Today’s topic came from Patty’s community. She recently asked her tribe what they needed and how she could help.
The answer surprised her a bit, but as she created the podcast, it became clear why this is so important right now.
As part of her work around the Receiving Method and Receiving School, Patty recognized why this concept of self-love is hard for many people.
She outlines how this shows up. You’ll recognize the symptoms of not loving yourself and it will help to see how easy it can be to make changes. This isn’t complicated, but many of us have been taught to value others, and to love others while denying ourselves.
Listen for the practical tools that she outlines. These practices that will help you find a way to practice self-love without feeling selfish or less than.
Transcript
(00:02):
Welcome to the wealth and purpose podcast, where people who are led by their hearts come to learn the secrets to creating wealth in a way that feels really good and live their purpose fully in the process. I’m your host, Patty Lennon. I’m an ex type. A corporate banker turned intuitive business coach. I’m also a wife, a mom to two. Pre-teens a professor girl scout leader. And well, Hey, you get it. Like you are aware a lot of hats, whether you’re looking for inspiration to get started or strategies to get growing, I am here to help you create abundance in every area of your life and business. Welcome.
(00:40):
Hey there, Patty here, the host of this episode of the wealth and purpose podcast, and I want to thank you for joining me right now. I have had so many topics I wanted to talk about here. The one though that I’m going to focus on today is a surprise to me. I didn’t think this was where I was headed a with the podcast topics right now in the environment we’re in. And yet it is the topic that is requested the most, no matter who I speak to or where I go, this seems to be the question I hear a lot. And that question is, how do I love myself? Or how do I love myself more? Or how do I stop hating myself? And when I recently sent out an email to my list at the bottom, I had asked, you know, is there something you need right now?
(01:40):
Is there some training? Is there some information I could put out that will be helpful to you? And the overwhelming response was some version of show me how to love myself more. This is surprising to me on so many levels. Not because it’s not needed, of course it’s needed. Um, I think we have all been trained to not love ourselves fully. Most of us, at least haven’t trained that way. And so learning how to love and accept ourselves is at the core of all healing work, whether we’re healing ourselves, our family, our community, or the world, it has to start with us being home. Why it’s so surprising for me to get the question is I’ve just never saw myself as a teacher of that topic. It has certainly been at the heart of my own journey, but when I’ve thought about self love and stuff, acceptance, they always were this sort of sarin out there, personal development catch phrase that a lot of people pointed to. And, you know, even as I went through this journey of personal development, I’ve been on for at least 25 years, if not longer, whenever the topic of self love came up. I, I always boobooed it right up until probably two years ago, I felt like it was just this surface stuff. I didn’t, I honestly thought I did love myself. You know, that that wasn’t the issue. Like I needed productivity. I need time management. I needed marketing. I needed other forms of self development, but self love was never really the thing that I need.
(03:30):
Yes,
(03:33):
The amount of healing work and, you know, evolutionarily, dedicated work that I’ve done on myself and in my own work with my clients really comes back to this loving and accepting ourselves fully. I think back even when I used to teach a lot of work on, you know, making the most of your time and time management that has to do with self love. And I’ll talk about that in a minute, law of attraction, allowing things into your life, all have to do with self love. And now teaching the receiving school, I’m seeing the very core of the work, the thing that people point to when they come out of receiving school. And I asked them, you know, where did the miracle happen? Because there’s just so many stories of miracles. And I say that humbly, I, I do not take credit for the receiving school.
(04:30):
It is, it was a process. The receiving method is a process that I learned through meditation, through connecting to my guides, through feeling into what I saw were the consistent challenges to my clients. And that’s what birthed the receiving method. And ultimately the receiving school, as well as the work I did on myself, after both, my parents died, when someone comes through it and they have a miracle happen, whatever that miracle is there, their business opens up in an amazing way. They lose an amazing amount of weight. They just feel different in their life. They feel connected to the loved ones that they have had crossover, whatever it is, I’d say 80 to 90% 0.2, one part of the receiving school and not as the work we do with the reject itself. And the reject itself is essentially the part of us that we reject quite simply.
(05:33):
It’s an aspect of ourselves that we push away and all of us have done it. All of us do it. We have pieces of ourselves impulses, ideas, ways of being that we have, we have managed ourselves out of rather than nurture and incorporate those parts and work with them to make them support, you know, our lives and the directions we go in. One of the most common examples of this is some version of, you know, I’m not lazy that the part of you or me that wants to dress the part of me or you that wants to slow down the part that will like to sit on the couch for 24 hours straight and maybe not 24 hour street, but 12 hours street and watch Netflix any chocolate. We reject that part of our cells that, that the version of ourselves that wants to do that is not good, is not us is not enough.
(06:35):
Right? And so then we push that away. And yet what I find, cause this is one of the most common rejected self’s parts that come up with the receiving school. Is that what that part of us is, is the part of us that understands how to relax. Part of us that learns how to slow down. That learns how to pause. And it’s in those pausing spaces that we can receive. It’s that stopping. That’ll give the universe space to give us the love and the support and the money and abundance and all the things we’re looking for that requires us slowing down. And it’s that part of us we’ve rejected that has the skill and the talent to show us how to do that. And yet, because we’ve rejected it so much, we don’t know how. And so it’s something that needs to be learned and over and over again, as the people that go through the receiving school, learn how to pull this, this rejected part of themselves, whether it’s the lazy part or it’s the silly part, or it’s the fun part.
(07:40):
I mean, none of the parts that people pull back in tend to be negative parts every once in a while. There’s the person I’m just about to use an expletive. So if you’ve got kids there or you might just want to turn this off and come back, but it’s the bitch or the tough guy that we’ve rejected and bring that part in is the one that knows how to set boundaries with other people’s the one that knows how to say no, and to there’s so much value in that. And in that, bringing that reject itself back, what happens is we start to love ourselves more fully because this feeling that we’re this question of, how do I love myself? What often times underlies that message, especially in the person that asked it is in a lot of pain, is this idea that I need to be calm.
(08:37):
Someone I can love. I need to be better. I need to stop doing the crappy things that makes me a lovable. And that’s where most people’s minds go. And yet the answer is no, that’s not at it at all. It’s not meant to be in this place of how do I be better? It’s how do I accept that this is who I am? How do I accept that? Right now? I have debt. My body has extra weight. I haven’t sustained a loving relationship, whatever it is accepting that this is the stage that you’re at and not loving yourself in spite of it, but loving yourself precisely because of it. And it’s a huge leap. It’s so challenging at first to really embrace this. So I want to take you back to a story
(09:35):
Where I,
(09:36):
I realized that I didn’t love myself. And then from there, I’m going to give you some tools. If you’re interested in learning how to love yourself more, what I hope are practical tools. One of the reasons I think I always rejected a lot of the self love work was that it was very surface level. It never seemed to really dig in and deal with what was really going on. It felt like a lot of platitudes things like look in the mirror and tell yourself that you love yourself, which by, and wait is a great exercise,
(10:09):
But it’s sort of like it
(10:11):
Level exercise until you’ve done some real foundational work and that’s not going to do you a lot of good. And so when I’m reading this, I’m rolling my eyes. So some of the tools I want to give you today are more practical. They’re going to feel more fundamental to your day to day life. And hopefully not so silly.
(10:30):
I was
(10:31):
Holding my baby girl and it was actually just her birthday. So that’s why this story came to my mind. She’s at about six months old and she was just that girl has loved herself and loved everyone else. Since the moment she came into the world, she just was one of those people, always smiling, always had an easy time of it. Even her birth was easy, slept through the night. Since the day she was born, just always had to
(11:03):
Smile again,
(11:05):
Really phased her. And so when I was, would rock her at night, it was a time where I just gone back to work. So I had a very busy schedule. And this time at night, when I’d rock or would be my peaceful time would just be 10 minutes of us hanging out together.
(11:25):
They’re always quiet, Aliso still and peaceful against my body. And I started hedger
(11:35):
And I looked down and it was dark. And I had a hard time seeing through the darkness, but it looked like nothing really was wrong. And she had sort of settled back in. So I kept rocking and all of a sudden she jerked again. And as I look closer, I saw there was water on her face. I looked up thinking there was a leak in the ceiling there wasn’t. And after a few more moments, I realized that the water on her face, where my tears I’ve told this story before in other contexts with other purposes. But the net of that story is that I came to understand that I was completely known to my life and completely numb to what, how unhappy I was. No, as it turns out, I wasn’t that far away from happiness, but I had just made so many tolerations for things that weren’t working for me.
(12:35):
And I was trying so hard to be someone I just wasn’t anymore. I was trying to be, you know, the corporate star. When in fact I had two kids and being a corporate star, wasn’t my priority anymore. I like to be good and succeed, but I needed to let go of that part of me that wanted to be the corporate star because she was gone. She died with the birth of my second child. I was trying to be this organic mom and it was stressful and I just didn’t have any, it wasn’t a natural inclination. Uh, I was trying to be a good wife, but I had no energy left for my husband. I was trying to be all these things. And because I couldn’t be what I did was I compensated by comforting myself with wine and M&Ms a lot. So I was heavier so than I didn’t like my body and my body wasn’t enough, you know, on and on it.
(13:31):
And that really, that story is the starting point of me really transforming my relationship to myself and my life, because that woke me up precisely because while I looked at my daughter, I thought you deserve so much better. And at the moment I thought that a voice that I’ve come to know is my, one of my grandmothers, someone who had already crossed over, came in to my head and very clearly said, well, then become the person she deserves. And at the time I was like, yes, she deserves so much better, but really what my grandmother was saying, love yourself better so that you can love her better. No, my daughter just turned 13. So that was 12 plus years ago. And the journey I’ve been on since then has been quite a wild ride. And I can’t give you every single tool I’ve used over the last 12 years.
(14:31):
And quite honestly, I’m not sure all of them worked as well as others, but there were some fundamental changes that I need that I have significantly helped shift me. And when I find myself feeling critical of myself, or maybe distancing myself from a full and loving relationship with myself, these tools tend to me back to myself. Now I’m going to warning. They’re practical, but they’re not fun. They’re not checklists that you can just do once and be done with them, their relationship building skills and the relationship you’re building is with yourself. So the first tool, which took me quite a long time to understand was that exactly who you are right now is 100% lovable. There is not a piece of you that is not lovable by the divine. And it is your responsibility to love yourself the way that the divine loves you. Now that’s a big ask, but that is the goal.
(15:34):
And just starting with the knowledge that there’s not a single thing in you that is unlovable, including every act you’ve done, that you have shame for guilt, for whatever. If you start by understanding you did the best you could with what you had at the time, that’s the first step to you doing better. If there is something for you to do better. Because a lot of times, the things that we really struggle with in ourselves are really just acts of love the way that we don’t hold strong boundaries is really rooted in the fact that we just want people to be happy when we overeat. It’s usually because we’ve given ourselves so fully to so many other people that there’s nothing left of pleasure for ourselves. And so we find pleasure in disconnecting with food or drink or drugs even. And so the first place to go is to remember that even those mistakes of eating too much or drinking too much are just behaviors that are rooted in love.
(16:41):
And the goal is to find a new way to love yourself. And so just starting with the understanding of that, you are a hundred percent lovable and there’s not a lot you can do with that, but that’s really the first place you have to start as knowing that that you’re a hundred percent lovable. And I promise you I’ve met many, many people many. And one of the gifts that I have been able to develop over the years, and I’m so grateful for it. The gifts that God’s given me is to see people’s souls. And I have not seen an unlovable soul in my entire life. I’ve seen humans who make odd choices, choices that can be destructive, but at any moment in time, their soul is still in there and they are doing the best they can with what they have. And when we fill ourselves up, when we learn to love ourselves fully, that’s when we have the overflow that we can extend to others and help lift them up as well.
(17:41):
With that understanding that everything that is in you and about you as lovable is to understand that there are probably some emotions that you’ve been avoiding and welcoming those emotions and is a step to self-love that understanding that difficult emotions, aren’t proof that there’s something wrong with you. They’re just proof that there’s something you need to feel or be, or see about yourself. And so learning to feel your emotions, to not escape your emotions when they get uncomfortable, different people have different ways of escaping their emotions. For me, it’s food. When I start to realize that I’m using food to give myself pleasure or disconnect, that’s when I realized, okay, there’s something coming up here for me to know, and I’ve got to willfully resist the urge to use food as a crutch and allow those emotions to come up. And so that’s, that’s the first real practical tool is resist the thing you’re using to numb yourself and allow the emotions to come up.
(18:56):
I know it’s going to be scary. I know it’s going to be hard. And depending on what those emotions are rooted in, what kind of trauma or experience you may need to get help support with a therapist or a counselor. But if you can feel what it is that you need to feel that right there is the heart of clearing so much resistance to loving yourself. The second tool is to have a honorable and in integrity relationship with yourself. And what that means is that you honor your commitments to yourself. This is going to be real nitty gritty practical. And I’m going to tell you that the place where I see most people disrespect themselves on a daily basis is to put things on their task list or on their calendar that they don’t get to. And what you want to do is to keep your task lists for any single day, manageable to where you can a hundred percent commit to doing it.
(20:04):
And then also put things on your calendar that you a hundred percent commit to. And if you can’t make them that commitment to yourself, it should be rescheduled, but it should not be ignored. This is really super basic, but I would say 80 to 90% of the people that tell me, they’re struggling with a relationship, a powerful relationship to themselves or love or money. It’s rooted in us putting things on their task list that is far bigger than they could ever accomplish in a single day, or putting things on their calendar and that ignoring them. And so that’s just, that’s just a real boots on the ground strategy. Something you could start doing today, and the answer is you do not work harder to get them all done. It’s you become more proficient at making those lists exact and making those commitments exact. So where you might’ve put 10 items on your task list for tomorrow.
(21:06):
Now you’re only gonna put three and you might say to me, well, Patty then, but all those things have to get done. And I would tell you, well, putting them on your list and saying they have to get done when you could never get them done, possibly ever is putting yourself in a really open relationship with yourself where you’re naturally going to reset yourself. Cause you’re saying, you’re not good enough that here, here, future may here tomorrow version of myself, here’s the task list that you need to get done. Now I know full, well, you can’t get it done, but if you don’t get it done, you’re not good enough. Can you see how that could set you up to really struggle with loving yourself and yet to say, okay, reasonably speaking, I can get three of these things done. So now let me look at them and really decide what do I have to eliminate?
(21:56):
And what you’ll start to find is the things you need to eliminate are things you’re doing for other people that you just don’t have the time, energy or resources to do. And that’s what empowers you to start saying no and setting stronger boundaries. And although that can feel hard and scary at first, those stronger boundaries are a way to form a stronger love of yourself, because it’s a way for you to choose yourself first and then to give to others from your overflow. And that strategy number three is saying no. When you mean now saying, knowing you feel now, because that’s really, really the key to using your time and your energy and your money, even in a way that represents who you truly are. And when you honor who you truly are, that you show yourself that you’re ready to love yourself. And when you’re thinking about saying, no, think about where you end up feeling bad about yourself.
(22:53):
If you end up in conversations with people, certain individuals, and you feel bad about yourself after those conversations, stop having those conversations, they’re not good for you. If you go on social media and you get off and you just don’t feel like great about yourself, you just don’t feel great. Period. Spend less time. There spend less time with people, situations and circumstances that leave you feeling less than happy with yourself. Now, if you can do those things, those basic things first acknowledge that everything about you is lovable from there, feel your feelings. I know you’ve really heard it a million times, but I promise you at works, then start honoring your commitments to yourself through your task list and the way you schedule your time. And finally say no and set boundaries that honor what you truly want. If you start doing those things, I promise you, you will start to feel more in love with yourself and your life.
(23:54):
Now I will say I find it very comforting to get advice from my guys. And if that’s interesting to you, then I encourage you to download my five steps to receiving guide. Because in that you’ll get some daily practices that will help you build a more relationship, a loving relationship with the universe and receiving. And in that fifth step, you’ll get a meditation to meet your guides, which many people find very helpful that also, if you do that, those five steps, you’ll also start to see things that don’t feel as good as you might’ve thought they did. And when you do the guide, when you do the five steps, that will make more sense. But through the process in that free guide, you will start to walk through. What’s blocking you from receiving everything you want and at the heart of it, it’s your resistance to self love.
(24:51):
So all of those steps are going to take you closer to a more loving relationship with yourself. And you can find that a Patty lennon.com forward slash receiving guide. And again, that guided notation is also Fran right inside the guide. Now, if there’s something that you would like me to talk about here on the podcast, you’d like to see me do a training on it and love to hear from you. Email me a patio, Patty lennon.com. Let me know what you want to care about. And then we’ll be happy to create some content around it. I wish you an incredibly loving day to yourself, with yourself, for yourself. Hey, thanks for listening. And if you know someone who needs to hear this message, please share this podcast with them. And if you’re feeling really generous, I love for you to leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. It helps us reach many more people, and it fills my heart with so much joy. When I hear what you had to say about what you heard, I am cheering for your success. Have an amazing day.
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