📝 Practical self love guide

My journey through the wilderness of self-doubt led me to an oasis of self-love that I had never imagined possible. On the Hot Genius podcast, I had the privilege of sharing this transformative adventure, unveiling the 'confession box method' that became my sanctuary for honest self-reflection. Self-love is more than a feel-good phrase; it's a series of actionable habits that can alter the trajectory of your life – and I can't wait for you to join me in discovering just how powerful they can be. We'll explore the pivotal lessons learned under the guidance of a wise youth worker, whose insights on personal responsibility helped me to evolve from a place of blame to one of ownership and action.

Expect revelations about how a shift from scattered lists to a unified digital system revolutionized my productivity and how swapping social media rants for reflective writing not only soothed my soul but also created ripples of support and community. The discussion will take you through the importance of intentional planning and the art of emotional regulation for personal growth. Through my narrative, I illuminate the ongoing development of these skills and their undeniable influence on not just my own effectiveness, but how they can be harnessed to transform your life too. Tune in for a dose of real talk and practical strategies that promise to elevate your self-love game.

Chapters

• 0:00 Practical Levels of Self Love
• 6:32 Choosing Intentional Planning & Emotional Regulation

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

What's up guys? Welcome back to another episode of the Hot Genius podcast. I'm really keen on today's episode. We're gonna go over traits and personality traits as well as habits, I guess, of what will help us to love ourselves more. These are the things that I developed over time that really, really helped me love myself. Of course, there's so many different moving parts when it comes to self love. It's not just a physical act, it's not just an emotion, it's the holistic element of it. But this episode is focusing mainly on the practical levels of self love. So we're gonna go through the 15 that I've got here. We're gonna just do, yeah, we'll go over 15 of them and each of them are gonna have like a mini training just to give us a really cool overview and just to get your I guess creativity juices flowing and to see what areas in your life you want to strengthen and want to trade in. So let's get into it.

Speaker 1: 1:04

So, number one self honesty over self fluttery. So with this one, I love it. I love it so much because if you had to ask me what is the most like if we could only choose one trait or one habit, just one, and we couldn't have anything else, that is gonna create the biggest impact in your life. If you had to ask me what that one thing was, absolutely I would say, without hesitation self honesty. Self honesty changed my damn life. I did this by accident. I figured this out by accident and as the years went on I realized that it was a whole thing. But the way that I accidentally discovered this was that since I was very young, I've always been like a journaler, but when I was a kid it was more like diary entries, and I found that every single time I was in my diary, I just was so easily able to be really honest with myself, especially as I got older, and I didn't just like to write. I loved to read back what I wrote and I loved having this experience of whoa, like, this freedom of, like you know, confessing you know, all these things that I wouldn't tell anyone else, and the freedom it gave me and the awareness it gave me that I look back now and I owe a lot of that to why I was able to be like pretty wise at such a young age. Right, it was self honesty, and it wasn't until I got older that I realized that, you know, self honesty and diary entries turned into shadow work before I knew what shadow work was and I just realized that every single time I was honest about myself, everything changed for me and I stopped focusing on self flattery, you know, and just saying things to buff up my ego and I started to focus more again on doing the uncomfortable things and having really deep and honest conversations with myself.

Speaker 1: 2:58

And I developed this method, this method called the confession box method, and I teach this in the academy the sim academy, self image mastery academy because it is just such a powerful tool, creating this safe space of within yourself. It would just pen to paper, knowing that no one's ever going to read it, and just really saying things that you don't have to pressure yourself to take action on. It really can change the game for you. So I just wanted to share that. When you can truly be honest with yourself and also release the pressure of having to do something about that honesty, everything can change for you, because the bravest act of self love again is self honesty. If you can be honest with yourself and realize that love, self love doesn't always feel good right, then everything can change for you, because I believe that most of us know how to love ourselves, because we know how to love other people. And if we can do that, it's just a matter of understanding and having awareness of what self love can feel like, and one of those things, like I said, is self honesty. So that's number one.

Speaker 1: 4:03

Number two is personal responsibility over blame. I don't know about you, but I was so victim for so many years. Right, it wasn't until I decided to truly go, and a very long adventure did not happen overnight. A very long adventure of practicing radical personal responsibility and release blame, thanks to my year 11 therapist well, he was my youth worker, but he was a therapist as well and I'm telling you right now this is how we are powerful. We become powerful when we can practice personal responsibility and let go of blame for good. You know, because the biggest act of, I guess, happiness and being in control of your life, it comes from its shadow counterpart. You could say it's not even shadow and it's being responsible for every inch of your life. You know, and if we can practice and cultivate personal responsibility and we can just trade that in for blame no more blame, let's throw blame at the window and really take your time in mastering this, then self-love can become something that is even more accessible to us. Yeah, that's number two personal responsibility over blame.

Speaker 1: 5:18

Number three decisiveness over options. So I used to be someone who maybe it's ADHD in me but I was obsessed with having options and constant access to possibilities. You know, I was a little bit of like a possibilities whore and it wasn't until I realized that that's why I was so imbalanced in my masculine feminine energy, you know, and I decided to cultivate decisiveness, which is really, you know, the positive side of masculine energy. And when I was able to let go of the fact that I needed so many possibilities and options to keep me stimulated, when I just let that go and I got good at grounded and neutral energy and almost borderline boring, getting comfortable with that stability, let me tell you, I was able to love myself and, like, in a way that I've never been able to like, decisiveness really hit different. It made me feel really in control and really balanced within myself. So, decisiveness over options, slash possibilities.

Speaker 1: 6:32

Number four intentional planning over messy lists. So again, I don't know about you, but me in my messy lists, like I used to have like what, no shit, 80 different to-do lists in different places. I'd have them in my phone, I'd have them in a notebook, I'd have them, you know, in a piece of paper somewhere, I'd have them on a post-it note, like they were just everywhere, you know, and it was my little way of, you know, trying to be organized and stuff like that. But really it was just me being anxious and anxious that I was going to forget something, and it wasn't intentional, it was just a mess, you know, and it wasn't. Until I really challenged myself to practice restraint and impulse control, where I would focus more on being intentional in my planning, did everything change for me, you know, and I decided to keep all of my you could say lists in one spot. I used to be like really old school and do everything on paper, and then I traded that in for like just digital, and I'm still learning this.

Speaker 1: 7:37

By the way, all of these traits are things that I I develop, I'm still developing, so I have the foundation of it. Some things I'm better at than others, but I'm always working on them, always strengthening each muscle, right. But I'm serious, like when we have intentional planning, and how I do that is I give myself. Instead of messy lists everywhere, I create a brain dumping space as its own thing, a brain dumping space where I just let out everything on my mind and I give myself that permission to make it a mess, right, and I just write next to it like permission to make a mess. But after I do this again, keeping it in the same place from here, I then create intentional planning.

Speaker 1: 8:19

I create more structure where I have like a yearly to-do list, where it's intentional, it's not just random shit, random ideas that I don't actually want to do. That it was just like you know, sometimes you have a passing thought and that's all it needs to be. You know it's learning how to you know differentiate between that and not having not being an ideas whore, either right, or being greedy with ideas and stuff. It was getting really clear on what was important to me, as opposed to just wanting to collect every idea possible, you know, and then never executing. So when I traded that in, everything changed for me as well. Like I just became, like productive isn't even the word, like I don't think you understand, like my level of productivity, like I'm not saying it doubled, like I'm not being dramatic here like I would say 20x'd, like no fucking shit. 20x'd, like 20 times more productive, right, that's it insane, you know? Absolutely can't it. Is it intentional? Planning over messy lists?

Speaker 1: 9:28

Number five is emotional regulation over venting. Oh, I love this one. Okay, I gotta tell you a quick story about this one. So, whatever, again. Hmm, okay, I'd say this was such a long time ago I can't even believe so. I think it was in 2014,. It's been 10 years, right? 10 years ago it was New Year's Eve, okay, I still remember it like it was yesterday, and that's when I first started New Year's resolutions, yeah, and I said you know what? I'm not just gonna make a resolution, I'm actually gonna keep it. I'm not gonna be part of that statistic of, you know, 98% of people you know fail their New Year's resolution within the second week. I'm like, nah, that's not gonna be me, I'm gonna commit. And I did, and I never looked back, by the way, and this was my resolution 10 years ago.

Speaker 1: 10:17

My resolution was so I used to like, always like vent. Obviously, 10 years ago, at the time recording this, I was 18, because I'm 28 now I was still my late teens, right and so I would vent a lot on Facebook, and if I wasn't just venting on Facebook, I was just a venter and I was an emotional dumper and I told myself from here on out, every single time I have the urge to write a Facebook status where I'm like emotionally dumping or complaining or playing victim or something like that, I'm going to actually write a post. So I opened up, I started like a Facebook sort of group where I'm used it as a blog. Right, I'm gonna trade in every single post and I'm gonna transmute that into advice and advice piece. So, as an example, if I was feeling really like lost or something or really depressed about situation with a friend or whatever else, when I found it where I would normally like write like a passive, aggressive, fucking Facebook status, you know, back in the days, I would actually channel that emotion and I would I still remember like was yesterday, I'm getting like frickin chills. I would channel my own emotions but then I channel like what I? What advice I needed to have in that moment. And if you don't know me before I'm anything else, my heart and soul will always be riding. I'm a rider, okay, and I use that to my advantage because every single time I channeled this part of me or I'm like give me advice, like I'm gonna write a blog, you know, to support someone who would be feeling exactly the way I'm feeling and I would write an amazing post and I've regulated my emotions from doing that. You know I didn't understand at the time that that's what I was doing, but I, accidentally, was regulating my emotions. You know, I was expressing how I felt, but I wasn't doing it in a destructive yeah, destructive way. I was doing it in a constructive way and I wasn't even making it about me anymore. I was making it something that was inspiring for others.

Speaker 1: 12:25

Long story short is that that blog ended up, you know, gaining a thousand members in that group because that's how it rolled back then. That's how I did it and I was reaching my writings, were reaching people all across the world and I know a thousand people was not much, but like 13, 18 year old who wasn't like really good at like technology and shit like that, like that was awesome, right, what a win. Anyway, that blog was called Ascendants to Peace and I ended up writing a book based on all those blogs that I've that is now no longer available for purchase, but that's a super story and I'm on a tangent. My bad, okay. So my point is by the way, since then I've never looked back, I never write anything.

Speaker 1: 13:09

I guess that's emotionally dumping and it taught me how to not emotionally dump in general and it was just the best thing I ever did. And so when I say trade, stop venting and emotionally regulate, I don't just mean, you know, emotionally regulating in like one way. It's whatever way works for you Now, for me it's not writing as much like it. I still write, I still definitely do that, but it's more like emotional regulation in general. So for me because I'm obviously more aware of emotional regulation now than I was 10 years ago for me now it's simply just feeling my emotions, like I don't have to go through a whole fricking writing process now. I can do it, you know, within 90 seconds now. But it doesn't matter how we do it.

Speaker 1: 13:49

I'm just saying that the important part here is to choose emotional regulation over venting, slash emotional dumping, because when you can do this, this isn't just a brave act of self love, you know. This is you learning how to become more emotionally intelligent and more control over your life and being a really good friend and partner and everything else you know, and it will truly support you in ways that I really just can't do justice just through my words. I think you just need to go for it. You need to do it. You know what I'm talking about, anyway. So I've decided that, instead of sharing all the 15, I'm gonna do a part two of this. What do you think? I think that's a good idea. I'm gonna do that. So we're gonna do. No, that's it. I'm just gonna share those five with you today. I think that that's juicy and I just realized, if there's 15, I'm gonna do three parts. So this is part one, then we're gonna do a part two and then a part three. How fun. I love this for us.

Speaker 1: 14:50

So, just to recap today's episode choose self honesty over self fluttery. Number two choose personal responsibility over blame. Number three is choose decisiveness over options and possibilities. Number four is choose intentional planning over messy lists. Number five the last one for today's episode is choose emotional regulation over emotional dumping or venting. Ah, how amazing If you can just focus on these five traits and really, really even just practice one for the next week, see what happens to you.

Speaker 1: 15:35

Obviously, pick the one that resonates to you the most, maybe the one that screamed at you during this episode. Do that one boo. You do that one. That made no sense. You do that one. Just remember that self love it's not always supposed to feel good and that, in fact, it sort of hurts most of the time, just a little bit, you know, and that's totally fine. Sending you so much love, don't forget to share this episode of someone you know is gonna benefit from it. Thank you for being here. I appreciate you being a listener to the show. If you've listened to the show since began, I appreciate you. Thank you so much, and if you're new here, welcome. Welcome to the gang. So hello, don't miss eye. You can follow me on Instagram at Christina Modafari, or the podcast's Instagram, which is at Hot Genius Society. Once again, I love you so much. Thank you for being here and I'll see you next week. Bye.