Hey, guys.
It's Clayton Olson.
In this video, I'm gonna talk about self-love.
I'm going to talk about ways – counterintuitive ways you can begin to love yourself fully
and completely.
Now I can't promise on this video that I'm gonna give you the tools and the insight to
make that happen immediately but I'm gonna give you a counterintuitive way of looking
at this idea of self-love that will, perhaps, help you get a little bit closer on this journey.
Because when I think about self-love and I think about the clients that I work with,
I realized that the reason that they're coming to me – the core issue behind all of the
experiences that they're having externally the situations that they're in the places
where they're feeling stuck, the places where they're feeling alone, where they're struggling,
there is almost always something underpinning that experience that has to do with a compromised
sense of self-love.
So there's 3 different ways to look at this and before I unpack them and go into each
one, I'm gonna just provide a little bit of context on how I've worked with people in
the past and how some of the work that I do provides a bit of a model for how we can start
to look at life.
It provides like a context, or let's say a system for loving ourselves more.
In Neurolinguistic programming, which is my background, there is an exercise called Parts
Auditorium.
And in this parts auditorium process, how I work with folks is I have them imagine that
they're standing in a auditorium.
And they are beginning to witness the different parts of themselves that are there, that are
attending this conference, while they are the say, keynote speaker or senior consciousness.
And in this Parts Auditorium, what's happening is we're working to identify perhaps the part
of them that is sabotaging their relationships, maybe it's the part of them that doesn't believe
in themselves.
We're also wanting to identify the creative part or perhaps the part that feels helpless.
And the beauty of beginning to break our personality into this constellation of parts, rather than
just seeing, “Well, this is who I am.
I'm a helpless person,” or, “I'm a victim,” is that it allows us to stand outside of these
parts and see that we are not just one thing; but rather, we are a myriad, a kaleidoscope
of these different personalities that come together and allow us to operate in relationships.
They allow us to operate and work.
They allow us to operate in friendships and situations that require our survival.
And often times when we experience suffering, what is happening is there is a lack of unity
internally.
There are some type of lack of alignment.
So there are certain parts that are not working together properly or gracefully and that causes
some type of cognitive dissonance.
It causes the person to be against themselves.
Pit themselves against themselves which then gets expressed into and projected onto people,
life, and things outside of them.
So when we do this internal work and we start to create these shifts internally inside your
internal landscape.
It's almost like a miracle but things begin to shift outside of you – that's the power
of coaching.
And I wanted to drop that as a context because that leads into this other type of work that
is out there called The Work, by a woman named, Byron Katie.
She's an amazing woman and I highly recommend checking her out.
If you're interested in understanding how people project onto things and shadow work.
So Byron Katie operates under the presupposition or her work operates under the presupposition
that whenever we are in relationship with somebody and we have some type of complaint,
or judgment, or something that's not working, that's causing a suffering, the work is designed
to take back our projections because what the idea is that we are consistently creating
other people.
We are creating other people.
We are interacting with a story of who we think they are inside of our mind.
I was doing some work with a client the other day and we were doing something called Perceptual
Positions – where were stepping inside and out of different people in his life to get
their experience.
And he says to me, “Well, Clayton… he's like, you know this is just kind of a mind
game because I don't really know what's going on over there.
I don't really know how they are.”
And my response to that was, when are we not playing a mind game with ourselves?
Aren't we only and always actually interacting with our interpretation of who we think that
person is?
Aren't we always interacting with our own creation, our own narrative of who we think
they are?
When is that not the case?
In fact, when is it not the case that we are interacting with our own interpretation of
who we think we are in life?
Are we actually ever interacting with something that's not our interpretation?
Or, our interpretation of life itself?
No, right?
It's all a story that we are creating and that story is either created accidentally
from old programming that exists in the past, or we are intentionally creating it so it
is aligned with us beginning to create the things that we do want as adults now.
Okay.
So I want to just underline that that we are always for the sake of this video and really
beginning to understand how this works, we are always interacting with our creations
internally of what we think is happening outside of us.
So that said, how do we begin to take our own self love to another level?
Well, I would say the invitation here is to start loving your creations.
Start loving the things that you are creating.
Start loving the creation of life that you are projecting out there of what you think
the world is.
Start loving the creation of the people around you that you are creating them to be and start
loving the creation of yourself.
Now it's drill into each one of those.
So if we're talking about loving the creation of life that we are creating, what does that
look like?
Well when I'm working with folks and we start to get down to the core beliefs that are underpinning
some of the suffering that they're experienced in their life.
I find that there's a core belief something that's at the very very bottom about life
– that life is unreliable.
Life is dangerous.
Life is out to get them.
Life is evil.
At the core belief when we begin to peel everything back and see if that is the lens, if that
is the glasses that we are wearing when we go out in the world, that is what we see.
Those are the things that we find evidence of.
And then we show up in relationship to our own creation of life which has us perhaps
have elevated levels of anxiety, fear, it stops us from taking risk.
It stops us from relying on people because we have this belief that we can't do that
because something dangerous will happen.
And again, if we are looking for it we will find it.
And yes there is evidence out there that life is dangerous and there's also evidence that
life is the exact opposite of that.
So what reality do we want to live in?
Okay.
So beginning to love yourself in this regard is beginning to examine those beliefs that
you have about life being dangerous, about perhaps life being untrustworthy, and shifting
that to something that you can actually be more in rapport with.
Now let's talk about people.
I would say that the folks that I run across who are the most insecure, the people that
have the least amount of love for themselves are the ones that are talking crap consistently
about others.
And I wonder is it because they don't love themselves that they're talking crap about
others?
Possibly.
And is it also that maybe all of that judgment unto other people also has them go into a
spiral like a self-fulfilling prophecy where they love themselves less as well.
I believe that's a possibility as well because if we're looking at it through this model,
that we are only and always interacting with our projections of who we think people are,
then if I am hating on other people and I am noticing the qualities and other people
that I am not liking consistently, I'm actually not liking my creations.
I'm not in rapport or accepting or loving my creations.
But rather, I'm grappling with them inside consistently.
[It’s] kind of like going back to the parts work I was talking about where it's like we're
grappling with these internal aspects of ourselves, were not in rapport with them, so if we are
hating other people we are actually hating aspects of ourselves.
Now, this does not mean that we condone people's behavior if it is not in line with our values.
It does not mean that we are hanging out with them or that we're enabling behavior that
is not in line with our integrity.
What it does mean though is that we are just simply neutralizing the charge.
If we are interacting with people and you're noticing places where you're getting hooked
in or you're getting hooked in and attached to changing them, attached to talking crap
about them or feeling powerless with them, there's something in there that relationship
is reflecting something that's going on in here that needs healing or is there's an opportunity
for you to neutralize it and come into greater rapport with it.
So the first one when it comes to people is work to neutralize those that you are judged
judging negatively and let go and allow them to be where they're at.
Allow them to be who they are.
I can guarantee that if they have bad behavior or behavior that's out line outside of integrity,
if you knew the full picture of how they got to that place and could understand the full
ecology of what's actually happening and why they're showing up that way, it would be absolutely
heartbreaking.
So even in that thought there can be more compassion that may be able to surface, rather
than this negative sh*t-talking judgment.
And then the other aspect is if you see people achieving things that you want, if you see
people in the types of relationships you want, if you see people making the types of money
that you or having the type of body that you want, rather than seen as something that makes
you jealous and envious and reflecting your own inadequacy, change it to “Wow.
That's possible”; which means it's possible for me.
What are the qualities that they must have in order to have and achieve those things
that they've got?”
And in that practice, by noticing those qualities we are actually noticing those qualities within
us going back to this projection idea that we're talking about.
So, it's these qualities that we can then foster and bring appreciation for so I say
switch from being envious - switching to having admiration for them because what's really
happening then is we're having admiration for those parts of ourselves.
Alright.
And lastly, let's talk about us.
Let's talk about the relationship in the creation the way that you are creating yourself inside
your own mind.
There's two components here.
I'm gonna invite you to pay attention to.
One, when you fail, make a mistake, have a regret do something that is not in line with
what you want.
How do you treat yourself?
How do you talk about yourself?
Are you being a tyrant?
A drill sergeant?
Are you turning into a helpless person inside your own mind and taking on the mentality
of a victim mindset?
If so, the invitation is to begin to change that dialogue to one of, if I loved myself
fully and completely, how would I talk to myself in this situation, right?
Another way of saying is “if I was parenting somebody who was in my situation, what would
I tell them to let them know that I still love them?”
So how can we begin to massage the dialogue that we have with ourselves so that it can
start to reflect a stronger more healthy relationship.
And then lastly is if you're in a situation and you find yourself operating from a place
of feeling wounded operating from a place of not loving yourself, simply ask the question,
“if I did love myself fully and completely, how would I show up in this situation?
“What would I do?
What would I say?
How would I engage or not engage in the situation that would be a reflection of myself love?”
Ponder that question and then act that way.
Now at first if my feeling congruent and I feel like, “Oh I'm faking this,” but here's
the thing, your actions and creating those reference experiences of becoming, of acting
in line with who you want to be more and more creates that character.
It creates that identity because again we're playing mind games with ourselves.
We are always interacting with a story of who we think we are, and you are the author
and you have the right to rewrite that story.
And one of the ways to do it is through the way that you talk to yourself and beginning
to act as if you are already there, so you start to experience what it's like to be in
that place.
My name is Clayton Olson.
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Thanks.