STOP! In the Name of Self-Love!

Stop in the name of SELF-LOVE

Ayana: [00:00:00] Uh, hi. Yes. My name is Ayana and I have a reservation for one. Yeah, I've made a very long and uncomfortable journey to get here and I'm seated alone tonight.

 You go anywhere this time of year and you are inundated with two colors, red and pink, because those are the universal colors of love and it is the season of love.

Yeah, it's that time of year and you're being inundated with images of love and hearts, heart shaped products and promotions and commercials and TV shows. You see red hearts everywhere, heart shaped candy, candy treats to give to your special [00:01:00] someone. You turn on the TV and there are movies about someone who needs someone to love.

And then there are love themed dances at your kids schools. And there's movies on the Hallmark Channel about saving love land in Hartville. And it's just everywhere and you cannot avoid it no matter what you do. Well, I guess you could probably turn off the TV and not leave your house, but there's no fun in that.

But you know what? I get it. I understand. It's festive, festive time of year. People love their celebration. People love their things. But the problem is, you see, but, but, but, but, but, a lot of us are madly, deeply, and truly in love with romantic love. And we don't save any of that love for ourselves.

I've got some explaining to do. Let's get into [00:02:00] it.

 Hey everyone, welcome back for another episode of Ayanna Explains It All, the podcast that bridges the gap between current events and human behavior hosted by me, Ayanna Fakir. That's A Y A N A, F as in Frank, A K H I R. Yes, I do have to spell it because people get it wrong. All the time. I am the black Muslim lady lawyer who has an opinion on everything.

I sometimes call myself the explainer in chief, but I'm really just here to help people understand the world better what's going on in the world and why it should matter to you. And in this episode, I'm going to be talking about something that's very near and dear to my heart. See heart theme.

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I am Muslim. Yes. 100 percent since birth. But I talk about everything. I talk about religion and politics and history and economics and technology. [00:05:00] I talk about mental health. I talk about community. I talk about race relations. I talk about everything because I want people to understand what's going on in the world and why they should care about it.

I feel like a lot of times people just pass over information because they really don't see how it applies to them, why they should care, why they should get involved, why they should be alerted to it. I've done episodes on voting. I've done episodes on, um, Like today's episode is about self love, but in the past I've done episodes on why, uh, you should have healthy boundaries and narcissism and empathy.

And I've done episodes on, um, race relations in the black community. I've done episodes on equal pay. I, I mean everything you go to the website and you will find all of this there. I categorize as much as possible, all of the episodes of the podcast so that you can just click on a category and all of the episodes will pop up for you.

Now I knew, [00:06:00] I know, I know, I know, I know, honey, I know, I know you're in love. I know everybody has at one point. And time in their life, been in love, right? Or at least you thought you were in love. Maybe you were just highly infatuated. I learned about a new thing. The, the, uh, a couple of weeks ago, I learned about labyrinths.

Whoa. Ciao. Woo. That's like, um, all consuming, obsessive thoughts about a person. Who you may or may not have ever met you, you, you, you're obsessed with them, not like stalking them, but daydreaming about them, thoughts about them have completely taken over your life. You can't work. You, you're not eating, but you're always thinking about them.

You're always, you know, looking at their picture. You're probably Googling information about them. You probably have like a catalog, a scrapbook or something, but it's unhealthy, obsessive love. [00:07:00] And the other person, like I said, may or may not know that you exist and you may have had some kind of interaction at one point.

But limerence, L E M E R A N C E. It's fascinating, fascinating. And sometimes I was reading that, I was like, I probably have experienced this. A couple of times in my life. Oh, gotta get it together, honey. But, um, today's episode is not about that. Well, it's kind of about that. It's kind of about being obsessed with one particular person, and that is yourself.

 I'm recording this on Sunday, January 28th, 2024, and in a couple of weeks, it's going to be Valentine's day for a lot of people. Not for me as a Muslim. I don't celebrate that, but for a lot of people, this love day, people are going to be, uh, you know, mired in, Oh, I got to get reservations for dinner and I got to make sure I have the perfect gift.

Ayana: And I got to make sure that we set up the camera so that tick tock and [00:08:00] see. A lot of people focusing on romantic love and expressions of love and giving gifts to their partners or little kids giving lollipops, exchanging lollipops and little cards for each other in school. Oh, so sweet. Everybody is focused on this.

We're taught. Kids are taught from, you know, very young age. Valentine's! Oh, you gotta give one to your sweetheart or someone, your friend. And this is our first introduction into how to love someone. We're never really taught from that small age to first love ourselves. No, we're, we're taught to please others.

We're taught to love others, but who is instilling in us love for self and this really has to start when you're a kid. You don't want to be like me and be, you know, over 40 and just learning [00:09:00] to love yourself unless you're already there. When you're listening to this, Oh, welcome to the club. But as people who are over 40 and who are just learning to love ourselves, Oh gosh.

When I tell you this has been a long, uncomfortable journey, it's been long and strange. Like your dad. Uh,

so self love is something that I had no idea. I thought self love meant I like myself. I thought it meant, yeah, of course I love myself. I mean, look, I get my hair done and well, I haven't been in a while, but whatever. And I, I buy myself perfume and makeup and I make my bed sometimes and I bathe and I have nice clothes and nice shoes and, and I pray and, and I, I eat well now.

So [00:10:00] I, I obviously love myself. Right? No. I mean, those things are part. Those are, that's like a very small piece of the self love, uh, equation. It's this plus this plus this plus this plus this plus this equals self love. The very small part of it is like the hygiene in the eating well and people really focus on that and claim that that is self love when it, it's not really, it's not even half of the, the problem.

It's not even a quarter of it. Like self love is a concept that involves, by way of a definition, self love is a concept that involves having a positive and caring attitude towards oneself. Gotta admit, not something I've always had. Not at all. But [00:11:00] self love encompasses self love encompasses recognizing and appreciating one's own worth.

Not something I've always done, accepting oneself as deserving of love and respect. Again, something that I have not, I always done, I haven't. And taking actions that promotes one's wellbeing and happiness. Self love involves treating oneself with kindness, compassion, and understanding, even in the face of imperfections or setbacks.

And again, not always done it. In fact, most of my life, I did not do any of this. So it's safe to say that the majority of my life. Probably three quarters of my life. I absolutely couldn't fucking stand myself.

I mean, it's the truth. I can laugh now because that is in my past. But who we, oh, we, [00:12:00] I did not love myself, honey. I probably didn't even like myself really. And I didn't know why. I didn't know why, like, I have been in, in therapy for a long time, but it was not effective until probably the last, I would say two years or so, because before that I wasn't doing the work.

I would just go into my therapist's office and, you know, tell her what was going on and then cry and cry. And she would yell at me and be like, girl, there's, do you, you need to get it together. Like, I. It was always, girl, you need to get it together. Girl, what's wrong with you? How come you don't see that this is not good for you?

How come you can't? How come you're internalizing all of this? Why are you letting people dominate you and take advantage of you? Why are you letting all of these things happen to you? And it was that theme was, why are you? Why are you letting all of this happen to you? [00:13:00] Why are you giving people permission to do these things to you?

Why are you giving the narcissist permission to do these things to you? Why are you giving someone permission to treat you like crap? Why are you giving someone permission? You know, it was, it was, I was allowing these things to happen to myself because I did not love myself. I didn't even know what self love meant, but I could, I knew what it meant to make someone else feel good.

You know, that romantic love or that, you know, that romantic partner love or that mother to child love. I knew what it meant to make someone else feel good. I knew what it meant to please other people and I could please myself, but I didn't know why I needed to put myself first. I didn't know why I needed to be first on that list.

I didn't know why I needed to treat myself with kindness, compassion, and understanding even in the face of imperfections or setbacks. I didn't embrace my imperfections. I didn't even [00:14:00] know or accept that I could be imperfect and that was my state and that was how I should be and that was enough. I thought I had to be perfect.

Yeah. I thought I had to be perfect to please everyone and to make everyone happy with me. I was a people pleasing nut job, but everybody was happy. Everybody was happy until they weren't. You know, they're always happy until you're not doing or you don't do the one thing that they wanted you to do. You could have done 13 things and then you don't do the 14th thing and they're like, you never loved me.

You never wanted me to be happy. Why won't you do this for me? I dealt with a lot of that a lot of that shit but I never I never would treat myself with any kind of kindness or compassion and understanding and I didn't think that I was worthy of love Not from anybody, not even from myself and I knew why, you know, I have a history of childhood [00:15:00] trauma.

I have a history of domestic abuse as an adult, so I didn't think I was worthy of anything because I was never treated well, so I must, I must not be worthy of being treated well. I must not be worthy of being loved because nobody has ever loved me. Nobody has ever treated me well, so I must not be worthy of it.

And I internalized that I believed it, believed it practically my entire life, my entire, I didn't even think I was worthy of loving myself. Like I used to always talk to myself negatively. I was always saying disparaging things about myself. And I would, you know, people love to say that self deprecating humor is the best kind of humor.

You can laugh at yourself. I can laugh at myself, yes, but that's all I was doing. I was disparaging myself, putting myself down, allowing myself to be put down, allowing people to walk all over me and treat me like I was just a fucking ragdoll because [00:16:00] I thought that's the type of person I had to be. I had to be.

As much as possible, perfect mom, perfect wife, perfect daughter, perfect sister, perfect friend, perfect lawyer, perfect, perfect, perfect. And it was, it drove me insane. It drove me crazy, but because everybody else was happy, then it was okay. As long as my kids are happy, as long as my parents are happy, as long as my friends are happy.

But was there somebody somewhere saying that about me? Well, as long as Ayana is happy. Fuck no! But then you had my kids who thought that they had to live to please me. And they're finally realizing, no, that's not what mommy wants. That's not what mommy needs. She just needs us to not be fuck ups. Because she, she doesn't want to have to bail us out of jail.[00:17:00]

But no, you don't have to please me. I don't want my kids to please me. I'm not, uh, uh, I'm not on a pedestal. You don't have to please me. I want you to make sure you're safe. I want you to take care of yourself. I want you to learn. I'm raising my kids, treating them like, and I'm teaching them how to live without me.

not live in spite of me. And so they really have to learn self love in order to do that because in order to be completely independent and understanding, you have to, you have to love yourself. You have to, in order to survive on your own, you can't harden yourself. People think I just, I will become the most hard.

heart hardened person and I'll turn off all my feelings and I won't care about anything and I won't need anybody and this will make me better able to stand on my own. No, [00:18:00] no it doesn't. It doesn't. But you will find on your journey to self love that a lot of the attachments you had when you were not loving yourself will fall away.

They will fall away. Because you will develop these boundaries and this idea of how you should be treated because that's how you treat yourself and you love yourself. And if you're treating yourself well and you love yourself, anybody who's not treating you that way obviously doesn't love and respect you even.

And you won't want to be around those people. And those people won't Want to be around you because they can't use you anymore. They can't use you anymore. And you're not the person, the, the old reliable person who's always going to show up and pay for everything. And you're no longer the person who's always going to come through and prop them up and make them feel good about themselves.

You're not their emotional fluffer anymore. [00:19:00] You're saving everything for yourself. And then because you've saved everything for yourself and you love yourself, you're going to attract other people who love themselves and you're going to be interacting on a higher plane and all of those interactions you had when you were unhealthy.

When you were not doing what was right for yourself, when you had no compassion or kindness or understanding for yourself, all of those attachments are going to fall away. Hopefully, as we say, Inshallah. But I often find that when people can no longer use you, they don't want to have anything to do with you.

When people can no longer abuse you, they don't want to have anything to do with you. It's not that they go, Oh, okay, well this is how you are now. I'm going to learn to love and appreciate the new you now. No, they walk away and they go find somebody else. They go find somebody else to run their game on.

So, [00:20:00] and you know, it's, the self love journey is, I have written here, a lot of shit. Because that's what, that is what it is. That is what it is. It's a lot of shit. It's a lot of shit. And there are factors that keep us from getting to self love, including shame and guilt, shame and guilt. And shame is saying, I'm bad because something bad happened, whether I'm responsible or not, but because something bad happened, that that means I'm bad. And guilt is, I did something wrong and I will let that control me, but I may or may not want to do something about it.

I feel bad, not that I am bad, but I feel bad because I did something bad or because something bad happened. I feel [00:21:00] bad. And when we don't resolve shame and guilt, especially when we don't atone when we are wrong, we certainly cannot learn to love ourselves.

And people don't talk about self love as much as they talk about romantic love. We run to romance and run from acceptance of self. We run from mindfulness. We run from gratitude. We run from self care, we run from forgiveness, or we think conservatively about these determinants, such as self care. As I mentioned before, self care is not, I'll have a spa day and I'll feel better about myself.

And I'll feel better about the things that are going on in my life. I'll feel better about how I acted. I'll feel better about how I was treated. I just need a spa day to relax and forget about everything. Okay, so what happens the next day when it's not a spa [00:22:00] day And that and that stain is still there on the on the carpet You still got to clean it up.

 And so I'm going to give you guys some free, this is free therapy that I'm giving you all. You won't have to go see your therapist this week. No, I'm kidding. Please go see your therapist. But this, this, this will be something ancillary.

This will be something that you will learn from. It's not going to be, uh, comfortable. It's going to be very uncomfortable, unfortunately. The road to self love, just like the road to anything worthy and worthwhile, even the, the, the path to God is hard. It's tough. It's uncomfortable.

It's, you know, rocks and boulders. And roadblocks and it's a lot of things and you have to move around and you have to get over and you have to endure. And at the end of it though, it's [00:23:00] going to be something so amazing, so amazing. You're never going to want to go back. You're not going to want to turn around and go back.

I promise you. All of those old habits, those old people, those old connections, those old ways. Oh, we, you're never going to want to indulge in any of that ever again. I promise. Inshallah. So

self love is perhaps The hardest, sometimes most daunting task for us to accomplish again, because you have to be taught this as a child in order to grow through and learn all of these things about yourself and learn to develop all of these things about yourself, understanding, kindness, compassion, and if you're not Then that's going to affect all of [00:24:00] your relationships as an adult.

It's going to affect your work life. It's going to affect how you are as a parent. And you're probably not going to be as effective or as good as you want to be. Or you'll be thinking, why am I not good at this? I should be good at this. Gosh, I must really suck. People must really hate me. I'm terrible. I'm awful.

You're going to internalize it. I was on, um, TikTok the other day and there was a young man who was doing a, he did a video from his car and he was crying about, he was crying in the video and he was talking about how his partner had just left, left him. They were supposed to move to a new state. The young man in the video had quit his job and he had ended his lease.

They were living together and his partner, while he was at work one day, took all of his shit and left. No word, no [00:25:00] nothing, no goodbye, nothing. You know, he had completely upended his life for this, for this life they were supposed to have together. And his partner was plotting against him, obviously, and he didn't know it.

He didn't know that this plot existed. And now that the betrayal has been revealed, see how wonderful God is. Now that this betrayal has been revealed, he has to find, scramble to find work, scramble to find probably a place to live, extra money to cover rent and bills. And the one thing he said, the one thing he said that struck me so hard because I had never been able to do this in any of my breakups, he said, I'm not going to internalize this.

This is not about me. This is about the other person. This is about what he did to [00:26:00] me, but it is not a reflection of me. I am not going to internalize this. Oh my God. Huh. I, when he said that, I was like, shit, you know, cause you don't hear people say that. You don't hear people say that when they go through a breakup, the first thing they think, the first thing I thought, there must be something wrong with me.

There must, there has to be something wrong with me. It's my fault. I'm ugly, I'm bad, I'm stupid, I'm dumb, I'm not worthy of love, I didn't do enough, I wasn't enough, I wasn't pretty enough, I used to think that I wasn't wild enough, and I used to think that I wasn't wild enough, I don't know the words to the song, but That's how it went and I would say my, I would say that to myself all the time.

Oh, I guess I'm not, you [00:27:00] know, I'm just not the type of person that they need. Maybe I should make myself into the type of person that a man needs so he won't leave. I turned it in on myself and I was with some truly awful fucking people. And even then I still thought it was about me because I didn't love myself.

I was not raised to, I was not taught to, I didn't know how to. And as an adult, I decided to get my shit together. And I say this a lot to people, but. You got to have courage. You have got to, you have, you have got to develop courage even for the small everyday things. You have got to put some balls in your sack and get your business handled. And I can be kind of hard on people when they're whining, even my own whining gets on my fucking nerves [00:28:00] because there's a certain age where if you don't got it, it's a wrap for you.

And you're always going to be begging people to do things for you, begging people to understand you when you don't even understand you, begging people to give you a break because you're broken, begging, begging, begging people to help you all the time because you don't know how to help yourself. You don't have anything.

You have nothing. There's nothing inside of you to draw from. You don't have any resilience. You don't have any strength. Perhaps you never learned it, or perhaps it was stripped from you. Like, we're all born with confidence, right? We're all born with confidence. And it's either built up as we age or it's stripped away as we age.

Mine was stripped away. And a lot of the things that I felt, people would look at me [00:29:00] and go, Oh my God, you're so, you know, commanding your presence is commanding and even intimidating. People still say this about me still to this day. Say, Oh, you're, you're just so intimidating. I don't even know how, how I am the most mild mannered laughing at dumb shit every day.

Telling dumb jokes with my friends. Uh, I just, I work and I raise my kids and I'm not, I don't, I don't get it, but people would say this about me, but all of what I was feeling that, that fire that I had was from trauma. It was from trauma. It was me acting out from trauma. It wasn't because I actually believed in myself at all.

It wasn't because I actually thought anything good of myself. I didn't. Was terribly insecure growing up, [00:30:00] terribly insecure. I was shy, for one. I was shy for a number of years because I wasn't made to feel like I was anything. I wasn't treated like I was anything, so I, I just didn't want to be a part of any conversations or activities and I was severely depressed or anxious or, you know, I had all this other stuff going on and so what I was doing, all of that fire coming out of me.

Wasn't good fire. It was bad fire. What do they call it? The blue fire is the good fire and then the orange fire is the bad fire. I was the orange fire. That was what was coming out of me. The bad fire. The one that's burning shit down. Not the one that's cooking on the stove. The one that's burning the shit down.

I was, I had a lot of anger inside of me. I don't anymore. No, I've, [00:31:00] I've let it all go. I've, you know, I've moved on. I've forgiven, I've let go, I've moved on. I don't even give a fuck about this shit anymore, honestly. And I, at 45 years old, I've experienced quite a bit of life. Quite a bit. So there was a lot of shit that I had to let go of.

A lot. A lot that I had to just go, you know what? MashaAllah. Masha, MashaAllah. MashaAllah. But that doesn't mean that I let any of the people back in or any of the activities back in that I was involved with that were hurting me. It doesn't mean that I continue to do the things that were hurting me. It doesn't mean that I continue to interact with the people who had hurt me.

I certainly do not. I can forgive you and move on, but that doesn't mean I fuck with you anymore. It doesn't mean I fuck with you anymore and I don't have to. This is [00:32:00] another thing about self self love that people don't understand. You do not have to interact with anybody. That you don't want to, we are made to believe that we have to, there are certain people we have to interact with every day.

Even though these people are tearing us down bit by bit by bit by bit, even though these people are cussing us out all the time, yelling at us all the time, even though these people are mean to us, even though these people, uh, abused us, we are made to feel like we have to. You know, over the holidays, like Thanksgiving, people were posting videos about their, their Thanksgiving dinner experience.

And this one young man was talking about how he went to visit his family and he wasn't looking forward to it at all because he knew what was going to come. They were going to just talk about his life choices. They were going to talk about his job, his sexuality, his romantic [00:33:00] partners, where he lives, how he lives.

And he said, I'm not looking forward to it and I just can't do it. And then he posted the after video and he was like, yep, it was as terrible as I thought. And my comment to him was if you knew this was going to happen, why the fuck did you go? Why? Why would you put yourself through that? Why would you put yourself through that?

But his whole thing was, I, I, I have to go. This is my family. I have to do this. You do not have to allow yourself to be torn down and tortured and degraded and demeaned for. Anyone, it doesn't matter how they are in your life, a friend, a family member, a coworker. You do not have to let anybody tear you down.

You gave these people permission to do this to you when you showed up and sat down and had a meal with them. [00:34:00] Now, it's one thing if you didn't know it was going to happen, but it's another thing that you know this is going to happen, but you continue to put yourself through it. You allow yourself to be treated poorly because you think you have to.

Oh, that hurts me. Oh my God. That hurts. That hurts me. That hurts me. It hurts me to hear that. It hurts me to see that because it is so unnecessary. You can't control them. But you can't control their access to you. You can't control your interactions with them by not interacting with them. You have to have healthy boundaries on this journey to self love.

You will develop healthy boundaries and you have to have them. So that you are, you go into these situations and you're feeling good, you're, you're dreading it. But you know, you think I can do this, I can do this, I can [00:35:00] do this. And by the end of the interaction, you're sitting in a pool of tears. And feeling like absolute dog poop because these people have ran through the list, honey.

They broke out the list and you a motherfuckin this and you a motherfuckin that and you don't give a fuck. I cannot tell you guys how many. Family get togethers. I dreaded going to absolutely hated. I don't do them anymore. I don't do them because I am not going to put myself through that. I am not in the state that I am in now going to force myself to be tortured and torn down just to be around people that I'm related to.

And if that bothers people, I mean that's, that's, that's you. [00:36:00] I don't put myself in situations where I know I'm going to be treated poorly. I don't do it. I do not do it. You couldn't drag me into a situation where I know I'm going to be treated poorly and I consent to that. Think about the things we consent to.

We consent to be treating, to be treated poorly. We consent to be used. We consent to be taken advantage of. We consent to this. You can actually leave. You can actually not be there. You can actually go somewhere else. You can actually limit your interactions with people. You can actually limit where you go, where you spend your time.

You are in charge of you. Why are you acting as if you are not in charge of your time and your life? If being at a certain place makes you feel miserable, Maybe it's work. If you dread going there every day [00:37:00] Maybe work from home, see if you can work from home. If you can't work from home, start looking for another job.

You cannot work under those conditions effectively. You want to be effective. If you want to just sit there and push, you know, buttons on a, on a computer, you will eventually see when you are unhappy, that stuff eventually seeps into everything. Your unhappiness seeps into everything, your job performance, your performance as a parent.

Because these are all performances, honestly, what you're doing as a parent, what you're doing as a friend, it's going to seep into all of that and it's going to affect all of that and you're going to be unhappy. You're not going to be at your best. You're not going to be present. You're not going to be present.

You will not be present. [00:38:00]

 And this is where it gets kind of technical, but stay with me. Practicing self love can involve various aspects, including self acceptance and self acceptance is the act of recognizing and embracing all facets of oneself, including strengths, weaknesses, successes, and failures involves acknowledging one's unique qualities, experiences, and characteristics without judgment or the need or for approval from others.

Now last year I read this incredible book, incredible book. It's called. The gifts of imperfection and it's by Brene Brown and she is a, she's a researcher. She's a public speaker. She's an author. She's a self help, uh, guru, if you will. But this book is so [00:39:00] amazing. It's called the gifts of imperfection and I'm going to be drawing on it a lot for, um, the next segment of this podcast episode.

Um, Because this is the book that finally opened my eyes to what I needed to do to be on my journey. What, but because this is the book that helped me open my eyes to see what I needed on my journey to self love and accepting myself to live authentically. This is what I wanted to do. I wanted to live as authentic as I possibly could not be perfect, not be perfect.

No. Because I'm not, none of us are perfect. We're all imperfect. But there are those of us who embrace it and use it to enrich our lives. And then there are those of us who can't accept it. They can't believe it, can't accept it. And so they, they race to it. They can't believe that they can't grab that, that, that flag.

They [00:40:00] can't grab it. They're always running, racing to grab that flag. So self acceptance is You develop a positive self image and healthy self esteem. And one of the things that, uh, Brene Brown talks about in this book is living wholeheartedly. And she says you cannot do this if you are not embracing the authentic, vulnerable, and imperfect person you are, but hide from the world and yourself.

And she summarizes wholehearted living as this. It is about engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness. It means cultivating courage, compassion, and connection to wake up in the morning and think no matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I Um, enough, no matter what gets done and how much is left [00:41:00] undone, I am enough.

It's not about fighting perfectionism as she notes. It's about living and loving from a place of worthiness. Embracing imperfection, cultivating what we need and let go, letting go of things that are holding us back. And how many of us are comfortable with letting our true selves be seen? She says, perfectionism itself is not about self improvement.

It is a self destructive and addictive belief system that fuels this primary thought. If I look perfect, live perfect, work perfect and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of shame, judgment and blame. We try to get ahead of the bad stuff by thinking if we're perfect, then nothing bad will happen and then there will be [00:42:00] no reason for people to judge me.

There will be no, there will be no shame associated. There won't, nothing bad will happen. Nothing will go wrong, so there won't be any blame to go around. And it's, and if there is, it certainly won't be on me because I did everything perfectly and I am perfect. So there, and this is the only time I advocate myself for speaking to yourself negatively, but this is actually a positive say to yourself, I am not perfect.

I am not designed to be. But I am enough. I am enough. Instead of striving for an unattainable standard of perfection, self acceptance encourages individuals to set realistic expectations and understand that making mistakes is a natural part of the learning and growth process. process. Let me read that again.

Instead [00:43:00] of striving for perfect, instead of striving for that unattainable standard of perfection, self acceptance encourages individuals to set realistic expectations and understand that making mistakes is a natural part of the learning and growth process. You will develop a positive self image and healthy self esteem once you understand that making mistakes is a natural part of the learning and growth process.

When you set realistic expectations for yourself, you will develop a positive self image and healthy self esteem. Another component of the equation of self love is what I spoke about earlier, self care. Now we see a lot of these posts everywhere. Oh my God. I would love to tap these people on the shoulders and be like, Hmm, you're not doing it right.[00:44:00]

You're not doing self care right. Self care is not drawing a bath and sitting in it with a candle and playing some Anita Baker music in the background. That's not self care. Self care. Self care is deeper than taking a bath. Self care is deeper than putting some lotion on and buying some lettuce that you're just going to throw in the refrigerator and forget about for two weeks and you're going to open the refrigerator and it's going to be wilted.

Self care is deeper than that. It's fully engaging in activities and behaviors that promote physical, emotional, and mental well being. Such as exercise, proper nutrition, adequate sleep, and relaxation. And these things all go together. I would actually start with adequate sleep. Because what happens when you don't get enough sleep?

I know what happens to me. I can be kind of a [00:45:00] glummy gus. I was going to call myself something else but we don't talk, we don't talk like that. About ourselves anymore. But I can really be oof. I could be kind of, if I don't get enough sleep and enough sleep for me, I know. Don't hate me. Please don't hate me.

Eight hours. I have to get eight hours of sleep. I have to, I will get eight. I will as much as possible. Get eight hours of sleep. If I do not the next day, I'm, I'm, I'm as quiet as you will ever hear me. Cause I don't feel good when I don't get enough sleep. Even one day I'm not getting enough sleep. I don't feel good the next day.

Like I could, I could wake up after three, four hours and perform and be, you know, do all the things, but I'm going to be slower. Reaction time is going to be slower. My eyebrows are going to be not filled in. [00:46:00] It's not going to be good. And a lot of us are not getting the sleep that we need. Some people will say, well, I only need four hours bullshit.

You need at least six. You need at least six, because the REM sleep that you need, that REM sleep, that the good sleep, the good stuff right there, it takes at least, I want to say, two hours to get there. And so, and this is not scientific, but I probably picked that up somewhere, but whatever. But it takes a while to get there.

That initial sleep, that's not REM sleep. You don't get to REM sleep until later. And so that's the good sleep that you need to be in that, that deep sleep to really feel rested and refreshed when you wake up. And if you only get. You know, two hours of REM when you could get six, [00:47:00] imagine you could have six and you only get two or you only get one.

Imagine how shitty you're going to feel the next day. You're not going to feel good. And imagine going day after day after day like that. What's going to happen? A lot of people develop depression, but they don't notice it. They don't notice that their mood changes. Their inability to control their mood is because they are not sleeping well.

And this decline in their mood is from them not getting enough good sleep. You're getting only one or two hours of sleep or three sleep. And I know in college, some days I was not getting the full eight hours. I was lucky if I got six hours of sleep in college and law school was the same. Now I get a lot better sleep because I have prioritized it.

I have priority. I had such trouble sleeping for years, years. [00:48:00] I would get maybe four hours of sleep, maybe four like that. I would never get more than four hours of sleep for years. And yeah, I developed all of these things. I had depression, anxiety. Obesity. I was crabby all the time. I was not in a good mood all the time.

But my problem was that I couldn't relax to fall asleep. It wasn't that I wanted to be up. It's because I could never relax to fall asleep. And a lot of adults. Especially if you have kids have this problem because you're constantly thinking about all of the things you have to do the next day and you're thinking about your appointments that you have and your tasks that you have to do and where you have to take the kids and things you got to do.

And if you're a professional, you also have this problem and you're thinking about all of the stuff you have to do for working at the next day. So much so that you cannot fall asleep. You cannot relax. to fall asleep. Your body has to relax to fall asleep. I always know when I'm, I'm getting tired because my [00:49:00] body gets really cold.

That's one of the things your body does to help you sleep is your temperature drops, your body temperature drops a little. And you'll notice you get chilly. Ooh. I know I'm not going to sleep if I'm still warm within 10 minutes of getting in my bed. And I know that I probably need to take a nap if I'm sitting somewhere and all of a sudden just out of nowhere, my body temperature starts to drop and I'm getting cold.

I'm like, Oh. Time for a nap, old girl. I do. I sometimes nap during the day. I need it. You have to listen to your body. But the sleep thing, the sleep component is so important.

And another thing I found, when I wake up, and people are going to hate this so much, when I wake up, the first thing that I do, the very first thing, is I expose my eyes to sunlight. I know it's kind of hard to [00:50:00] find here in Northeast Ohio this time of year, but I expose my eyes to light. The first thing. My eyes have been closed and I've been in the dark for, you know, eight hours.

The first thing I need to do is get some sunlight onto my eyes, onto my face to awaken, to re, to feel refreshed, to feel rejuvenated, to be like, Hey, it's time to wake up. So my body knows it's time to be awake. You know that circadian rhythm that, that I, I saw that commercial where the blind guy is talking about how his circadian rhythm is off because he's blind.

He can't see light or dark. All he sees is dark. He doesn't see light. So he doesn't know when to wake up, and he doesn't know when to go to sleep. But you, you put that sunlight on your eyes, and your eyes, your brain knows now, Okay, time to be awake. Time to be alert. Time to be awake. But also, I drink water in the morning.

I have [00:51:00] to, to take my pills, but, I drink water in the morning. Put sunlight on my eyes, thank God. Got to. Got to do all of these things. This is part of the routine. This is part of the routine of me taking care of myself because I'm an African American woman living in the United States and we know that the top five killers of black women and black men my age, one of them is heart disease.

The other is diabetes. Heart disease and diabetes. Strokes, that's another killer cancer. We know a lot of these things are preventable cancer, not so much, but there are some cancers that are preventable, but we know that the things that are killing us the most are things that we can prevent preventable illnesses.

And so anything that I can do to prevent these things, I'm [00:52:00] going to do it. That's self care. That's part of loving myself. Another part of loving yourself. Setting boundaries, establishing healthy limits in relationships and situations to protect your emotional and mental health. Brene Brown talks about this in her book.

And It seems to be an it word the last few years. Oh, my boundaries. You're violating my boundaries. But boundaries are for you and you only unless you're in a corporate setting and then you're, you know, boundaries are for you, the employees, but personally. Boundaries are for you and you only in your personal life.

You set boundaries for yourself, but you also, if you're raising kids, okay, yeah, kids have to have boundaries.

Kids need routine. So you set boundaries for them in that respect, but [00:53:00] you personally, the adult for you, boundaries are for you, you state how you expect to be treated and what you will not tolerate when it comes to you.

We cannot accept ourselves or others when we do not practice this level of compassion, understanding what I won't tolerate. And that is, for instance, people showing up to my house uninvited, I absolutely do not tolerate that. I don't tolerate it. And people have had such a hard time with this. To this day, to this MFN day, but I don't waiver. That's the thing about boundaries. When you set them, you cannot waiver. People will not take you seriously if you waiver when it comes to your boundaries. You have to hold people accountable also when they violate your boundaries, when they exceed them.

You have to hold them [00:54:00] accountable with consequences or they will, they will learn to ignore them in the future. They'll never respect you and your boundaries once they see that you don't enforce them. But in doing so and enforcing boundaries and giving people consequences, you're not blaming or shaming them.

You can find a way to communicate these things to people and enforce your boundaries and hold people responsible without humiliating them. Having boundaries doesn't mean you get to humiliate people and shame them because maybe they didn't know. But if you communicate and they know and they violate them, hey, you know what?

I'm going to have to do X, Y, and Z from now on because you did this and I have asked you not to do that when it comes to me and you did it and that's it. You don't have to go, you know what you stupid fucking bitch. I told you that I don't like [00:55:00] it when da da da da da da. No, you don't have to do that. You don't have to make people feel bad for violating your boundaries.

Maybe they didn't know or maybe you have allowed them to do it multiple times and so they don't, they don't take you seriously anymore. In which case, either you need to cut them off or you need to put some balls in your sack and handle your business. Another component of self love and the self love equation, this is number four, right?

Number four, we've had number three, setting boundaries. Number two is self care. Number one is self acceptance. Number four is positive self talk, positive self talk. I am, I have been so bad at this. And now I'm, I'm practicing mindfulness. So I'm aware of when I'm doing this to myself. Like if [00:56:00] I do, I do a lot of DIY stuff, you know, I'm a homeowner.

You gotta do something DIY. If I, if I screw something up, I'll go, girl, you are so stupid. And then I'm stopping that. I'm stopping that. I'm not stupid because I made a mistake. You're not dumb because you made a mistake. You're not dumb because you made a mistake and you're not ignorant because you made a mistake.

You're not foolish because you made a mistake. You just made a mistake. It doesn't define you. And this is what I've had to learn is that my mistakes do not define me. Don't use your mistakes to define you. Have to cultivate a positive inner dialogue by challenging negative thoughts and replacing them with affirming and encouraging statements for people who struggle with body image and confidence.[00:57:00]

I was one of those people. This is a biggie because negative thoughts, right? Negative thoughts become words and words become actions. What you think about yourself becomes what you say to yourself and becomes how you treat yourself outwardly. You have to identify negative thoughts and question their validity and accuracy.

Now does it sound, Aiyana, does it sound logical that you're stupid? You just, you just screwed something in the wrong way. Doesn't mean you're stupid. I mean, you know what stupidity is, girl. I mean, come on. You have to question the validity and accuracy of these statements. Are these thoughts based in facts or are they distorted by negative biases?

Challenging negative thoughts helps to create a more balanced and realistic perspective. And you can [00:58:00] challenge these negative thoughts. You can build positive self talk by practicing self compassion. Treating yourself with kindness and understanding, especially during challenging times instead of harsh criticism, practice self compassion by acknowledging your humanity and embracing your imperfections.

I want to be healthier. I want to feel better for me, not I'm fat and disgusting and I really need to lose 10 pounds so that people will like me. If I don't lose weight, then my husband's going to leave me.

 I instead say, I want to be healthier. I want to feel better for me. My doctor is saying that there are, you know, some concerning things on my blood tests and I need to get ahead of this. This is when you need to get ahead of something right here, or this is when you need to reverse something, but you want to do it.

Because you feel for yourself, you're practicing kindness and understanding of yourself and you want to be good [00:59:00] to yourself. So you acknowledge your humanity and you embrace your imperfections, but you don't harshly criticize yourself. And then you focus on solutions rather than dwelling on your problems.

Positive self talk involves shifting the focus towards finding solutions and taking and taking proactive steps. This will help you. Approach challenges with a constructive mindset. For instance, I want to be healthier. I want to feel better for me. So I am going to increase my activity every day. And then maybe say, you know, I'll increase my activity by 10 minutes every day.

And then after a month you increase it by. 20 minutes every day. So now maybe you're at 30 minutes of activity daily or even five times daily. But you not, or even five times a week, you're at 30 minutes, five times a week [01:00:00] now and you, you didn't, you, you slowly implemented it. You increased it slowly so that you really didn't even notice you were doing it and now it's part of your routine and now you're doing it.

And after a while you notice, Hey, I can breathe better. Hey, my, my joints, they feel better. My muscles, like I'm developing some muscles here and there. I feel stronger. I feel stronger because it is about how you Feel about yourself, but you have to develop an opinion of yourself that is good, that is healthy.

And one of those ways is through positive self talk. Positive self talk includes of course, words of encouragement and support. It's about being your own cheerleader and acknowledging personal efforts and progress instead of saying. I will do this. Say, I am doing this. Say it. I [01:01:00] am doing this versus I wonder if I can do this.

I probably can't do this. I'm not talented enough to accomplish this. Many of us wake up every day after going to sleep the night before and both times we're worried. Dissatisfied that we did not do enough. Remember at the top of the, the, the episode, I said, I am enough. I am enough. But there are some of us who go to bed saying, I didn't do enough.

I'm not enough. I didn't accomplish enough. And then we wake up with that same mindset. I'm not enough. I didn't do enough. I didn't accomplish enough. Instead of saying I didn't do enough, or I didn't accomplish enough, say. No matter what, what didn't get done today, what I didn't finish today. I am enough. I am enough.

You have to tell yourself that you are enough or you will not believe it. You will constantly think [01:02:00] that there is more for you to be and do, and so you will never be satisfied with who you are in that moment. You will never be satisfied with yourself. If you're constantly operating from a place of, I am not enough.

We, a lot of us do that. A lot of us operate from the place of, I am not enough because we look around and, and we see, we don't see the things. That we think we should have, or we didn't get our entire list of tasks done for the day and we think, oh gosh, I'm a failure. I didn't finish this, da, da, da, da da.

Instead of, I'll get to it tomorrow. I'll finish it tomorrow in Shawla, I'll finish it tomorrow. I couldn't finish it tonight because I only had a certain amount of time, and that's that. We don't internalize that and go, well, it's because if I had, if I was smarter, [01:03:00] I would have been able to do this in two hours instead of five.

And so because I'm not smarter and it took me five hours, it's going to take me another 10 hours because again, I'm dumb and I'm stupid. , Stop,

stop. And I know this is because no one taught you like no one taught me how to talk to myself. Is it that I am the most important person in my life? No, because someone else was always more important and you are always in a state of having to please someone else and how they felt about you was the most important truth about yourself.

So you accepted other people's opinions and judgments as the opinions you hold of yourself. And so now your inclination is to talk negatively about yourself. And that comes from that history of, you know, abuse, trauma, the history of narcissistic parents or caregivers.

[01:04:00] You were not raised in a healthy and loving environment. And so you never learned to be healthy and love yourself. and develop positive thoughts and positive attitudes about yourself.

But when you operate from a place of worthiness and saying, As Brene Brown says in her book, you are worthy now, right now, as you are. You don't need to change your face or your clothes or lose weight or get muscles or bigger breasts or a different job or a new car or house or do anything differently.

You are enough now. Do not shrink yourself so that others feel comfortable. But if we say this to ourselves every day, I am not good enough. We will believe it. And we, when we believe we finally gathered all the things that make us enough, that others will accept us and love us, and that's what's [01:05:00] most important being accepted or liked or loved by others.

And when they don't, we feel rejected and we internalize that. And we believe it's because we are not enough because we didn't do something right because we didn't dress right or look right or speak right. And if you grew up in a conservative religious environment like I did. Acting right. Speaking right.

Dressing right. There's a right way to do everything, but you can never be totally right is what you don't understand is it's not, it's what, it's not what people encouraged. They always encourage that you could be striving. You're always striving to do the right thing, but that striving is so it wears you down.

What you have to understand is that you're never going to be completely right about everything. If your intentions are good, you're fine. If your intentions are good, you're fine. If you're [01:06:00] running away from the bad stuff and running to the good stuff, you're fine. You don't have to work yourself to death to worship God.

So why are you doing this to yourself? Why are you doing this to yourself? It's because we think if we're perfect that we will please, we'll please God, we'll please our parents, we'll please our kids, we'll please the people that we're, we work for, but you can never be perfect. And so when you see that you can never be perfect, when you, when you have.

Faults. When you do things wrong, when you make a mistake, you internalize it. And so then you talk to yourself negatively and you don't encourage yourself. You don't love yourself. You don't believe that you are enough. You never believe that you are enough. And when you never believe that you are enough, you don't think that you are worthy.

And when you don't operate from a place of worthiness, then you do not love yourself. If you say to yourself and believe you are worthy now, right [01:07:00] now, as you are, You don't need to change your face, your clothes or lose weight or get muscles or bigger breasts or a different job or a new car, new house or do anything differently.

You are enough now and you do not shrink yourself so that others feel comfortable with you because you are enough now as you are, as you are. And if you want to do all these other things, do them because they will enhance your life. Not because you believe that this will make you, that this will legitimize you, that this will make you a person worthy of loving, worthy of being worthy of friendship, worthy of kinship.

If you want to lose weight, it's because you believe you need to be healthier and you're doing this for yourself. If you want to change something about your body, change something about your house, do it because it [01:08:00] pleases you. It benefits you. Not because you're thinking, okay, if I do this, if I add a pool to the house, then the kids will be happy.

And if the kids are happy, then I'm happy. No, don't do that. Don't, please don't sink thousands of dollars into getting a pool so that people will be happy with you.

But there are people who do this, they go into debt for their families. They're going to debt to prove to their families that they got it. They go into debt to prove to their neighbors that they got it, to show people up, to make themselves feel superior or on par, you know, keeping up with the Joneses.

That saying, that's a true statement. People will really work themselves to death and put themselves in a deep hole to make it look like they're living the life that either they have pretended to have or that they see that other [01:09:00] people have and they want to enjoy. Nobody's doing anything for themselves.

We're all doing all this shit for other people. Look at all of the things we are doing for other people. It's madness. It's madness. It has to stop. It has to stop. It has to stop. Or you will not be long on this earth, honey. You won't, you won't. People develop stress from these things and stress can lead to these preventable illnesses.

Hypertension. And when you have hypertension, you're in danger of developing heart disease. You're in danger of developing stroke. You can die from this. Stop it. Stop it. You are enough now. You are enough now. Number five in the equation is mindfulness. [01:10:00] Mindfulness. Being present in the moment and cultivating awareness of thoughts and feelings without judgment of yourself.

 You take a balanced approach to negative emotions so that feelings are neither suppressed nor exaggerated. We cannot ignore our pain and feel compassion for it at the same time. You cannot say, Oh, I feel so bad for what I'm going through, but also ignore what you're going through.

You have to deal with pain. You have to, if you had a headache, you take some Advil. and be done with it. I, if I get, you know, I get really bad menstrual cramps. I take those ibuprofen and I deal with it and I'm done. I, I treat my emotional pain the same way I treat my emotional pain the same way I deal with it.

I deal with things. I've always been the person who has to deal with stuff, who has to resolve. I'm a [01:11:00] solutions oriented person. I'm a resolution oriented person. But the problem is I wasn't. I was allowing the things to keep happening. I would resolve it and then open up the wound again and let it bleed again and then have to deal with cleaning it up again, resolving it again.

We cannot ignore our pain and feel compassion for it at the same time, but we also cannot repeat the same. things that are causing our pain and then not deal with the pain and then feel sorry for the pain at the same time. Mindfulness requires that we not over identify with thoughts and feelings so that we are caught up and swept away by negativity.

There are people, yes, people who live in a negative spot, who are pain addicts, pain addicts. They are addicted to feeling pain, [01:12:00] not just physical pain, not, I'm not talking about S and M. I'm talking about people who will, who love to sit in shit. Because it's what they've always known. It's where they feel comfortable, it's where they thrive.

They thrive in that. If you were raised in that kind of environment, if you were, like I was raised in trauma and abuse, you, that feels good! It feels good! I don't know how to, to, to I don't know how to exist outside of that. I don't know how, when things are not chaotic. I don't, what do I, what do I do when everything is normal and everything's good and everything is fine?

Alhamdulillah, I'm finally, finally at a place where I don't do that anymore. I don't thrive in pain. I don't want pain. I run from pain, but I also deal with it when it comes up. I deal with it. I deal with it, but. There's some people who are addicted to it and so they purposely fuck [01:13:00] up everything all the time.

They keep reopening those wounds because that pain feels good. You don't love yourself. If you're doing that, if you are a pain addict, you do not love yourself. You don't. How could you possibly love yourself and want yourself to experience pain and be in constant pain?

How could you? Mindfulness encourages accepting things as they are without attempting to change or control them. It involves acknowledging and allowing thoughts and emotions to come and go without getting entangled in them.

Mindfulness involves intentionally bringing attention to the thoughts, feelings, sensations, and surroundings in the present, being present in the moment, fostering a nonreactive and nonjudgmental awareness. Mindfulness encourages people to be fully engaged in the current moment, [01:14:00] paying attention to their thoughts, emotions, and sensory experiences without dwelling on the past or worrying about the future.

Have you had this before? When you're sitting somewhere, this is especially for people who have PTSD, when you're sitting somewhere and just out of nowhere, a negative thought comes up about something that happened to you, something painful, and it just consumes you and you can't function. You can't function for the rest of the day or the week or the month.

And you allow more negative thoughts to come in. Once you allow one in, it's like the fucking, uh, it's like a horror movie. Once you allow one ghost in, one vampire in, they all want to come in. They all want to sit down with you. And so you have to stop it. You have to stop. This is one of the techniques my therapist would always tell me, is that when those negative thoughts come up, you have to hold up a stop sign.

You have to [01:15:00] stop them. You have to stop them because they will take over. And when one gets in, all of the other ones will get in. And then you're talking to yourself negatively. And then you're not practicing self care. You're not practicing mindfulness. You're not practicing self acceptance. You have to deal with it.

You cannot let it take over you, however, and you cannot judge yourself for being in pain, for having this pain. If you judge yourself, then you're not going to be able to do anything about it. You're going to think, Oh, this is my fault. I did it. And maybe it is your fault, but. That doesn't mean you don't, you aren't worthy.

It doesn't mean you are not enough. It doesn't mean you are beyond help. People think if they did something to themselves, then they don't deserve to be helped out of it. That's not true. None of us is beyond help, except people who don't want it. And you can't help somebody who doesn't want to be helped.

That is the truth. The next [01:16:00] step, and there's just, don't worry. There's just two more. Number six and number seven, there are seven components to self love. Number six is forgiveness. And here is where you will exercise the greatest amount of patience that you have on your journey. To loving yourself, forgiveness, letting go of self blame and forgiving yourself for mistakes or shortcomings.

Brene Brown says in her book that practicing self love means learning how to trust ourselves to treat ourselves with respect and to be kind and affectionate towards ourselves. And as I say, you cannot do that. If you are hard on yourself for mistakes that you've made or for not fulfilling someone else's dreams for you, or not having all of the things in the trappings you imagined you would have at age 40 when you were seven years old, you have to [01:17:00] practice self compassion again, self compassion, self compassion, self compassion.

You have to identify and challenge any negative or self critical thoughts. You have to replace them with more balanced. Thoughts and constructive perspectives. Positive self talk comes into play here. It plays a crucial role in the forgiveness process. Forgive yourself because shame traps you and may make you engage in self destructive behaviors.

 Forgive yourself because shame traps you and may make you engage in self destructive behaviors because you feel like a bad person. Cause you did a bad thing and you feel unworthy because you lack certain accolades or achievements, even if they aren't for you. And because you feel that shame because you cannot forgive yourself, you act out.

Ayana: I'm bad. So I might, I may as well do bad things to myself. [01:18:00] This is when people sometimes get into alcoholism and substance abuse and engaging in, you know, even sexual behaviors that are self destructive or they engage in high risk behaviors that are self destructive that could kill them. You act out. I feel bad.

I am bad. So I may as well do some bad shit. We have to recognize and accept responsibility for our actions and our decisions so that we feel we even require forgiveness. We have to recognize and accept responsibility for our actions or decisions that we feel require forgiveness. Right. We have to understand that these things require forgiveness.

Other people can say it to us, but if we don't get it, then we are not going to forgive ourselves. [01:19:00] You need to forgive yourself for the things that happened to you when you were a kid that were beyond your control. Yeah, you do. You have to forgive yourself for that. I give you permission if you're looking for it, it's okay to forgive yourself for things that happened to you that were beyond your control that happened to you were when you were a kid when you weren't being protected when you weren't being looked after properly when you were being abused.

And so now you can't be happy, forgive yourself and be happy. Reflect on your values and goals. Take ownership without excessive self blame and then consider how your actions align with your core beliefs and use this reflection to guide your future choices. Make better choices. Make better choices. Make better choices when you forgive yourself and you're mindful and you understand [01:20:00] yourself and you're practicing self compassion and understanding and self acceptance, you will make better choices for yourself.

You will, you just will. You won't want to make bad choices. You won't have the addictive behaviors. You won't have the, the, the bad relationships because you're going to recognize when it gets bad and when it's time for you to get out. You're not going to want to hurt yourself. The last, number seven. Whew!

You know, the thing about therapy is, you always go over that one hour anyway, so this is fine. I know I always go over my hour. Shoot! And I'm on time too, and I still go over my hour because we talk. We talk. We resolve things. But finally, number seven. Is gratitude, gratitude, focusing on and appreciating positive aspects of one's [01:21:00] self and one's life, cultivate and know joy when we see our cup as always half empty and race to make it full again, we operate from a place of scarcity versus a place of gratitude for what we currently have. And in her book, Brene Brown goes over the myth of scarcity. And I love this because it makes so much sense. Not only because it makes sense, but because It's actually what a lot of us do. We think, again, this goes back to us thinking that we are not, uh, not enough believing.

We are not enough saying we are not enough that we don't have enough. So this is from, the author's name is Lynn twist and she wrote a book called the soul of money in this book. She addresses the myth of scarcity. [01:22:00] She writes for me and for many of us, our first waking thought of the day is. I didn't get enough sleep. The next one is I don't have enough time. Whether true or not, that thought of not enough occurs to us automatically before we think before we even think to question or examine it.

We spend most of the hours of the days of our lives hearing, explaining, complaining, or worrying about what we don't have enough of. We don't have enough exercise. We don't have enough work. We don't have enough profits. We don't have enough power. We don't have enough wilderness. We don't have enough weekends.

Of course, we don't have enough money ever. We're not thin enough. We're not smart enough. We're not pretty enough or fit enough or educated or successful enough or rich enough. Ever before we even sit up in bed before our feet touch the floor, [01:23:00] we're already inadequate, already behind, already losing, already lacking something.

And by the time we go to bed at night, our minds race with a litany of what we didn't get. or didn't get done that day. When we go to sleep, we go to sleep burdened by those thoughts and wake up to the reverie of lack. What begins as a simple expression of the hurried life or even the challenged life grows into the great justification for an unfulfilled life.

And so when we do not operate from a space of gratitude, we feel unfulfilled and that becomes our life. We feel unfulfilled. That's it. That is the sum of our life. And that is a fucking deep pit right there. I couldn't imagine. But that's what I was living. That's the life [01:24:00] that I was living. An unfulfilled life.

I was constantly chasing fulfillment. Because my cup was, my cup had to be full. It had to be. I don't do none of this half, you know, empty shit. No, no, no, no, no. I don't do this. Uh, I don't, I, I don't do that. I always saw, I always thought that I had to have the, I had to have the husband and the job and the career and the kids and the house and the suburbs and I had to have all of these things because number one, this is what I've always wanted for my life since I was a little girl.

And number two, The people around me, this is what they had, this is what I saw growing up. People had houses and husband and wife and mommy and daddy and kids. And in my community, everybody was married, everybody was living life and they were traveling and married and whether they were happy or not, I didn't know.

But this is what I saw. And I thought, Oh, that's it. That's what I need to feel fulfilled. [01:25:00] That's what I need right there. I need all of those things. And so I was never happy with. having just what I had and when I lost everything, like I've lost everything several times, I felt like the lowest piece of human excrement.

I internalized it and I thought it was because of who I am and what I. gone through and what I'd done and what I experienced and all of the trauma that I experienced it. I thought, Oh, well, of course this makes sense because I suck as a human. I'm a bad person. I'm, I'm awful. I'm ugly. I'm dumb. I'm all these negative things, negative, negative, negative, negative, negative.

Just absolutely. I did not operate from a place of worthiness. I had no compassion for myself, no understanding, no kindness, none of that, none of it, none of it. But then there would be people in my life who would say, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's because you didn't, uh, pray that one [01:26:00] prayer that day on that particular day, or it's because, you know, look at the way you dress, look at the way you act, look at where you, you know, hang out, look at who your friends are, you don't go to the masjid, look at the little, but it was always my fault.

I was always being blamed. And I was internalizing it, even if it wasn't my fault, it was my fault. Even if I wasn't to blame, I was to blame. I was going to make sure I was to blame. I was going to make sure I felt that pain and that I felt it over and over and over again. And so I would constantly chase the fulfillment.

Okay, if I have these things again, then my life will be okay again. Then people will accept me and then I will be happy and then people will look at me and go, Oh, look, she put it back together. She put the puzzle back together. She found the missing pieces. No, no. Who I was was enough. Even though I was probably emotionally and psychologically unhealthy, I was still enough.

I [01:27:00] just needed to tweak some things. I was still enough, but I never, I didn't realize this. I didn't realize this, that I was enough, that I was worthy of anything, that I should be happy for what I have. Because I, even though I didn't at sometimes I had very little. And I was, you know, sleeping on a busted up bunk bed in my parents house as a lawyer.

Or I had to, you know, all the times I had to go back home because I had lost my home or I'd lost my job and I had, you know, a baby, I was still worthy. I was still enough. If I had thought that then, if I had believed that then what I have not chased any of the things that I was still chasing, there's no way, but you can't do the what ifs.

You can't do the what ifs because everything that happened happened and happened for a reason and it's done and it's in the past and that's it. Now you have to move [01:28:00] on and do better. You have to move on and do better. And you have to be grateful. You have to have gratitude. When we practice gratitude and operate from a place of joy, then we can find joy in anything.

Small things, even smaller things, big things, medium sized things. You, you know, you get a free beverage at the, uh, the fast food place. Oh my God. Yay. I got a free beverage. And that might make your day and that is wonderful. There is nothing, there's no victory, no joy that's not worth celebrating. We don't have to wait for something big to happen to be happy.

We can find joy in the ordinary, in the daily and celebrate victories that are wins that are just wins even for us. And when you operate from that place, then you are never. not enough.[01:29:00]

And this is what I want people to remember and understand. We are all worthy of love. And most importantly, we are worthy of the love we give to others. We are worthy of the love that we give to others. We are worthy of love. We are worthy period. But we have to be brave and courageous. We have to be brave and courageous.

We have to develop self love. And this is an ongoing process, may involve self reflection, personal growth, intentional efforts to prioritize our own well being. It requires us to be vulnerable, take risks, accept. Accept imperfection and cultivate authenticity. It is an essential component of mental wellbeing and contributes to building [01:30:00] resilience in the face of life's challenges.

And as Brene Brown states in her book, loving and accepting ourselves are the ultimate acts of courage in a society that says, put yourself last. Self love and self acceptance are almost revolutionary. You can't put that on a candy heart. And if you do not love yourself, then you cannot love anyone else.

And this has been Ayanna Explains It All brought to you by Facts, Figures, and Love. Take care.

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