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Why is Loving Myself So Hard?
423 Plays1 year ago
Do you find it hard to love yourself? Do you give others more compassion than you do yourself? What’s at the root of that and how can we free ourselves from the feelings of “not enough”, shame, and self-doubt. In this episode, Laura Coe and Kevin Kaiser get vulnerable about their own journeys and explore the simple (but sometimes not easy!) ways we can give more space to loving ourselves.
* Join us at Little Soul School, a community of people dedicated to soul growth, soul learning, and accessing the Akashic Records, a place that hold all of our souls’ histories—everything we’ve done in all of our lifetimes. If you’re looking for a deeper connection to yourself and a place to experiment and learn in a non-judgmental, open community of people, join us at https://littlesoul.school. No woo-woo, no fluff. Just fun and connection.
Come check it out at https://littlesoul.school
Follow Laura Coe:
Website: www.lauracoe.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/laurascoe/
Follow Kevin Kaiser:
Website: www.kevinkaiser.co
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kevinkaiser.co
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Transcript
Introduction and Nature's Healing
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to Soul School with Laura Ko and Kevin Kaiser. On this show, we dive into life's biggest questions. Who are we? What are we here to do? And how can we fearlessly live as our truest, deepest selves? Soul School is the spiritual education you never received. So if you're ready, join us as we explore together. Soul School is in session.
00:00:26
Speaker
Welcome back everybody. This is Kevin Kaiser and I'm here with the illustrious Laura Ko who is in the Michigan woods as we speak. Hey Laura. Hello from Michigan. I know, right? It's like, look at this. I mean, I am a tree in nature today. It's like a junk for people who can't see it. It's like a, like a thickly wooded area. So she's in hiding. Oh, so happy. I'm, you know, I live in the center of the city. So to get out and feel,
00:00:56
Speaker
a little oneness with nature is restorative to the soul. For me, nature is the thing. I mean, if I have a love language, it is walking in the woods. Beautiful.
What is Self-Love?
00:01:12
Speaker
Well, today's show, I want to tee it up a little bit for us, and it's all about
00:01:21
Speaker
why is loving myself so hard? And we've both coached a lot of people over the years. And this is a recurring theme with people. Seems to be at the very core of our struggle as people who are trying to figure out who we are and why we're here. And it seems like that's the big brick wall that we all ultimately either have to climb over, chip our way through, or blast our way through.
00:01:50
Speaker
Today's show, we're diving into that question of why is loving myself so hard? What's your take on this? What I appreciate about us is we always pick the small topics. I know, right? I mean, softballs. We go for the softballs. Just this little topic of loving oneself. I mean, I think of it as a multi-prong problem, right? One is
00:02:21
Speaker
I don't think we know what it means to love ourselves. I think there's this funny spiritual ideology out there that
00:02:32
Speaker
I just have to repeat mantras about how much I love myself and look myself in the mirror without my clothes on and compliment all my body parts. And then eventually I will love myself or something, right? It's just a super weird topic. And it used to give me cringy throw up feelings, right? Like it was just something I kept away from because it felt disingenuous, uncomfortable, awkward, and it didn't strike me as truth.
00:03:01
Speaker
So I think the definition is the biggest obstacle to get started, that to love oneself is to understand I'm not the thoughts in my head. The things that I say about myself that are unloving don't necessarily disappear for me to love myself because that is not me, it's my brain and they're my thoughts.
00:03:29
Speaker
and that those thoughts are simultaneously happening while this energy within myself, which is my true self, my spirit, my soul self, my authentic self, whatever you like to think about it as, is flowing
00:03:50
Speaker
the life force of self and those thoughts are thoughts, but they don't mean that I'm not lovable just because I may harbor extreme views of myself on a regular
Understanding True Self Beyond Thoughts
00:04:05
Speaker
basis, right? Like imposter thoughts or approvals or low self-worth or all these different things that the brain likes to chew on all day long. There's a like, maybe I'll go to 50 therapists or get a shaman or do like pounds of ayahuasca.
00:04:17
Speaker
so that I can eventually stop thinking negative thoughts. But therein to me lies the problem. One is I am, the definition of loving oneself is to know that I'm not my thoughts and to know that I'm just this energy. And that energy is devoid of thought. It just is. And so if you really sit with that, how can that not be lovable? How can energy be anything? I plug in my light, there's electricity moving through it.
00:04:46
Speaker
It's not really like good, bad, right, wrong, blah, blah, blah, right? It just is. It just is. And so that part is the first step in my mind. Does that make sense to you?
00:04:58
Speaker
Yeah, that makes perfect sense to me. And it's really the thing that comes up for me when you say that is just how much of it is learned. Because if you take a look at little kids, I always come back to that because all the sages say in order to be free, you have to become like a child.
00:05:17
Speaker
And it's like even kids before they learn language, before they learn how to divide up the world, I'm not sure they even have the capacity to create that sort of split in themselves, right, of I'm not okay, I'm not enough, which that's what that whole thought process is. And it's just like this, like you said, it's energy, it's awareness, it's like the very nature of your being.
00:05:45
Speaker
It actually is love, it's self-love and the expression of love. It's then when the program gets introduced, the whole not enough, the whole shame model, which is you're not enough, there's something wrong with you, it begins the flywheel spinning. I mean, I can look around at kids,
00:06:10
Speaker
You can see them when they're young and they're playing, they have not a care in the world, then we get to them, the adults get to them, and then it starts to change. They start to doubt themselves, question themselves. And my daughter's in college now, and we picked her up a few weeks ago, and I just listen to how her friends talk about themselves.
00:06:34
Speaker
you know, how they question themselves and, um, you know, question their, their value and not enough. And, you know, and the entire world is, is confirming those stories, you know, social media and everywhere you look. So yeah, yeah, it is that. Yeah. And then you hit on something so important, right? This, this concept of shame, because shame, if we all have,
00:07:01
Speaker
checked out our Benet Brown and listened carefully to lovely Benet, right? She's so eloquent in her explanation that shame requires secrecy, right? So the moment that you have these thoughts of not good enough, that split that you mentioned, then you buy into it. And so then you hide it and you walk around going when people find out the truth. Yeah.
00:07:26
Speaker
I suck in these fill in the blank ways, then they're going to know how unlovable I really am, how unworthy I really am, and the gigs up, right? And everybody's walking around with this same fear, this shame of eventually being found out for this self loathing that we all participate in in our own minds. And if you
00:07:56
Speaker
if you share it, you know, hey, Kevin, I'm
00:08:02
Speaker
actually feeling unlovable in these three ways this month, people worry about you. They're suicidal, like, oh my God, right? Because they're like, we're not set up in culture to feel like it's normative to share that stuff. Or people say, oh, you'll be fine. Or, oh my God, why would you say that about yourself? You're amazing. And it's like, that's not helpful. That's just not helpful, right? So everything about it is a mess. And it's like,
00:08:31
Speaker
What really helped me eventually, and it took a long time, was the recognition that I'm not supposed to fix all that, solve all that, stop all that, even share it all. Just know that being alive and human means I will have this negative self-talk. And here's the thing, Kevin, how can I love that?
00:09:02
Speaker
the self-talk part or like the words themselves. Like I've started having compassion for the words that I am speaking to myself, right? On my worst moments where I'm really fearful or very hard on myself privately.
00:09:21
Speaker
It's like, wow. I think, wow, that's a lot, Laura. You're really having a hard one today. And I sit with it and I feel love for that, right? But it's not me. It's like, you know, I use this example all the time, but you stub your toe.
00:09:40
Speaker
you'd be compassionate to your toe like, oh, it hurts. And you tell your friends, oh, I stubbed my toe and they don't go, oh, and I'd be like, I know. And so it's broken. It's broken. Oh, no. Right. But so it's about having the ability to have compassion for it and not self abusing further. Yeah.
00:10:03
Speaker
and then taking care of it. You put a cast on it, you put it up, you ice it, whatever it is, right? You take care of your foot. So how do I take care of myself, those thoughts in the way that I would take care of a body part, because it's just my brain, knowing it's not
Facing Universal Struggles with Compassion
00:10:20
Speaker
me. I know my toe is not me. I do not know that my thoughts are not me. And so of course that separation, it's not me. And then that love and compassion towards it.
00:10:31
Speaker
I think that's really key. This whole idea of your conditioning isn't, first of all, it's conditioning. That's what language is. Language is conditioning. And it's not personal at all. It wasn't a personal choice that English is my native language. It was imprinted on me. And then that imprinting started dividing up the world in very particular ways.
00:11:01
Speaker
And I couldn't unlearn that if I wanted to, unless maybe I had a stroke or something that just totally took me offline. I'm glad you brought that up, because it's been a real pivoting point for me. Because for years and years, I
00:11:22
Speaker
I mean, I dealt with and faced a lot of depression and real self-doubt and was really, really hard on myself. And I really began to notice that, oh, these thoughts come and go. It's just like you're talking about. And I would still have this awareness that
00:11:42
Speaker
Like whatever I am, I still remain. And no matter how loud and angry and vicious this voice is, whatever this voice is, it's not always there. Which means it's not me. It's not really me.
00:11:58
Speaker
And there's that whole saying of what you resist persists. And it makes me kind of throw up in my mouth a little bit when I say it, but it actually is true that you can see these things and you can lovingly accept them for what they are. And somehow, I don't even know how this works, but it creates just enough of a gap where
00:12:22
Speaker
like the light can get in, or air can get in, and you can begin to see that, oh, like this is a narrative, this is a story, and I don't have to believe it if I don't want to. I can, you know, and actually, because I'm conditioned to, that might actually even feel comfortable to me. It might feel more comfortable to like really berate myself for what I think is wrong with me versus what I love about myself, so.
00:12:52
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, but it really does. It does start with that, um, that realization that, Oh, well, these are just, these are just thoughts. They're not my thoughts. It's just, it's just habit, habitual ways of thinking and being. So let's get practical for somebody who's listening to this. They may be struggling with self-love like, okay, this feels very squishy. Um,
00:13:21
Speaker
Where do they begin? I mean, what has worked for you in those times when you were sort of digging out of the stories and really learning or finding out how to love yourself? What's worked for you? Yeah, I mean, the first step is what we talked about, right? I'm not my thoughts. That's a big one. That takes a long time.
00:13:48
Speaker
And that shame isn't something to feel bad about. Like we're all filled with it. We all think we're not good enough, somehow we shave. I mean, and we're all gonna go to, I think our deathbed with thoughts or feelings. It's just natural to have some of that. And so that's for sure the first piece, but then I think setting that expectation secondarily that I'm not supposed to
00:14:17
Speaker
stay in a state of happiness.
Embracing Emotional Fluctuations
00:14:21
Speaker
I had this weird idea that I was gonna like rid myself of negative thoughts, right? Like I thought the Dalai Lama, right? Didn't you think that? Yeah, I was like, well, at some point, right, this just ends, call it enlightenment or awakening, whatever you want to call it. Yeah, it's kind of disappointing. It's kind of a letdown, right?
00:14:46
Speaker
It's kind of a letdown, but it's also like, if I go to the gym enough, at some point, I'm gonna have six pack abs and I'll never have to do a situp again. I mean, how glorious, right? But like, that's not true. And so there's these weird ideas of what it looks like to be in emotional shape or spiritually enlightened or awakened or whatever you wanna call it, as if nothing bothers you, you're always at peace.
00:15:15
Speaker
in a certain way, right? So it's not that you can't have peace, because I do feel very much at peace most of the time in my life now, but it's by setting an expectation that my mind will continue to play out these strange narratives and stories and have strange right and wrong views or be judgmental or frustrated or whatever, but I'm not in
00:15:42
Speaker
conflict with it. I'm not in, I don't have shame most of the time. I'm like, I have a more relaxed, even entertained view of it now, where it's like, Oh, it's kind of funny actually, right? That, that I'm doing this. And so with that shift of expectation, that the goal isn't to never have it. Does that make sense? That, that to me is like, was the big aha phase two.
00:16:13
Speaker
Oh, I can't get six pack abs. I can't be above having a brain. That's not going to, that's not a thing. Right. Cause that's, I mean, it's, it's being human and you know, I, I don't remember when this happened, but, um, I had this realization that, that, um, even if I understood, even if I saw, okay, look, I'm not my thoughts.
00:16:41
Speaker
not my feelings. Even when I saw it, I had to keep reminding myself that, oh, I have decades of conditioning, decades. And this is what the mind does. Not just the mind, but the mind-body, the whole central nervous system.
00:17:04
Speaker
And I mean, I've talked to so many people and like the people that I've coached, I mean, I, most of them are in midlife at this point, you know, and they'll have some kind of awakening awakening experience. And then we'll go through the very things that you and I talk about. It's like, I had it, like I had it. And then like something came up and I lost it. And I was like, no, no, like you didn't,
00:17:29
Speaker
You didn't lose anything. It's the mind that it's just doing what it does. And the very fact that you're not getting lost in it proves that you're beginning to see, oh, there's some space here. And I'll tell them, look, I'm going to prove to you that this is all in your system.
00:17:55
Speaker
And like I'm right-handed most people are right-handed. So I'll tell them go try to brush your teeth with your left hand Like it is the most effortful like uncomfortable thing ever because you're like, you know Like poking yourself in the face and stuff. It's because everything is like encoded through reflex like repetition and
00:18:17
Speaker
and your mind is just out of the muscle. I love your example of the, you know, not having to do crunches anymore and go to the gym. Oh, I would love it. Yeah, yeah. But so much of it is that? So much of it. And, you know, the conditioning is a big piece, the awareness, the practice then, right? That
00:18:41
Speaker
If I'm not my mind, what am I? Right. And, and you have to have somewhere else to go. Right. Because if, okay, fine. Right. I can get somebody to believe really quickly in coaching or whatever.
00:18:55
Speaker
Fine. I'm not a thought. Thoughts move. They're not the same. I haven't had the same thoughts that I had when I was 10. There's all these great arguments you can make to people to get them to let that one go a bit. But then it's like, what am I? And then that's the hardest thing. It's like, I don't know. Something else, right? You're the part that's aware, but I can't put that in space or time or point to it. It's like,
00:19:22
Speaker
you know, my still point of the turning world that we talk about, right? It's this kind of dance of life that's somewhere still and moving. How about that? And it's such an unsatisfying answer because it's so intangible. And so there's also to me, this next phase of loving myself is to love the energy that somebody might claim is the part they know to be me.
Energy of Self and Love
00:19:51
Speaker
Right? Like there's a sense of somebody that they'd say, Oh my God, I love Kevin so much. He's so Kevin like, right? It's like, whatever that is, that's what I love about you, but I can't touch it. I can't define it. Really. Words are like, okay.
00:20:07
Speaker
But they're not great. But then to say about yourself, OK, I'm this this something else. I'm this else. I'm this energetics. I'm this intangibleness. I can't find it. I can't we point to our chest. Right. But it's not inside of the chest cavities. So who am I? Right. And there's this absolute existential crisis that happens. And you have to kind of let go of of knowing yourself.
00:20:35
Speaker
intellectually, right? You have to start to love this elusive sense, right? And that's where I think, again, the definition, so then I'm in a full circle and ping it back to you, Kevin, but the idea that I am life force, energy, right? This sense. If I don't trust that as
00:21:05
Speaker
potentially true, then if I'm not my thoughts, I have nowhere else to go, right? I get stuck, right? And I have to be willing to be open to this idea that I am the energy. So we said, you know, why is it hard to love myself? Well, love is energy. Love is not this romantic, a Hallmark card. I love you because you give me butterflies. It's an energetic,
00:21:33
Speaker
sensibility that we all have as part of life. And so that energy of self wants to express through each of us, and that is self. And so you kind of have to let go of your definition of love. You have to let go of your definition of self. So we asked this question at the beginning, why is it so hard to love myself? And I think it's a multi-tiered problem that the spirituality world puts out there. We should love ourselves or self-help.
00:22:03
Speaker
And it's not fair. It's like a setup for failure to me, right? To make it that trite. It's quite complicated. Yeah. Especially when everything in our society is geared toward making us not love ourselves because it's helpful in a economy that is driven by consumption, right?
Impact of Consumer Culture on Self-Doubt
00:22:23
Speaker
Of us not feeling enough, being enough, having enough.
00:22:27
Speaker
Oh, it's cynical, Kevin. You've gone off the cynical. Deep in, man. Yeah, this is from 10 years of being in online marketing. There's truth in that though, right? Because we're all consuming, consuming to feel better. Yeah. Yeah. And we're told that that's how you feel better. And in order to feel better, your attention has to be drawn to, oh, I'm not okay. And I need to escape this not-okayness.
00:22:57
Speaker
Yeah. And how do I do that, right? And so, you know, by getting this thing that will make me give me a dopamine hit really quickly, that'll then go away, right? So much of this, I mean, for me,
00:23:11
Speaker
It is the, it's like the understanding the essence of ourselves and what is the essence of what we're talking about. And then how do you embody it? Cause I think so many people, I mean, this was my challenge for a long time. It was, I'm going to meditate it away.
00:23:29
Speaker
I'm gonna not think the thinking away. And then I found that all I was doing was there was no motion, there's no action to my life. And things started to change for me when I took this course on somatic awareness. And the whole idea is like, you really clarify what is a desired future for you.
00:23:55
Speaker
So maybe a desired state for me is, I want to know myself in more living ways. And then the next step is, well, what quality do I need to develop in order to make that happen? So it's like total acceptance.
00:24:11
Speaker
What does an image of total acceptance look like physically? Think about somebody that you think really loves themselves and really totally accepts themselves. How do they show up in the world? How do they show up for themselves physically? How do they move through life? Because one of the big tenets in somatic therapy is physiology first.
00:24:34
Speaker
And then psychology second. Yeah. Right. So if you need to change your state, you change your physical state first and then the mental wall almost always follow. Yeah. So I started doing things like, like self hugging myself, um, which sounds weird, but in those times when I would feel down and there was nobody to hug me and I would have to go ask for hugs, but when nobody was around, I would hug myself.
00:25:00
Speaker
or I would do something physical, some kind of movement with the intention of what to somebody who loves himself, how do they act? And then I would start acting that way in combination with meditation and learning to see beyond or be beyond my thoughts. And it seemed like those two things together, that's really when I started gaining some kind of traction.
00:25:28
Speaker
in my own life, because it was both like the inward movement and the outward movement integrated together. That's right. And back to your point about kids, right? Like they just are. They just are.
00:25:41
Speaker
And so if they need to stand, they stand. If they need to sit, they sit.
Lessons from Children on Self-Acceptance
00:25:44
Speaker
If they need to cry, they cry. If they need to eat, they eat, right? And to your point about the body and everything all coming together, what does it look like when somebody loves themselves? They just do whatever it is that they need to be doing in that moment without judgment of self. They're not simultaneously hating on themselves and their thoughts, hiding that and hoping that nobody sees
00:26:10
Speaker
that they're so uncomfortable with what is actually true for them. And so for me, the true definition of self-love is to be completely comfortable
00:26:22
Speaker
in yourself in the way that you wanna feel in that moment, whatever it is. So if it's like, I need a hug, great. If you need to scream, great. If you wanna nap, fabulous, right? Like whatever it is, it's okay, right? Obviously you don't wanna hurt other people, but it's not to be analyzed every time there's a energy towards or away from something
00:26:51
Speaker
that there's some reason that you should or shouldn't be doing that. And I mean, you know, I've written a book from the Akashic Records on self-love and they talk about the lion, right? That he just...
00:27:02
Speaker
he just is like the lion eats, lion grazes, the lion kills. And it's like, like, lions kill. That's what they do. And it's like, right or wrong, that is truth for a lion. And so whatever is truth for you, obviously, we don't want to kill people because we have executive functioning. But the truth of what is
00:27:28
Speaker
arising within you moment by moment is self-love without the judgment, in my opinion. It takes a long time to get there, though. You have to strip those thoughts. You have to get into your body. You have to be willing to express it without shame for what others would say or you say about yourself.
What is Radical Acceptance?
00:27:47
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It reminds me of radical acceptance.
00:27:51
Speaker
that book by Kara Brock where she talks about just radical acceptance without any stripped of all of the ideas and judgments of what should be or shouldn't be. I mean, I'm sure somebody's listening to this thinking or maybe even screaming out loud, that's easier said than done. Well, yeah.
00:28:13
Speaker
Welcome to human life, right? It's like it's the hardest thing in the world in a sense, right? The hardest thing because for so many years you're so conditioned to think my thoughts are me and then I don't know where to go. But when you take that first leap and you stop trusting that these thoughts that are endless, they're exhausting and endless and they never satiate. When have you ever felt like
00:28:44
Speaker
whatever your thoughts ever said to you, oh my God, there's zero else you need to change. You're perfect. This moment's perfect. You're perfect. At any moment, you can just look around any room and find flaw, right? In yourself, in the way something needs to be cleaned or a list that you didn't do. So if you're consulting your mind to feel
00:29:05
Speaker
Free alive happy joyous and peace like filled with those things that we identify as self love you'll never get there so in a way it's the easiest thing because you just. Need to stop trusting and but because we've been condition it does to your point take a long time.
Creating Space from Thoughts
00:29:24
Speaker
to let go of the grip the mind has over your life. And I think anything you do to just create any space between those thoughts to suggest that it's not you is triumphant in our culture.
00:29:41
Speaker
And it just gets easier. It's the space between believing the thoughts that I have as truth that leads towards a more peaceful life, right? I used to believe them all the time. And then it was like 10 minutes a day I had space. And then it was like two hours. And then it's like, oh my God, now it's only five minutes that I kind of went, oh, what just happened? I got lost. I thought that was true for a minute. And then you come home.
00:30:11
Speaker
Yeah, and also there's one other element here that we haven't really touched on, which is the element of grace and asking for help and asking, show me who I really am and call it prayer if you want, but asking for that clarity because everything we've talked about so far is essentially on some level initiated by us, right? And we think all of this, at least I've
00:30:40
Speaker
I went through a long period of time where I just felt like, well, if I just do the right things, meditate the right ways, whim off breathing, it'll just happen. And there is an element of surrender. There's a very important element of just allowance.
00:30:59
Speaker
Um, you know, where you can just relax, you know, and allow things to be, and then that, that seems to drop. Things just seem to drop off more easily that way versus this all depends on me, you know, damn, if I can just like love myself more and, you know, it's like, just relax. And that's the biggest myth there is Kevin, right? Like.
00:31:22
Speaker
If there's one thing to deprogram, it's a belief that the more I work towards self-love or ideas of self, the more I'll get there. It's the opposite. It's the not doing. It's the being.
00:31:36
Speaker
sitting back, the surrender into the unknown, like all the things you're saying, that is the path in, but the ego fights every second. You're going to be broke and lazy and nobody will like you and you'll have no friends. It's literally contrary to every thought you're having, right? But yes, the only way in is through the release, the letting go, the
00:32:02
Speaker
non-resistant state, total surrender, lack of control, right? But these things, you can do them in an instant. Some people do. Some people have a waking up in seconds, and some people it takes decades. It's just how much do you freefall into the unknown of, I'm not in control. I'm not, yeah.
00:32:27
Speaker
Yeah.
Invitation to Self-Love Journey
00:32:28
Speaker
Well, my wish for everybody listening to this is that they fall headfirst like through empty space and like scream, screams of joy and probably terror at the same time because like this is the ride, right? It being human. And, um, but it's worth, if the choice is not to love yourself or to love yourself, the choice is obvious. So just do it.
00:32:54
Speaker
right? Like allow yourself to be okay and, um, you know, see what happens and see what happens in your life. I love it. Let go surrender. Let go. Well, this is beautiful. I wish everybody a beautiful day. Laura has always, this really helped me. So thank you. Me as well, Kevin. Thank you. We'll see everybody next time.
00:33:22
Speaker
Thanks for listening to this week's episode and I really hope that you consider checking out the Little Soul School, LittleSoul.school, where there's a community of people dedicated to soul growth, soul learning, and the Akashic energy.
00:33:39
Speaker
a space that holds all of our soul's histories, everything we've ever done in all of our lifetimes. Because they're looking for a deeper connection to themselves, a place to experiment and play with spirituality in a non-judgmental, vulnerable, open community of people. No woo-woo, no fluff, just fun and connection. Come check it out, littlesoul.school.