that's where I am. Mainly. I just don't seem to accept myself nowhere

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near as much as I can accept other people. I can almost accept when they make a mistake, but when

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I do it, how dare I do it? I should know better. And I think that's where we get mixed

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up between self-love in a way that it

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Should self-love be a narcissistic, oh I love myself and I'm awesome and I'm amazing? No, I don't believe that

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self-love I think that's an ideology that just isn't real. But I think self-love just means

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be kind to ourselves, opening our heart to we are human, we have

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crazy thoughts, we have fluctuations in energy and feelings, you know, when we're really tired just, you know, okay,

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we're tired, embrace that, when we're really stressed, we're tired, embrace that, Instead of trying to think

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that we have to be this amazing, loving, awesome person that is just a gift to the world all the

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time.

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I just don't think that's realistic, I don't think that's possible. And I think this is what Buddhism mean by

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the middle way. It's have that balance between, on

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one hand there is times when I feel radiant inside and I feel like a massive empowerment of self-love

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normally when I'm listening to a good 80s 90s rock ballad and I'm feeling really good and the sun's out

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and we're travelling down the road. And I feel like this like heart orgasm all over. It's like, ah, this

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feels really good. Easy to love myself then. But what about when I'm really struggling in a room with a

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few people that I just really don't get on with. And I'm being critical of them and myself in my

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head, and I'm feeling awkward. I leave that room and I immediately put myself down, say I've done a terrible

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job. That's when the little bit of self-love just, it's in that instance, what do I

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need? I need someone to put their arms around me and go, it's okay, Stevie. You're okay. Don't worry about

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it. It's fine. I'm here for you. And that's what I mean by self-love. That's what we need to do

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to ourselves. We need to somehow cuddle ourselves and go, do you know what? You're awesome,

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you're cool, don't worry, we all make mistakes, it's okay. And I think that's what a healthy self-love does.

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And it gives us the ability to make mistakes. It gives us the ability to try things and be confident

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in the world. To walk into that room and go, Hey, do you know what? I'm not the most amazing

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human in the world. And I haven't got the confidence and look at me I'm great but I'm here, I'm

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showing up, I'm doing my best and do you know what? I'm proud of who I am, I'm proud of

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where I am and I think that's the healthy self-love that we need to put ourselves on the back and

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that's what we need. You

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know, that's to me, I could give you 10 tips on how to have self-love but the main one is

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how would you love somebody that you have a real deep caring for? What would you do to them when

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they make your mistakes when they fall? You help them up. You're not critical of them. You don't have a

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go at them, do you? You

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hold your hand out. You give them a hug. You you just help them in the best way possible. And

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that's what we need to do. That's what I mean by self-love

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And I think the more you do that, the more the critical mind and the negative thoughts that come and

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go will be, okay, there's a critical thought, I can embrace it. There's a negative thought, well that's just,

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you can't turn negative thoughts into positive thoughts. I've done lots of podcasts about that, it's impossible. There's no thinking

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positive all the time, it doesn't exist. You know, negative thoughts are not negative thoughts, they're there to protect you,

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so really they're positive thoughts. But if they're there all the time, we miss the positive thoughts. So you can

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head back to other podcasts in my podcast library to help you with that. I think it's one about a

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train metaphor which is really brilliant about turning the negative thoughts into more positive thinking patterns. But

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the main thing is go easy on yourself, learn to just have

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a little um I don't know, compassion for yourself. That's a good way of doing it, Compassion for yourself. What

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does that look like? And

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when you do have this compassion, you create this safe space for yourself to play and be a little more

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adventurous with yourself. When you have this, you know, how do you love someone entirely? You give them

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the space to be themselves selves So if you were to give yourself self-love, ultimate self-love, what would that look

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like? You're giving yourself the space in order to be yourself without being

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very critical. You accept yourself for who you are so that's what self-love is. It's not about

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telling the world you're amazing, It's not about blowing your own trumpet and saying to the world, look how awesome

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I am and look how much I can love myself and look how much better looking I am than anybody

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else. That's not self-love. That's arrogance and that's the confidence and narcissism that only comes with a fool

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a few days later, if not hours. It's

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about acceptance, creating that space. So

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that there's the technique I would say is Create the space in your heart for you to be perfectly who

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you are.

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Flaws and all, you know, all the good stuff, all the bad stuff. Put it all in there into a

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safe container. Jumble it all up and realise that's the beautiful beautiful mesh you are, that's the beautiful joy

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you are, that's the beautiful human we are I've I've yet to come across a human that's not deeply

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flawed and deeply perfect in the same breath. You

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know, we're all trying our best. We're all doing what we can. We see others and we see them in

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a way that they're doing amazing and they're winning out and they're doing this incredible things in life and they're

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never making a mistake. They're making loads of mistakes all the time. They haven't got the confidence. You

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know, they're wondering whether or not they should show up or they had a crisis earlier that day that they

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didn't want to go or they wanted to cancel these events or things like that, you know, it doesn't matter

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what it is in your life, but we feel like we want to run from things all the time. Or

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maybe I'm just projecting maybe, maybe many people have got the confidence out there that they're not worried about any

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of those things. But anybody genuine that I know worries about these things. I've yet to come across anybody that

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isn't genuine, that when I look up and go, do you know what, I was really worried about this, And

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they went, Oh my God, so was I. And it's so nice to have that refreshing conversation. When I look

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up and I've been to many, many events in the past two years because I was the mayor of Truro

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for the last two years and I haven't been now for the last two weeks because I've done my two

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years and the amount of events I went to and I didn't know all these dignitaries and all that and

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I would be there talking to a dignitary, somebody that I'd never met before and I'll look up and say

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I I have no idea what that food is there. I've never seen food like that before. I wouldn't even

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know how to eat it, let alone what it tastes like. And they look up and go, oh, me too,

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that's why I haven't eaten anything.

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And it's just like refreshing, you look up and go, well, you know, but aren't you hungry? No, we went

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Mcdonald's on the way over here. And I'm like, and I can't say who this person is, because they're quite,

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you know what I would say in the hierarchy of dignitaries, they're quite high up. But it was so

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refreshing. I was like, oh, I can be human around you. So every event I went to, I made a

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beeline for them. I'd be like, how are you doing? And I go Oh, I've had such a dreadful day.

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It hasn't been this, we don't want to be here. It's like, oh, wow, you're human and I love you

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for it. And I think they embraced the fact that life isn't equipped for us all to be,

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feel perfectly safe and perfectly well. But if we can be ourselves in that space, that's

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love, the ability to be ourselves. So embracing self-love is giving ourselves

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the permission to be ourselves and completely accepting it. That's

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pretty awesome, right?

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It's so simple yet profound. How many of you genuinely give yourselves

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absolute permission to be exactly who you want to be and

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have a deep breath, that's my podcast this week and I hope it helps. If it does help, look, leave

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a review. That'd be awesome. That's one way you can help me loads. If you want to download the five

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simple practices for inner peace, you can do that by going to thankyousteven.com. If you want to help me with

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equipment, editing and hosting of this podcast, so I can grow it and promotion of it, you can treat me

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to a coffee. I love you, you're awesome. Love yourself by accepting who you are.

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Flaws, joys, the perfect of who you are and everything. Take care. Bye.