S1 E22: Self-Love, Inner Dialogue & the Practice of Compassion | A Collective Conversation Part 1

So Kaylee, why don't we start off with you?

So when I define self-love, I think about my connection to myself and what that looks like.

I take it as a look into myself in the mirror, into my eyes, and how do I feel looking at me? And what is me? And how do I feel about sitting with me? Is it uncomfortable? Is it weird? What thoughts or emotions or feelings arise when I sit with that that raw version of myself.

And so for me, I've gone through many phases of what that looked like.

And there was times where I looked in the mirror and hated that.

And it was so uncomfortable.

And now I can actually look at that part of myself and be like, wow, I actually love you.

And It's taken miles to get there, but the journey has really consisted of picking apart my beliefs about myself and what is uncomfortable or what things were telling myself that wasn't true.

And I think I've also had this pre, you know, understanding that, you know, if you were to love yourself, that means that you're full of yourself.

And I've had to really sit with how people kind of see that.

It's like, oh, you love yourself.

Like they have this kind of pre-decided, definition and i'm like no that's not what it means at all so it really interests me to dig deeper into this so people can learn from that and rewire that

yeah yeah jasmine how about you how would you define self-love yeah

very very similarly um i think that self-love to me is an evolving relationship and that changed from the way that i have seen it in the past where i almost thought of it as this similar to what kaylee said like a cockiness or overconfidence and then also like a toxic positivity kind of way where self-love required everything to be going really well and required required this kind of vision of yourself but what I've reframed it to now I would say is more like an evolving relationship so self-love can be in in the dark parts in the challenging areas in the areas that I want to change and so I've kind of evolved a relationship of self-love where I can meet myself where I'm at, which requires lots of journaling, lots of inner practice.

And so that's what I would say, that's how I would describe it now, as like an evolving wave of a relationship with yourself.

Interesting.

Megan, how about you?

Similarly with the wave metaphor you used, Jasmine, for me, it's lately become the harmony of the darkness and the light side of things and being... comfortable and confident with both sides of it instead of associating good and bad and you know it's it's neutral it is what it is and it's more about how I respond to myself and what's happening and coming back to kindness and compassion and integrity and authenticity with it and myself um

Yeah, and I love that because you guys spoke of the ego, and I love how having this concept of self-love can seem very pompous and very, like, how dare you take the time to have this self-love and that vacillating kind of accepting kind of the valleys and the hills as well.