A few days ago, I put up what I think is the most important video I've ever put on YouTube
and it was on self-love. If you've not seen that video, first thing, click here, watch
it because this video is the Q and A from you guys.
I saw great questions in the comments and in 20 minutes, I didn't answer all of them,
so that's what I'm going to do right now. I've got them here on my phone and I'm going
to pull them up, so here we go.
All right, Question #1: You talk about loving people even if they've done wrong. I blocked
my ex on Facebook and the phone after she cheated on me. Do I need to unblock her to
practice what you're talking about?
No, absolutely not. You can exclude people from your life while still extending to them
those sort of good vibes. All that I mean when I say love people even when they've done
you wrong is that you don't wish ill on them. You hope, in your ex's case, one, that she
begins to treat people better and doesn't cheat on them, and that, two, once she gets
there, that she actually does wind up happy. You don't need to have this psychic warfare
against people who have wronged you.
Question #2: Aren't those people who love everybody, no matter what, kind of doormats?
How do you avoid being walked all over and becoming other people's servant if you're
constantly lovey like that?
So, great question, and it is best answered, I think, in a story. This is one that my friend
related to me, and it was about his mother. So, her family was not always the greatest
to be around, right? She loves her mom and dad but they smoke often, they drank some,
and of course, they fought when they did that more and more often. And she was raised around
that, was not particularly happy with it, so when she had my friend, what she said to
her family was this, "Listen, I'm your daughter. I love you guys. I want you in my life, but
if you bring smoking, or excessive drinking, or the fighting that I saw when I was growing
up, into my son's life, you will never see your grandchildren."
And that is kind of the illustration of what self-love allows you to do. It allows you
to create firm, healthy boundaries in your life, so that people cannot enter it, unless
they're a positive influence. When I say "love people," what I'm saying is extend that love
to them. I love you no matter what. But I will only include you in my life if you are
a positive influence and if you meet certain conditions that are absolutely important to
me. So you don't need to be a doormat. In fact, you can be completely the opposite once
you got a solid sense of self-love.
Question #3: If I start to love myself, no matter what, I feel like I will become less
productive and stop improving myself. I feel good and loved when I'm productive, and feel
bad when I'm doing something worthless. Should I change that to achieve what you're talking
about in this video?
Absolutely not! So, for instance, you did for 24 hours, you were completely unproductive--you
ate Cheetos, you ate Oreos, you watched TV reruns--whatever it is, at the end of that,
it's going to be very natural for you, even for someone who feels a tremendous sense of
self-love to feel disappointed in their behavior.
Having a high sense of self regard and self-love, and even self-esteem, doesn't mean that you
look back on every decision and go, that was a great decision, really proud of that. All
that it means is that you have this underlying sense of "You know what? Even though I made
mistakes, even though things in my past are not as I'd like them to be, I care for myself."
So, quite the contrary, in terms of productivity, if you were to ask yourself in the present
moment all the time, "How would I behave right now if I truly love myself." You're not going
to find answers like I'd sit down and watch TV for another 4 hours. Typically, you're
gonna do things that are good for you, that are productive and good for other members
of society. So I would say that self-love and productivity actually go hand-in-hand.
Question #4. Didn't the insecurity make you the person
you are today? Without the insecurity that you felt because you weren't loved, and if
you felt perfectly loved now, wouldn't have you become complacent and won't we?
Well, the truth is, yes. Insecurity did drive me and made me the person that I am today,
but I will tell you, that's not the only way to do it. Right now, I'm not making this video
out of insecurity or desire to improve myself. I'm making this video because I want to continue
the conversation that we started. You guys asked great questions and I want to contribute
back to it. I want to keep this dialogue going.
I guess the point is that there's lots of different kinds of fuels, and I completely,
clearly, I was driven by insecurity for a long time. A lot of amazing things in my life
came from it and some people do the same with anger, with fear, trying to prove other people
wrong, and those fumes can take you very far. But the truth is, the way that you should
think about them is they're noxious fumes, and you're driving really fast on anger, but
it's filling up that car with stuff that is choking you, and makes it a miserable ride
even if it goes far.
There are cleaner burning fuels--excitement, the desire for some variety, the desire to
contribute to other people, to your community, to humanity, in a greater way. Those can make
you do things and absolutely take you out of complacency. I think of Elon Musk when
I think of this.
And when I listen to him speak, I don't know the guy, obviously, but he doesn't seem to
have a chip on his shoulder. He doesn't seem to want to prove anything. He genuinely seems
to want to improve the world and do the things that he thinks are best for humanity 500 years
down the line. That desire to contribute has certainly not made him complacent. So, if
Elon Musk can do it, without seemingly admitting to be insecure, I'm sure that the rest of
us can find a way to do it as well.
Question #5. What if you don't love yourself? I was doing the mirror exercise and I knew
that I wasn't telling the truth as I looked at myself.
So, for this, if you feel like you don't love yourself right now, what I encourage you to
realize is that self-love is, first and foremost, a choice. It is a choice that says I decide
to be happy. I decide to care for me. I decide to accept it. Yes, in the past, I've done
things I'm not proud of, and I decide, from this moment on, that I'm going to be the type
of person who takes care of myself, who makes decisions that do make me proud.
Now, in terms of the mirror exercise, you've made that decision. You're standing in front
of the mirror. You can't just go, "I love myself. I accept myself. I love myself," because,
truly, the physilogy needs to be involved as well. So if you can, whatever it is, sometimes
I say things that make me laugh. But I'll go, even though I'm feeling kind of ridiculous
today standing in front of the mirror, I love and I accept myself fully and completely.
You got to commit yourself to it. If you need to shout, if you need to scream, whatever
it is to break out of that "I don't like myself" pattern, snap that tone of voice, snap the
body language, you will start to feel it more intensely, and stick with it.
Truly, it is a decision and if you don't feel it when you're looking at that mirror, there's
probably nothing more important that you can go and do right now.
Question #6. How do you maintain this? I had this mindset a couple of months ago, but I
stopped worrying, so I lost it.
So, two questions that I kind of see here. One, you did ask him, one you didn't. The
one you didn't ask is how do you keep it going if you're feeling crappy right now and you
want to make sure that it actually drives into your brain, and I've been there.
What I recommend is if you're in it right now, in a bad state, decide that for the next
half of an hour, any time a negative thought enters into your brain, you will do the exercises.
You will interrupt it, you will feed yourself the self-love, and then, you will extend that
love and that gratitude to people around you. For more details, go to the last video I mentioned
before, but one half hour is, generally, enough to make that state change for a long time
to come.
To your question, you feel better, you don't feel like you need to feed yourself that self-love
all the time, what do you do? I've just started building it into my morning routine, because,
yes, there's, maybe, bad thoughts occuring in your day, so what you want to do is in
the morning, I wake up, and for 5 minutes, before I get out of bed, I'll just lay there,
and there's not a bad thought interrupt necessarily, but I will kind of do step two, and say, I love myself
and accept myself, and I'm proud of this. I'll even extend the past love to pride, other
kinds of emotions that I want for 5 minutes, to just sort of feeding that need to feel
appreciated. And once I got that, I go up on my day, and, honestly, I've noticed it
making a big impact. So, build that into the morning routine. I think you'll see some really
good things come of it.
And the last thing, which is not a question, but just a note from me, is that the Comments
section was overwhelmingly awesome. I genuinely appreciate all of the stories that you guys
told, up until a couple of hours ago. I've read them all. I can't respond because I think
there's over a thousand at this point, but I have read them. I truly appreciate the time
that you guys take to do that. It makes me want to keep this conversation going, so if
there are more questions, maybe we'll come back with that.
I just wanted to say, you guys are awesome, and, honestly, you do the YouTube comments
section proud. So, thank you for that.
If you've made it to the end of this video, and for some reason, you are not already subscribed,
I don't know how you got here, quite frankly, but click here, I'm going to throw up a link.
You can subscribe to the channel. We typically have videos that are charisma-related and,
also, like this, the mindsets of confidence, charisma, and happiness related. And I think
self-love is a big important part of that.
So if you've not subscribed, go ahead and do that. If you want to comment, keep this
conversation going, then, we'll do another video, otherwise, I'm working on Muhammad
Ali right now and, potentially, Arnold Schwarzenegger. So look for those soon and, of course, I will
see you guys in the next video.