In this Episode

• [01:58] – Orion talks about what self-love is (and isn’t), and mentions the dictionary’s definitions of self-love.
• [03:52] – Self-love is taking actions that are directed toward promoting your well-being, Orion explains. One of the major factors in this is forgiving yourself.
• [06:40] – Orion talks about what the difference is between being proactive and reactive, and clarifies why it’s so important to be proactive.
• [08:53] – Only when Orion slows down is she able to function at her best.
• [10:36] – One of the days in the challenge that Orion did was about forgiveness. She talks about some of the things she had to forgive in her own life.
• [12:28] – We hear about an upcoming episode’s guest, Byron Katie, and her system involving four questions.
• [15:06] – Self-love looks like self-trust, Orion explains, and talks about what this means.
• [17:14] – Orion has learned to separate the guru from the method and understand that it’s okay to release what you don’t need, especially the attachment to that particular person being your guide.
• [18:36] – We learn about what intuition is, and some of the reasons that it can be so important.
• [20:31] – Orion offers a piece of advice: talk to yourself the way you would talk to your best friend. She offers some personal insight into how she has felt about her body, and the importance of accepting yourself the way you are.
• [23:15] – You’re perfect just the way you are, Orion points out, and you’ll suffer until you accept your perfect imperfections.
• [24:04] – Orion talks more about the seven-day challenge she did with her group, and describes the day they did mirror work.
• [26:54] – Orion offers an exercise for listeners: touch a part of your body that you’re having a hard time with, and say, “I love you” and “thank you” to that part of yourself.
• [29:02] – A tip you can use to create more self-love is to practice saying no and being assertive. You can still be kind, but protect yourself and your boundaries.
• [30:30] – You can also practice saying yes! Orion lists some things you should say yes to.

About Today’s Show

Hi, welcome to Stellar Life podcast, this is Orion. How are you doing today? Today’s all about self-love. Everytime a lady joins my group, Awaken Your Inner Goddess on Facebook, I ask them the question of, “Why do you wanna join our group? Why do you wanna join our challenge?” I collect their answers because it’s really important for me to know what women want. One of the answers that I hear repeatedly is, “I want to learn how to love myself more,” and another answer is, “I wanna relearn how to love myself.” Some maybe never connected to self-love and some maybe have experienced that but life hit and life hit hard and they need to relearn it.

My thought is that we need to remind ourselves, you need to remind yourself, every moment of every day that, like my mentor, Dr. Demartini says, “Whatever you did or didn’t do, you are worthy of love.” Self-love is not about being selfish, it’s not about taking, taking, taking, it’s not about pride, it’s not about ego.

I just opened the online dictionary and they had three definitions for self-love. One was narcissist, one was vanity, one was the instinct by which one’s actions are directed to the promotion of one’s own welfare or well-being, especially in an excessive regard for one’s own advantage. Even the good definition at the end sounds a little bit critical or it’s a criticism, one’s own advantage. But this is the one that I relate with the most.

Self-love is the instinct, it is instinctual. It’s instinctual for us to take care of ourselves because nobody will take care of you or nobody will care about you, even your loved ones, care about you, care about your business, care about your health as much as you care about it. It is your instinct to take care of yourself. Sometimes things happen in life and we start ignoring our instincts. We wanna fit in, we don’t wanna be loud, we don’t wanna break rules, so we numb ourselves not to be different or not to go against what we were supposed to be or our perception of who we need to be in the world.

Self-love is taking actions that are directed to promoting your well-being. What does self-love looks like? Self-love looks like forgiveness. Many times other people forgive us but we don’t forgive ourselves. If you did something or there is something from your past where you didn’t forgive yourself for doing it, it’s in the way. Sometimes we’re willing to forgive everybody else but ourselves. If you love yourself, I want you to think about one thing from your past that you did and you regret, and just forgive yourself. You don’t need a big reason to forgive yourself. It doesn’t have to be a long journey. You can just forgive yourself because you want to forgive yourself.

Self-love looks like slowing down and looking inward. I’ve been so busy lately, I’ve been slammed beyond my work and everything that I need to do. I’m also planning my birthday party which is great. I have to fly next week because I’m shooting videos for my website. I have a conference coming up. I’m planning a trip to Israel. There is so much on my plate this month. It’s pretty insane, it’s pretty insane.

When so much happens, the last thing I wanna do is slow down, and the most important thing for me to do is to slow down. I know it sounds like an oxymoron, “You’re so busy. Why the freak would you slow down?” Because when you slow down, you self-regulate. When you slow down, you’re able to breathe, and when you breathe, and you breathe deep, in and out, you relax your nervous system. When you relax your nervous system, all those crazy thoughts that goes on in your mind quiet down.You can listen to the space between your thoughts. You can listen to the space between your thoughts and that will help you organize your life better and take action from a place of being proactive rather than from a place of being reactive.

When you slow down, you self-regulate. When you slow down, you’re able to breathe, and when you breathe, and you breathe deep, in and out, you relax your nervous system.

The difference between proactive and reactive, as you probably know, is proactive is about taking the high road. It’s about doing something with intention and getting the outcome that you want. Being proactive is being a cause in the matter and taking self-responsibility. But being reactive which happens when you’re tired, which happens when you have so much to do, so much on your plate, so many people that demands so many things from you, and everybody wants you, and everything is pulling you in different directions. Everything screams at you. Your email box is screaming at you. The unwashed dishes are screaming at you. Your cat meows. Your kid is asking something. Your husband needs something. Your family members need so many things, so many demands, so much. And then what happen? You just become reactive.

You react from your lizard brain. You react from the place, more of like animalistic side, “I just have to do it right now. I’m going to be short with them,” or maybe you’re short with them or you’re reacting in the way that you want to react, you’re not reacting from a zen place. This is a really important key. I’m here to remind you of something that you know and you know that. You know that when you slow down, that when you are relaxed, that when you breathe that you can think better and you can act better. You can treat everybody around you better and you can plan everything and organize everything much, much better.

Me, myself, I’m very creative. I have a million and one thoughts that run through my mind in any given time and only when I slow down, I’m able to function well. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t work, let’s face it. It doesn’t mean that everytime you wanna slow down you’ll be able to. Sometimes a little healthy stress in your life is good. But overall, don’t come to a place where you’re so overworked and overwhelmed that it affects your physical well-being. It’s not something that you want. Because if you are too stressed, if you don’t slow down, if you don’t take the time to take care of yourself by slowing down, it can affect your body, it can affect your relationships, it can happen your work, it can affect everything.

Talking about affecting your body, it can cause adrenal fatigue and many other health problems, so self-love is also about self-care. You can have self-care when you slow down. Got it? We talked about forgiving yourself and in the challenge that I did with the ladies one day was about forgiveness. This was one of the days that gave them the most breakthroughs. In my own private history, I had to do a lot of forgiveness around stuff that happened in my childhood that were difficult things, very difficult things, up there with the top 500 things that can be really horrible for you to experience. But until I forgave, I couldn’t move on. Because when you forgive, the reason why you forgive is because you are taking self-responsibility, and you owning what happened, and then you’re not a victim.

When you’re not a victim, you have ownership, you have power because if somebody hurt you and you don’t forgive them, then you’re still a victim, you’ll always be a victim and it sucks being the victim. But when you forgive them and you say, “Okay, I had a part in it,” even if your part was 0.000001%, “I had a part of it, and I’m taking ownership,” then you’re taking your life back. That is self-love. Owning everything that happened and didn’t happen, like really owning it, that’s self-love.

Self-love looks like looking inward and processing your thought patterns and not believing your thoughts, your thoughts can lie. I’m so excited because I’m gonna have Byron Katie on the show and Byron Katie, she’s huge. She’s a big spiritual teacher, she’s very loved. She has a method where she asks four questions and those questions are to question your thoughts. Let’s say, one thing that you might be thinking right now is, “I can’t forgive myself or I can’t forgive him.” The first question that Katie would ask you would be, “Is that true?” And you can say, “Sure, that’s true. I can’t forgive him.” The second one she’s gonna ask is, “Are you 100%, 100% that this is true?” I might not be asking it in the correct exact way but this is the juice of it, “Is that true? Are Are you 100% that this is true?”

This is one of the questions that I love, “What would life be like if this thought did not exist in your life?” And then there is a turn around. I might be forgetting something but the reason, you can Google Byron Katie and four questions and really get those questions from online. I’ll make sure to put them in the show notes on stellarlifepodcast.com. Because every episode, we have show notes, we have checklists, we have all the information either of – if it’s an episode like this when I’m talking to you, we’ll have some resources there or if it was with a guest, then all the information of my guest will be in on their episode’s show notes.

The reason why Byron Katie is asking those questions is to question your thoughts. When you look inward and you analyze your habits, you analyze your patterns, and you understand that thoughts are just something that you created. You can’t always trust your thoughts, especially not the negative ones. Only trust your positive thoughts. Be overly optimistic. That’s always good, being overly optimistic, but with those negative thoughts, doubt them, really doubt them and turn them around. Because you came up with those thoughts so you’re the person that can change them.

Self-love looks like self-trust. Do you remember a time in your life where you really trust trust yourself and something magnificent happened? Or you did something and you just trusted the universe and something happened? Self-trust is so important because if you cannot trust yourself, what is your life about? Is it about what other people think? Is it about other people’s opinions about you? You’re looking for some big guru to tell you what to do and how to live your life?

I’m all about information and I’m learning from gurus and coaches and God knows I learned and studied and will study with so many for the rest of my life. I studied with so many people, it’s insane and I’m kind of proud of it. It’s awesome. I learned a lot. Everybody that I studied with, everybody that I was coached with gave me something that really, really helped me. They also know something else. I also know that I need to trust myself and make judgements. Even with spiritual people. I rubbed shoulders with the greatest leaders and the luminaries of our time and I learned that not everybody are their facade. Some people are very genuine, the way they are on stage, the way they are in person, same thing. Awesome, genuine people, I love it.

Some are the polar opposite. You see them on stage, you hang out with them in real life, and it’s like, “Oh, man. No.” It’s like the Wizard of Oz where you discover that the wizard is this little man behind the curtain. It sucks but it’s also good to know. In that case, what I learned to do is to separate the guru from the method and understand that some of the things that they are teaching me are amazing and valuable. I’m gonna take what I need and I’m gonna just release what I don’t need, especially the attachment to them being my guide. Because if I, let’s say, I sign up to work with somebody and what they’re teaching is amazing but the person is not amazing, I’ll have to separate the two and just take what I need. But I can’t do it if I won’t trust myself.

That’s why some spiritual leaders are very genuine and heart-driven and some are cold leaders. They just use tools of hypnotizing the masses and having their followers really depend on them. You don’t wanna be dependent on anyone, not to that extent. I depend on other people to teach me skills that I need and guide me when I need to, but at the end of the day, it’s about self-trust, and it’s about trusting your intuition. Self-trust and trusting your intuition is self-love. You know what intuition is. Intuition is that little voice in your head that tells you, “Don’t go there right now because there is danger.” It’s that little sensation that tells you, “This person is a good person or a bad person.”

Intuition is really important when you come across somebody you admire and you can get a little bit starstruck where you’re so excited that you can’t see beyond. It can be with getting into a relationship with somebody toxic because you listen to what they are saying rather than listening to what you are feeling.

When you encounter somebody and you’re not sure, trust your intuition before you trust what they say. Trust what you get from their body language before you trust their words. Trusting your intuition and trusting yourself is an act of self-love.

Self-love is about the words that you say to yourself when nobody is listening. We are our own greatest critique. My dear, be careful. Be careful not to tell yourself words like, “Oh, my God. I’m so stupid.” Or, “What was I thinking? I’m so silly. Silly me. Stupid me. I’m so dumb. I’m so clumsy. I’m so bad at this and that.” All those words, all those negative things, get rid of it. Get rid of them. Get rid of negative words.

Self-love is about the words that you say to yourself when nobody is listening. We are our own greatest critique.

Tell yourself sweet things and kind things and talk to yourself as if you are talking to your best friend. If your best friend made a mistake and they’re feeling really sad and miserable about it, you won’t come and say, “Oh, my god. You’re so dumb. You’re so stupid. You’re so silly. Who would ever wanna hang out with you? You’re so stupid.” Whatever those words because yeah, sometimes we get really mean with ourselves, me too. Me too.

Everything that I share with you ladies and gentlemen here is me too. Be mindful with the words you are saying because the words that you are saying are important, and you wanna say kind things, and treat yourself as if you were your own best friend.

Body image. Body image and loving your body is an act of self-love, especially for women. With everything that we see in the media and all the beautiful skinny models and the trends like, “Wow, now that Kim Kardashian is really popular, I have to have a big butt because I like big butts and I just can’t lie. Nicki Minaj and all those girls in the clips, they have big butts, so I need to have one too.”

When I was young, Calvin Klein and Kate Moss, the super, super, skinny, skinny models were in fashion. “Wow, I don’t look like a Calvin Klein model. I’m probably not good enough, not beautiful enough.” Women have so many insecurities when it comes to their bodies. It’s your responsibility to love your body. If you are extremely overweight and you wanna take care of your body for health purposes, you should. But this is not what I’m talking about. This is not, “I’m just gonna accept myself as I am.” No. If you’re in the danger zone and this is becoming unhealthy, go and do stuff to take care of yourself and take care of your health, because this is self-love.

If you look in the mirror and you have some love handles, maybe some wrinkles, maybe some stretch marks, maybe it’s not that perfect Photoshop image you see in the media, you are still perfect just the way you are. You’re just perfect just the way you are. Unless you really accept your perfect imperfections, you’re gonna suffer, and why would you? You wasted so much time telling yourself mean things about your body, criticizing yourself in the mirror, wasting freaking time on this bulshit, and it’s time to stop. It’s time to stop and appreciate your body for everything she did for you. For the pleasure she gave and is giving you, for your ability to do things with your body. You wanna change your expectations with appreciations.

When I did the 7-Day Challenge with my group, mirror work was the first day because women are having a hard time looking at themselves in the mirror and saying, “I love you.” It was about connecting. It had two levels. One is almost like connecting to yourself, to your soul, you look at yourself in the mirror, in your eyes and you say, “I love you.” There is a book called Mirror Work from Louise Hay. You can read all about it. But the gist of it is look in your eyes in the mirror and say, “I love you.” The other level of mirror work, of doing this type of work in the mirror is loving your body. It might not be a quick win for you to look at your naked body in the mirror and just love her but you can start with loving little things about you.

Everyday, you increase and you train your brain to find what’s good. You train your brain to find what you love about you. The more you say it and the more you focus on loving your body just the way she is, loving her and accepting her, the more you’ll be able to do it, and then you’d feel liberated. And you know what, when you love your body, somebody else will love your body even more because when we criticize ourselves out loud, in front of our partners, we actually affect the way our partners look at us.

With my man, in the last year, I’ve been taking some bioidentical hormones, I had something with my thyroid, and I gained like 10 pounds which I see it. It’s very different. 10 pounds look very different on me, plus 10 pounds or minus 10 pounds. I have to say that I felt a little bit more confident when I was a bit skinnier but I never criticized my body in front of my husband, ever. When I catch myself doing it, because sometimes I do, I catch myself doing it. I’m like, “No.” For every bad thing I tell myself, I say 10 good things because this is the balance. For us to believe the good things, we have to say way more good things than bad things.

I still give my body the love she needs and the love she deserves. I give my love handles and something that you can do now if you’re not driving is touch your belly, or a part of your body that you’re having a hard time with and just say, “I love you. I thank you.” This is a part of you, you can’t just freaking hate a part of you, it’s a part of who you are. Whatever it is, this part needs love and the person that can give love is you. You give love. Give the love that you want to receive. Keep giving your body the love. Keep embracing your body and keep caring for your body. You can care for your body by trying a new, hopefully organic and non-toxic lotion or cream or oil, whatever it is.

Self-love is also being kind to other people. Because when you love yourself more, you are a kinder person and a more loving person to somebody else.

I also urge you to love yourself regardless of any external situation with whatever you are going through, whether or not you’re going through some trouble at work, at home, in your personal relationship, with your health, all those things. They’re a part of you but they are not a part of your value as a human being, as a person.

Whatever experience you are experiencing, you are worthy of love. You need to give yourself that love. Don’t wait until you have the perfect amount of money in the bank to love yourself or the perfect health and fitness for you to love yourself, or the perfect relationship for you to love yourself. This is backwards. You need to start focusing everyday, all day long, about loving yourself. Like I said in the beginning of the podcast, loving yourself not from a place of vanity or selfishness but from a place of self-care and really appreciating the light that you are, because you are.

Here are two tips before we finish. One is practicing saying no. When you love yourself, you practice saying no to things that you don’t want to do or if people are trying to force their opinion on you, you say no. Physically, who try to force themself on you, you say no. They would try to take away from your time, you say no. You wanna practice saying no and being assertive. Saying no in an assertive way, in a kind way, in a way that protects yourself and your boundaries, and set those boundaries.

Say no to these things that don’t serve you. Say no to alcohol say no to drugs, say no to too much sugar, don’t say no to a little bit of sugar, say no to anything, say no to toxic people, say no to juice stealers, say no to people who try to pick your brain for free, say no for people that try to take advantage of you, say no to all that, protect yourself and put those energetic boundaries around yourself. To protect yourself from things that are not good.

Practice to say no but also practice saying yes. Say yes to inviting great people into your life, say yes to inviting great knowledge and learning more, say yes to going on hikes and adventures and plane, say yes to play, say yes to going to the beach, say yes to rolling in the snow, say yes to fun things or even little things that are outside of your comfort zone that can enrich your life, say yes to something you’ve never done before that can be great, say yes to somebody inviting you out for coffee or a sexy date. Practice saying yes to the good stuff. Say yes to the good stuff because life is short. You wanna experience as much joy, and love, and spirit, and excitement, as you can.

I hope you enjoyed this episode about self-love.

If you have more topics that you want me to talk about, if you have questions that will help me a lot to know what you need, to know what you want me to talk about because I can’t just read your mind, so I’ll appreciate your communication. You can email me to my private email, it’s orion@nullorionsmethod.com.

Email me and let me know if you life this episode, every topic that I mentioned here is a topic that I can talk about for hours. People wrote many, many books about each and every topic that I touched on in this episode but it’s all a part of self-love. I had to mention it all and I probably didn’t mention a thousand more things or a billion more things that you can do to love yourself. I hope I helped you remember that you are a beautiful bright star and you are worthy of love, and respect, and care, and everything that you want. Keep on that focus and keep pursuing self-care and self-love. Until next time. This is Orion, signing off. Bye.

Your Checklist of Actions to Take

✓ Constantly remind yourself that you are worthy of self-love. It’s not selfish to make sure your own needs are met.

✓ Prioritize self-care. No one will be able to take care of your career, environment or business the way that you can.

✓ Forgive yourself and don’t let negative memories or feelings get in the way of your personal growth. It’s easier to forgive others but forgiving yourself brings inner peace.

✓ Slow down from your busy life. A little bit of stress is good to keep you challenged but too much work can take a toll on your health and well-being.  

✓ Take ownership of everything in your life whether it’s good or bad. When you take responsibility for even your littlest fault, you value yourself better.

✓ Be more aware of your thoughts and analyze them rationally rather than emotionally. Don’t let limiting beliefs take over.

✓ Continue to improve your skills or try out a new one. Self-love is about letting yourself grow and improve as you get older so that you can age gracefully.

✓ Have a healthy body image. Don’t let the media tell you what looks good and what doesn’t. You are real, beautiful and incredible.

✓ Be kind to others and spread positivity so that it will surround you. Being happy and fulfilled makes it easier to love yourself.

✓ Practice saying no. Don’t feel guilty for avoiding something you don’t want to do. At the end of the day, people will respect your decision.

Links and Resources:

• orion@nullorionsmethod.com
• Awaken Your Inner Goddess
• Dr. John Demartini
• Byron Katie
• Byron Katie’s Four Questions
• Mirror Work by Louise Hay

About Orion Talmay

I help alpha women awaken their inner goddess so they can embody a sexy confidence and attract their soulmate.

Through the rollercoaster of my life’s journey, I have discovered how to live as a confidant, empowered woman and have a healthy relationship. Want to know more about my journey? Visit my About page.