- Okay, let's talk about some really good advice
that we all know we need to follow,
which is to love ourselves a little bit more.
You're so hard on yourselves.
And it's easy to do, right?
We have a bad day, we beat ourselves up
and then we feel bad the next day
so we beat ourselves more
because we feel bad that we beat ourselves up more
because we know we shouldn't feel bad
because we're better people
than we usually give ourselves credit for..
Then all of a sudden,
we're miserable.
And a lot of people, their reality
is that they don't care for themselves.
And it shows up in so many ways.
It shows up from how they choose to eat.
It shows up from how they choose to express
or not express themselves.
It shows up in what they choose to do as a career.
It shows up in how they really feel each and every day.
And a lot of it comes from that inside,
they just haven't allowed themselves to be themselves.
They haven't learned to give themselves credit.
They haven't learned to love themselves.
So, I'd love to talk about that topic with you here
and when I talk about love yourself,
I always like to say love yourself sort of.
Meaning, there's a lot of people
who have a very high mind about themselves.
They almost have too much self esteem
or too much pride or such a level of narcissism
that they're almost,
I mean they're tilting toward that sociopathic level too.
It's just like woah!
They're so confident in themselves
and yet they're bad at everything.
So that's not what I'm going to be talking about.
I think we should love ourselves spiritually.
Have a deep caring for the blessing
and the gift that we have been charged with
and that's life.
Loving yourself is having reverence ultimately for life.
It's not just about,
I feel good about myself, I feel good about myself.
It's a deep gratitude for the life that you have.
Which is hard cause you see a lot of people
who have a better life than you.
I do.
We all do.
There's lots of other people who appear
to have better lives, externally than we do.
Maybe they have fancier cars or bigger houses or more money.
Or maybe they just have better relationships
or they look outwardly more amazing.
Their amazing six pack abs
on their Instagram is like wowing you.
It's easy to start comparing yourself to other people
and then feel down about yourself.
But we have to remove other people from the equation
about how we feel about ourselves.
We even have to remove at some point sometimes,
our own stupid thoughts, our own bad actions,
our own poor habits
and we have to start with the fact,
that whether you call it the universe,
luck, chance, God, evolution, spirit, whatever you call it,
you've been blessed with breathe.
That you're alive right now,
the odds of that is so extraordinarily rare.
That I really believe loving ourselves
starts from a place of reverence for life.
So when people say love yourself,
I go 'Yeah, you know what, first love life.
Be honoring of the fact that you are alive.
Love yourself because you've been granted life.
You've been given this gift of life.
There must be a reason or purpose or a mission behind that.
At least, that's what I believe.
I believe in God.
I believe in the fact that the odds of us all being here
is pretty rare.
That may not be your belief and that's totally cool
but what I really do hope is
that you have a reverence for your life,
an appreciation, a deep gratitude, a sense of enjoyment
or enthusiasm that you're alive.
That's where loving yourself has to start from.
Outside of self, outside of others.
Starting from that place, everything can turn for you
in positive directions.
So, when I talk about loving yourself,
I have three take aways for you today.
With that context, my first take away is,
if you really want to love yourself,
have a vision for yourself
and be congruent with that person.
That's how you really love yourself.
A lot of people hate themselves
because they have a vision for who they really want to be
and they're never acting like that.
They see themselves as an honest person
but they're lying all the time.
So they hate themselves.
They see themselves as a healthy person,
but they choose junk food three meals a day
and then they feel bad about themselves.
And I usually say, you know what,
I don't think we need to hype up that person.
I think that person should feel negative
about their behaviors.
And I know that sounds very judgmentally
but I don't think it's always good advice
to run and say everyone should feel good about themselves
for 100 percent of the things they do,
because we lose standards setting in life.
There's a lot of us who don't want to feel the guilt
of doing a bad job.
But sometimes feeling that guilt
allows us to do a better job.
Sometimes we don't want to feel bad
for the behaviors that we did that hurt someone's feelings
but you know what, sometimes feeling bad about what you did
that was wrong,
can set you back on the right path.
So I say, have a vision.
Who do you want to be?
And what I've tried to do in my own life,
so that I care about myself and I respect myself,
is say, okay, how do I want to be as a person in the world.
What do I want to stand for?
And then I say, how do I want to treat other people?
And then I say, what would I have to grow into
to serve at the next level?
And then I aim my behaviors
and my habits and my thought pattern,
each and every single day to be that person,
to treat people like that
and to ultimately become that person I'm aspiring to be.
We're never ever gonna be perfect
but if we can sense we're progressing towards
a higher ideal of ourselves.
If we can feel like, Yeah I am becoming better at what I do,
kinder to other people,
more like the best version of myself,
then we'll love ourselves.
We'll feel a deep gratitude
and a sense of connection with ourselves
because we're being congruent with the best of ourselves.
You wanna love yourself,
be congruent with the best of yourself
(police sirens ring) and don't get arrested
because I hear a.
I don't know if you can hear the police car going by
but welcome to downtown Portland, Oregon.
(laughs)
So, love yourself.
Be congruent with the best of yourself.
It gets so much easier.
Number two, give yourself credit.
And I know you always hear me talking about this
in so many of my YouTube shows
and that's because people are so hard on themselves.
Give yourself credit for the small steps you took this week
but in general, give yourself credit.
If you have a caring heart and you're still nice to people,
Oh my God, give yourself credit.
If you have a passion,
but it hasn't been paying off the way you hoped it to
but you still believe in it
and you're still working diligently,
give yourself some credit.
If you've been mistreated and someone was a jerk to you
but you still have love in your heart
and you still believe in the power
of a beautiful relationship for yourself,
give yourself credit.
Sometimes, the way to love ourselves
is to recognize the extraordinary power we have
and the strength within that still believes.
It's why when I sit down with people
who've been through such extraordinary things
around the world and
my work as a motivational speaker
and a trainer in high performance,
I've dealt with the most difficult situations.
People who are literally in their last days of life,
people who've been disabled, paralyzed,
lost jobs, lost spouses, lost kids.
I mean, at this stage of my life, in my 40's,
having been doing this at the top levels for over a decade,
I feel like I've seen most of it.
Some difficult situations and some major hardships
and when people describe those hardships and difficulties
and strings of bad luck,
the ones who I know will make it
are the ones who can describe it
and still have a belief that things are gonna get better.
Who still believe in themselves,
believe in their god, believe in their family,
believe in their faith, believe in their goal,
believe in their heart, believe in others.
That those people, there's still a kernel of belief there,
and that thing never dimmed
and even though it dimmed for a little bit,
it came back stronger
because they knew that the struggle would lead to progress.
That the struggle would lead to strength.
That the struggle caused the transformation
for them to grow to that next level.
And I'll tell you, if you still have belief in your heart
after all the hardships you've had in your life,
I'll tell you it's so much easier to believe in yourself
and to love yourself because you'll give yourself credit.
But if you won't give yourself credit,
man, ain't nobody gonna be able to do it for you.
There's no external person or reward, accomplishment,
bank balance, new job, fancy car, new place to live,
that's gonna help you love yourself.
Cause wherever you go, there you are.
So you gotta learn to give yourself credit
and still believe and then it's easier to care for yourself.
And the last thing, it's such a simple habit.
You need to start noticing when you do good things again.
You held the door open for the person.
That's okay.
Allow yourself, notice.
Like you know what, five people walked by
and no one held the door.
I held the door.
You know what, no one usually tips,
here, I tip.
You know what, no one usually listens here.
I listen.
You know, no one usually says thank you.
I say thank you.
It's noticing the little things that you do.
And notice also the things that you don't do
and give yourself a little bit of self respect for it.
When I'm in a car with somebody
and I see somebody get,
like they're driving and they get cut off
and they don't flip the bird to the other person,
they don't swear, they don't beat the dash.
They don't cuss.
They don't lose their cool
and I'm like, I respect that.
There's a lot of things you do
that are amazing.
But there's also a lot of things
that you've chosen as a good person not to do,
that you should give yourself some credit for too.
Notice that you didn't scream when you coulda.
Notice that you didn't quit when you coulda.
Notice that you weren't an ass when it's so easy
when you're surrounded by all these other people,
who're like that.
But you didn't go there.
Notice when everyone else is negative,
you kept a positive edge.
Notice when everybody quit,
you pushed harder.
Notice when everybody else is bullying,
you spoke up.
There are things that you do
and there are things that you choose not to do
that make you a good person.
And often, we only notice the big accomplishments.
I want you to notice those small choices you don't make
that make you a good person.
I want you to notice the small choices you do make
that also confirm the best of who you are.
Cause if you can do that,
then you can start to love yourself more fully.
We're never ever going to love every aspect
about every part of our lives and everything we do
and that's good because sometimes
when we don't feel good about something,
it helps us adjust behavior.
It helps us adjust mindset.
It helps us be better for somebody the next day.
Sometimes, a bad job or some guilt,
helps us be better tomorrow.
So I don't think we always have to tra la la,
everything's perfect, I'm perfect.
That's not what the goal is.
But the goal is to more deeply,
connect with the best of ourselves.
More deeply believe in the best of ourselves.
More deeply desire to show the world the best of ourselves
and if we do those things,
we'll start to love ourselves more too.
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