I’m Diana Swillinger, and this is the Renew Your Mind podcast. Episode Number 15 How to Love Yourself.
DIANA: Hey. Hey. How y’all doing? I’m very good. I am very good. I love that I’ve learned how to appreciate each day that I have and have gratitude and hope each day. And, you know, that’s kind of enough to keep me good. I just came back from Walmart. I went there twice because I did one of those mobile orders and my first order was missing a whole bunch of stuff and I guess they just had bad communication at the store. Nobody could quite tell me was the stuff available in the store or not. I had actually gone home without a lot of the stuff, so I made another trip back and I was just good the whole time. Like, it didn’t matter. None of it needed to bother me because what was being upset going to do to help any of it. So I’m good. Raining back and forth to Walmart. It’s all good.
So I, uh, want to start with reviews because I have been so grateful for those of you who are listening and leaving reviews. I appreciate you and I’m really inspired that you’re joining me on this mind renewal journey. It means so much to me. I’ve told you, I’d mentioned some of the reviews because as it works in the itunes and podcast world, the more people who subscribe and leave reviews, the more people can find it. Let’s start with Ebuild. Are you listening, Ebuild? Here’s the review that you left. It says Diana’s soothing, calm voice. There’s another one that says my voice is calm. Diana’s soothing, calm voice makes it easy to listen to her podcast. It’s like a breath of perspective. Interesting. I love the podcast. Have two verses, choose to it gave me lots to reflect about. You too will have lots to reflect about when you listen. Thank you so much, Ebuild. One more kmp. Um, Carter. It says terrific. My husband and I listened to the List and Control podcast together. They really resonated with us. We especially put the list advice into action right away. Thank you for sharing your knowledge in such a calming and fun manner while also getting to the point the length of time is doable. Love your podcast and topics. Keep at it.
I feel like this is maybe remember in the 80s, those of you who are old like me, when we had all the smooth love radio stations, maybe my voice is kind of like that up next we’ll have a song from Lionel Ritchie. In another life. I’ll be one of those because I have that calm, soothing voice, I guess. Anyway, today we’re talking about how to love yourself. Because when I go speak, when I coach, when people find me online and talk to me, or they show up at my webinars whenever I’m working with people, a lack of self love just seems to keep coming up.
So this is an important topic. This is what a lack of self love looks like. It looks like thoughts or saying to yourself, I’m not good enough. I keep making mistakes. I should be doing more. I should be better at this by now. I’m not enough. I’m lazy. Nobody likes me. I feel like a failure. I’m not lovable. So that’s what it looks like in our thoughts. And what it looks like in how we feel is rejection inadequacy. We’re going to feel things like disgust or self hate. We’re going to feel shame, envy, or inferiority. If you’re feeling those things, you might be struggling to love yourself. So when I point these things out, this question just seems to always follow. Diana I see I do this and I want to get better. So tell me, how do I love myself? When I coach people, we get to this point and they’re just like, how? I don’t know how.
Okay, so I want to teach you how. Let’s start with what we do know. Usually when I ask people, we know ways to love other people, right? Do you know how to love other people? What does that look like? When we love someone else? It might look like respecting them, having value for them, appreciating them. Or we forgive them. When we think about them, m. We think they’re important. We’re nice, we’re kind to them. We’ll think about their needs, we’ll serve them. And my favorite, when I love someone, I love to encourage them and build them up. When you love someone, you show up for them. You support them.
Okay, so we know what it looks like to love someone else. Another thing we know is the famous Bible verse, love your neighbor as yourself. We hear this verse, and I think we all hear the love your neighbor pretty loud and clear. Nobody’s confused that we need to love your neighbor. We need to love our neighbors. But it doesn’t stop there. It says, Love your neighbor as yourself. Okay? So we know these things. We have the knowledge. We seem to know how to love our neighbors. We know how to love the people in our lives. We know how to love our husbands or our spouses. We know how to love our kids. We know how to love people in the community, our parents, our siblings, best friends, even acquaintances. We know how to love them. We get busy loving on them, and we totally forget to love ourselves.
Now, if you took that verse and went out to love people as you currently love yourself, what would that look like? If we go out and try to love people the same way we’re currently loving ourselves, it’s going to look like telling them they’re not good enough, reminding them of their mistakes, pointing out where they fall short and how they’re failing. Saying things like, you’re not enough. Nobody likes you. You’re not lovable. But we don’t do that. That’s not nice, that’s nasty. We don’t treat people that way. That’s not love. So for any of you that think it’s selfish to love yourself and think we’re only supposed to love outward, I think you’re thinking about it, uh, wrong. Just as much as that other person in your life is cherished and loved and a creation of God, so are you. And I think when we try to love other people but fail to love ourselves, it’s a little bit duplicitous. We’re supposed to love others as we love ourselves. So all that good stuff we do when we love other people, that’s for us too. When you love yourself, it means respecting yourself, valuing and appreciating yourself forgiving you. Can you do that one forgiving yourself? Is a huge act of love towards yourself. Loving you looks like being there for you, being nice to you, considering your needs, building yourself up, telling yourself you’re awesome because you are. So to get you started loving yourself better, I’m going to share three things with you today. I’ve kind of said them already, but I want to focus on these three. First, value and appreciate you. Next, forgive you, finally be nice to you.
Okay. So let’s start with value and appreciate yourself. How do you learn to appreciate yourself? I’d just say you practice. You just start doing it. I’m going to be super practical with you on this one. I’m just going to give you some homework. Yay. Ah. Homework in summer. That’s awesome. Unless you’re listening to this later, but right now, when I’m recording, it’s summer. So I’m giving you all some summer homework. This kind of work will train your brain to find value in you and appreciate you. It doesn’t matter where you are on the spectrum of loving yourself. Whether you are in a place of self loathing or whether you love you sometimes and other times not so much. Or even if you do show yourself love daily, this assignment will improve your love for you. Which honestly is going to help you show up for everybody else in your life better too. That’s the whole point of it. Love your neighbor as yourself.
Start with you. Your assignment is just grab a piece of paper, write down five things you value or appreciate about you every day for a week. If you are serious about wanting to love you more, do some work and make it happen. Those five things can be from all sorts of categories. It can be about your personality or your character could be about the things you do. It could be how you show up for other people, things you do for others physical features. Maybe you have great taste in movies or clothes. That’s something to love about yourself. You could be good at picking vacation spots. Or you know how to whistle. Well, I’m an okay whistler. I like that about me, though. I can whistle when I want to. Maybe you’re great at making macaroni and cheese, like the real stuff, or even craft. Doesn’t matter. Are you good at it? Appreciate it.
Love the things about you. Big or small, I don’t care. Just write it down. There are hundreds of amazing things about you, and you need to appreciate them. If you can’t come up with some, just ask somebody else. Please tell me two things that you love about me that would really be helpful. Why not just go ask? In doing this, you’re going to train your brain to find value in you. You’re going to train your brain to appreciate you. Mhm. Some people have asked me, hey Diana, isn’t this prideful? And I just want to tell you it’s not at all. I don’t believe that. I think that’s a lie. It’s not prideful to recognize things about you that are worth appreciating. If you’re actually good at doing something, but then you pretend you aren’t, I think you’re just kind of fooling yourself. It’s not pride to recognize it.
Pride is when you think you are a better person. Like you’re fundamentally better than somebody else. That’s not what I’m asking you to do. Pride is when you place your value or worth or your contribution above that of another person. Basically, pride is when you compare yourself. You aren’t comparing yourself or elevating yourself as better than somebody else. When you’re appreciating what’s good about you, what’s actually true about you, how God gifted you, or things that you’ve worked hard at to get good at or accomplish. What you’re doing is acknowledging the things God has given you. How he’s gifted you, how he’s enabled you. And guess what happens when you value and appreciate yourself and things about you. It’s a place where you’re more secure in yourself. And out of that security, it gets so much easier to value and appreciate other people. Okay, so do that homework. Write down five things a day that you appreciate about you. The second thing I would suggest you do is to forgive you. Here’s how it works. Basically, you just need to admit that you’re a fallible human that makes mistakes, and then give yourself grace.
You’re human. Guess what humans do? All humans. We screw up, we get it wrong sometimes. We make mistakes in math. We give inaccurate information. We put the red shirt in with the white laundry. We say the wrong thing, we lose our cool. We make mistakes all the time. That’s just being human. Extend compassion to yourself. Just like you do for someone else. Because we’re just humans doing our best. When you don’t forgive you, this is kind of how I think of it. It’s almost as if you want to keep yourself down. Like thumb yourself down, make sure that you’re forever paying the price for what you did wrong, and forever questioning your worthiness, your actually worth forgiveness. It doesn’t do anything positive in your life. It’s self destructive. When you don’t forgive yourself, it’s self punishment because you keep yourself in pain and shame and guilt and negative emotions. It’s not useful. And you’re supposed to love yourself. And love, forgives and forgiving yourself doesn’t mean you have to let yourself off the hook. And you don’t have to improve yourself in any way in life. When m we love ourselves, we want to become better. When we love other people, we want to become better.
So you can forgive yourself and you can still want to change how you do something. You can still want to learn more and grow and get better. You can forgive yourself and still do all that. In fact, you’ll probably be much better at all of that growth and maturing and learning without the pressure of thumbing yourself down and trying to keep yourself unforgivable. It doesn’t help. So just forgive you. Admit you are a fallible human that makes mistakes and give yourself grace. Lastly, be nice to you. Have you ever heard someone say something derogatory to someone else? Something mean? And you’re like, hey, I was mean. We notice it when it happens to other people, right? If somebody said, she’s so stupid, you would be like, Whoa, that is not okay. She’s ugly again. What? Why are you being so judgmental of that person? She’s always messing up. We’re like, no, you don’t say those kind of things to somebody else. That’s so mean. When somebody else talks that way to another person, we know it’s not nice.
We correct our children when they do this all the time. One kid says to the other, don’t be dumb. US moms, we step in and we say, hey, hey, don’t say that. That’s not nice. Don’t tell the other person he’s dumb. It’s not nice. Now you need to start saying that to you too. Catch yourself saying that. Remind yourself it’s not nice. Loving you means liking you, respecting you, looking out for you, having your own back. You don’t let people badmouth you, including you, and especially you. That’s not love. To love others as ourselves, we need to start with breaking the habit of being mean to ourselves. Be our own friend. Be compassionate and kind to you.
Think of it if this helps at all. Think of it if a friend were to call you at the end of the day, friend calls you and says, uh, I made a mistake at work today. The boss got mad. I feel like such an idiot. You don’t just say, yeah, you’re right. You’re an idiot. We don’t do that. We say, hey, it’s okay. People make mistakes. It doesn’t mean anything bad about you. Don’t be so hard on yourself. We need to do that to ourselves, too. Okay? So here’s the three things. Remember to love yourself. Number one value and appreciate you. Number two forgive you. And three be nice to you. So let me wrap this up with my final thoughts here on how to love yourself. I don’t want to be too redundant on these episodes, but I’m finding it’s related to this, too. A couple episodes ago, we talked about how God created you in his image. He put a lot of thought into your uniqueness, your characteristics, how your mind would work, what you would look like, what your body would be like, how you walk, how you talk. God made you that way on purpose.
You have talents, gifts, uh, a personality like no other. You are you on purpose. A lot of thought and care went into you being created as you are. And here’s the bottom line. There’s nothing that you’re going to say or do or think that’s going to touch your loveability. Nothing can change that. And there’s nothing that anyone else can do or say or think that’s going to touch your lovability either. None of that makes you any more or less lovable. It’s not possible. Satan wants you to believe lies. That you are not good enough, that you aren’t worthy of God’s love, that you aren’t enough, that you aren’t lovable. I have a secret for you. He is lying. Don’t m fall for it. You remember who you are, okay? Perfectly and wonderfully made and lovable. And you get to go love others and love yourself. So go do that. All right, y’all, that’s it for today. I will catch you next week. Until then, take care.
As an advanced, certified life coach, I help Christian women trying to live their best lives, but they still feel unsatisfied and stuck. I teach thought management skills that work so you can enjoy life again and step into who God has created you to be. Don’t forget to head on over to Rympodcast.com to get my free resources or a free coaching call.
