Episode #33 – How To Love & Accept Yourself?

Transcript:

Hi everyone! Welcome back to this podcast. Welcome to Soulish Femme. My name is Glennavelle Manarang. To those of you who are here for the very first time, I would like to welcome you. And to those of you who are my returning subscribers and supporters, thank you for coming back once again Mondays and Thursdays with the new podcast. Today’s episode is titled, “How do we love and accept ourselves?” or “How do you accept and love yourself?”

First of all, acceptance and loving yourself is truly important for you to become the one that God created you to be. However, as I always like to emphasize on my channel, loving yourself is impossible unless you tap into your God-given intrinsic value. Realizing that each one of us are innately valuable, intrinsically important in the eyes of God because he’s the one who created us. Vertically aligned with your creator and that will come with loving yourself. Pay attention to how you see yourself in the mirror. What do you see? Let go of criticism and negative affirmations or words that you have believed and spoken over your life the negativity, subconscious self-belief that you are fat, ugly, and you’re always going to be broken. Instead, learn to accept yourself completely by changing how you see yourself. I know it’s very easier said than done. It’s counterintuitive because our brain is usually negative. That’s how we were programmed because we live in the fallen world and there’s so many negativity that we see out there and therefore sometimes it doesn’t come naturally for us to think positively in our nature.

#1. Self-Awareness

We love to just criticize ourselves. This is why it’s so hard to become positive. It takes a lot of self-awareness and it takes a lot of shifting from being negative into positive. Especially when you have been brought up in a family where there’s a lot of Betty downers and there’s a lot of people that are very negative and that is why when you come out of that environment, it takes a long time to unlearn certain patterns and it takes a long time to break the cycle. And therefore; it’s very important to say, “I accept myself fully. I am beautiful.” As probably you have heard me before said try saying that in front of the mirror, “I love you. I accept you. I forgive you. I am enough. I am worth it.” You’ll be surprised the amount of relief that you will feel about yourself.

#2. Forgive Yourself

Secondly, learn to forgive yourself. Without forgiving yourself, you cannot accept and love yourself. Forgiveness, of course, is acknowledging the fact that you are not perfect. Acknowledging the fact that you are flawed and you made mistakes. But it’s okay as long as you are learning from your mistakes and growing from them. That is how you can start healing. People usually who are in denial and running away from the truth, they’re actually still unable to grow because they refuse to face themselves with honesty, saying, “In order for me to fully accept myself and to forgive myself, I have to acknowledge that yes, perhaps I was victimized by people, but I could no longer use that as an excuse not for me to try and do something else.”

How many times have you beat yourself up because of the wrongdoings you’ve done? And you say things like, “I’m dumb, stupid. I never do anything right. I’m always screwing up.” Instead, learn to forgive yourself by saying, “Okay, I have made mistakes. It’s okay. I forgive you.” It is like a mother to her children. A loving mother would offer forgiveness when the child admitted his or her misbehavior. A mother would say, “It’s okay, honey. Try not to do it again. I forgive you.” When you never had a mother love or a father love before who really were there for you, you must learn how to become your own parent.

And it’s very hard for many of us who have mother wounds and father wounds that sometimes we must be our own confidante and our own parent. And it takes a lot of grace and understanding that you are perhaps a child who were neglected and rejected and left alone in the world. And therefore, when you grow up, it’s so hard for you to learn how to forgive your own self because you probably were brought up in the perfectionist environment. And you realize that life is not about perfection. It’s never about being perfect. It’s about progression. And as I said, you can never grow up until you realize that without taking accountability, you will get stuck into your own cycle of victimhood mindset.

#3. Embrace Solitude

And thirdly, of course, is to embrace solitude. Forgiveness, accepting yourself, loving yourself is embracing solitude. Find out what makes you happy. Solitude doesn’t mean loneliness. Solitude is the way for you to reflect. Journaling and dumping your thoughts down in a piece of notebook really releases any negativity that you have been harboring any thoughts that are not yours. When you write down something in times of solitude, you have time to self-reflect and self introspect and interrogate every belief system in your heart. If you have been believing that you’re not worthy, you have to interrogate. Is this even true? Where did this come from? If you have been told that you are always going to make mistakes and you’re never going to mount up to anything, did it come from you or did it come from people around you that were lying to you?

This is why I love solitude because this is a time for you to shut down the noises around you. To turn down the noises of people’s voices in your head that are not yours. Unfortunately, we are very distracted generation. We have so many things competing with our attention, social media, the news, television, noises. And that’s why we somehow confuse our own thoughts with other people’s thoughts. We confuse their truth with our own truth. And if you do not know how to sift the noise out and really learn that these thoughts and these belief system are actually not mine. Then you have a better understanding to shift that. For me, I like to write to cook, dance, which I love to dance to. And solitude is about really tapping into your childlike spirit. When you’re in solitude, that’s who you are.

You will know who you are when no one is looking. How do you behave? What kinds of activities you gravitate towards? The kinds of things that ignite something inside of you. This is exactly is going to help you embrace being alone sometimes. I know when I was in my lonely years, which is when I was in my single years, I usually I went out by myself, movies, to a movie theater. I watch a movie by myself, or walk at the park by myself, go to the gym by myself, or eat at the restaurant by myself. For some people, it might look like you’re such a loner and you’re alone wolf or you have a pathetic life because you have no friends around you. But actually when you really know who you are, you realize that you can choose people right away. When you can feel it because you became your own best friend and there’s really no other place for you to become. Because people come and go, friendships come and go. Not a lot of people are going to stay in your life.

#4. Stop Comparing Yourself

And of course, if you want to love and accept yourself, stop comparing yourself. Comparison is a thief of joy. You have heard this before. It is by Elenor Roosevelt. You are unique and there is not a single person in this world who is you. You might have similarities but still the person isn’t you. The reason why I deleted my social media is because I have found myself many years ago. I was comparing myself and comparison really is going to make you feel sorry about yourself. You feel as though you are left behind or why is it that some women on Instagram have a perfect life? It seems as though their life is well curated and yours is not. How come these people look like they’re living the life that you’ve wished for and here you are struggling financially? Or maybe you could barely afford to pay your rent. What do they have that you don’t have?

And we cannot be really fooled by a five minute snapshot. And that’s only something that you see in a glimpse. You have no idea what these people are going through behind closed doors. So, this is why you wouldn’t want what other people’s life because if you would probably ask them the question, what are their struggling behind closed doors? They’re not going to tell you that. They’re only going to tell you the beautiful perfection that they want to showcase into the world. This is why when you’re comparing oranges and apple. They do not taste the same. They don’t have the same nutrients and vitamins, but they’re in the same category. They are fruits, but they actually consist of different things that they will contribute to the world.

If you just allow yourself to really tap into your identity and find out what you’re good at and use that instead of looking around what everybody else is doing, you are a much happier person. I really think that depression and especially in women, we are very depressed or we feel insecure is because we get caught up in the comparison matrix. We compare with their looks or our body type especially for women. We have been body shamed in our society and some men or women perhaps are part of the problem who have set up a standard of beauty that is very not realistic. It is not attainable. And we, as a human, usually we get caught up in this whole standard of beauty. Well, because she’s size two perhaps that’s why you called beauty and beautiful. But for some reason, if you’re size six or eight, then you’re not beautiful. Or their body shame you because you have gained the weight because you just had three children.

And as I said, if you allow the toxic society to dictate what beauty standard is, and that’s why many women suffered with eating disorder or perhaps the other extreme, which is obesity. And we do not really find the balance or the equilibrium of what a healthy standard beauty is. And we are just so bombarded of this constant push to women that you must be a certain size or you must be free of wrinkles and do not embrace aging because once you do then you are no longer relevant into this world for some odd reason. They always demonize women who are aging. In fact, aging is part of living. If you’re not aging, then something’s wrong with you. And that is why if we are not careful, we allow society to give us all this ideas or indoctrination in our brain that is not even I don’t know it’s actually superficial in my part.

So, stop comparing yourself and stop allowing society to tell you that you’re not beautiful. If you are actually taking care of yourself, you’re doing the best that you can, then who cares what people say? And of course, invest in yourself. As I always like to say on my channel, I can’t emphasize this enough. How we care for ourselves is crucial. Self-care requires taking good care of your well-being physically, emotionally, and mentally. How does self-care looks like physically? Doing the things that good for your body. I don’t have to tell you. Eating the right food, nutritious food, exercising, movement. I am not a person who’s very rigid of going to the gym or exercising. I don’t know. I just perhaps because I never grew up in that kind of environment where we have to really exalt exercise and put our body on the pedestal. We were not consumed with that kind of vanity. Maybe it’s cultural.

I never really seen my grandmother or my aunts that were so obsessed with how much weight or what do they look like. I think because in the western culture. We are very in vain. The vanity metrics is very rampant that we’re so obsessed with how do I look? Am I size zero or size two? Am I size four size or size five? I think because as I said it be it comes with your culture. In my culture where I grew up it’s all about really taking care of yourself. We took a nap, eating the right food. We eat lots of fruits and vegetables when I was growing up. I didn’t really see my grandmother as I said or my aunts getting obsessed with size two or size zero. But we actually moved a lot by gardening. We walked in kilometers. We didn’t have a lot of, you know, transportation. Sometimes we just like to play outside and that was our way of exercise. We didn’t really have to think about it. I think exercise for us is more like, you know, scrubbing the toilet or vacuuming or mopping the floor or washing the dishes. That for us is not like a regiment exercise that you really have to be rigid.

I think when you move your body and you’re not sedentary and you’re just not sitting for 30 minutes a day with absolutely doing nothing. Then I think that can also comprise of exercising but if you really think about it, exercising is just moving your body. Maybe putting a music on and start dancing with the music because the moment you keep on saying I need to exercise and 15 minutes or 20 minutes it becomes rigid and people usually myself. I don’t like rigidity. I feel like it’s very hard to stick to a schedule when you don’t enjoy what you’re doing. If you’re not flexible enough. You become rigid and what’s the point of doing something you don’t enjoy? What’s the point of having this routine and you’re so not able to become flexible? I feel like you become a prisoner of it because of the set standards that people have set for you. This society have set the standard for us to exercise this much amount of time and 20 minutes and 30 minutes and at the end of the day who can keep up with it?

This is why for many people they always fail to stick with their routine. They don’t stick with the exercise schedule because for them it it is so rigid. It doesn’t come with this idea that whatever feels good in my body. They’re not attuned to what makes them feel good. As I always like to share in my channel that self-awareness is very important. Instead of listening to the people around you that you must lose 5 lbs or 10 pounds because this standard of beauty or the standard of the extreme whoever stated that you have to exercise 20 to 30 minutes. For me, if my body is feeling like I need to stretch I would do that. If my body is feeling lethargic, I would sometimes just be stretching, do yoga or strength training. You have to know your own body. You have to be able to understand your own physiology. What makes you feel good? What doesn’t make you feel good?

Do not get so sucked into this one standard, one size fits in. If everybody says this is how you have to do it. Then you must follow. If it doesn’t make you feel good, you’re not going to be able to stick to that regimen. You’re not going to be able to stick to that routine because it’s unattainable for you. And that is why some people they’re like I don’t know why I can never keep up with this exercise because it doesn’t make you feel good. And our body will reject that. And of course as I always say, emotionally you have to invest in your emotions. Ask yourself the question, how am I feeling today? Much of our issues and underlying rooted from our heart. We are we advise that guard your heart with all diligence. The heart is what we consider the inner man or the subconscious part of us.

When there are unresolved issues from our past, most likely we will carry it into the next relationship. And if you want to invest in yourself, it comes with your healing. As I always say, talk it out with someone that you trust. Be careful who you ask for advice. Because if I would want to share to you today that some psychologist who actually ruined uh some people’s trust because they’re misdiagnosed and this is what I do not understand about psychologist people especially those who have never been in your shoes who have never been sexually abused who’ve never had abortion and if you go to them and this has happened to me before when I went to this specific psychologist I’ve been to so many people because you thought you would trust someone until to find out they will misdiagnose you. I was diagnosed with bipolar and they would give you anti-depressant.

But here’s my question, “How can you possibly label someone with bipolar when somebody tells you I was sexually abused by my dad and I had an abortion?” What made you think that it is going to constitute a bipolar problem? It is what these people want for you is to medicate you so that they can control you. I really think that people are just leveraging our pain to make us the guinea pig or the experiment whether or not we really have to this category. When people are categorizing you already, they have already added insult to the injury. I don’t know who said it first but said if you’re going to negate me, you have already insulted me. Negating is insulting me. It’s like if you label me, you have already negated me. You have already somehow invalidated the fact that this person, my person, me was going through something in life. I was psychologically, emotionally, physically violated. And for you to say to someone that you have a bipolar and that is a label, you’re adding insult to the injury.

And this is what psychologists or doctors have to change their narrative that women especially and men who have been sexually abused are not labels. They are not serial boxes who has to be labeled. These are human being who have been abused mentally, physically, and there’s no amount of medication that can fix that until your soul has to be healed. They think that just because you are going through this and they can just medicate you and everything is fine. Medication only works for physical body but it doesn’t forget what happened to you. You need to really allow the Holy Spirit, the spirit of God to change you from the inside out. There’s not a lot of medication. The medication can only alleviate your pain, but it doesn’t cure you.

It doesn’t cure the fact that you were abused. It doesn’t cure the fact that you were violated. It doesn’t cure the fact that you were actually been psychologically mentally has been broken down by narcissistic people in your life and by labeling people you are not helping. And this is why these people are truly trying to do this.

So I feel like it’s becoming make you as invalid. No, it doesn’t really make any difference if we label you because we have to name it. For what reason? It’s not a mental illness. It’s a mental breaking down of you. You were thrown out in your nervous system. What made you think a person is going to be in this equilibrium when she has been mentally and physically abused? It’s like a narcissistic in a roller coaster ride. One minute they love you, the next minute they spit you out. The next minute they invite you in and the next minute they dump you. And that’s why how people their nervous system is jacked up. The nervous system is out of whack because that’s what narcissistic people do. They designed for you to become psychologically unstable by playing the games. This is a mind game.

If you don’t know what mind game is, this is exactly what one of my bosses said, “Did you not know that this man is playing a mind game with you? I never really understood what she meant until I realized it’s exactly what she meant when a person in your life will come in, give love bombing. They will give you the attention that you need and then suddenly they will unplug from you and they will ghost you as if you never existed. And if you keep doing that to a person by playing the mind tricks of loving you, love bombing you and the next minute they just unplug and they just hide and seek. It’s like Jacquelyn & Hyde. What made you think the nervous system is not going to be out of whack? This is why inconsistency creates a lot of confusion. When you are not consistent showing up for the person time and time again, you are going to be o all over the place. And that’s why people have highs and lows. They have sometimes they feel so heightened and sometimes they’re very low because some people in their life they jack them up and they have been abused like that mentally.

#5. Self-Acceptance

That is how they psychologically break down a woman or a man. And that is why do not be fooled by these people who wants to just label you because you’re not a serial a box. I am out of the tangent and let’s just talk about then secondly when you want to talk about loving and accepting yourself of course let’s not talk let’s not forget about self- acceptance. Excuse me. I just had some breakfast. I’m going keep on burping. Acceptance is part of selfac acceptance is not changing what you cannot change. So when you say self-acceptance and loving yourself, it’s about embracing your physical body. As I said, I used to do not like my body before. You know, I was I feel like I was disproportionate. I was unsymmetrical or whatever you call it. The longer you realize that I am who I am, the way that God created me, I am short. I’m actually a little chubby and I know I can change with a weight but when it comes to the height I cannot change it.

I cannot change the color of my skin. I cannot change my eyes. I cannot change my stature. I cannot change my genetics when it comes to my appearance. However, I can change the character because self-acceptance is not only limited on how you look in the mirror or how people perceive you. When it comes to people’s perception, it’s actually on them. That’s not on you. So, even if you beat yourself up and you try so hard to create an illusion that you must be tan or you must be lighter because you want that or you must have this certain color then you are missing out the point. It is this race that is an ending chase of a tale that you’re never going to feel happiness. Women who are constantly fixated on changing their appearance is because it’s rooted deeply within their soul.

As I said, it’s part of a society’s problem too that we somehow demonize women who are getting older or who do not have the right kind of a body. Self-acceptance, as I said, is not only physical but also your values. Self-acceptance comes with knowing who you are. Self-acceptance comes from not wanting validation from people. Self-acceptance is knowing that you’re fearfully and wonderfully made by the one who created you. That you’re are an important puzzle. You are not a person who has to be fixed. You’re not a person who has to blend in. You’re not a woman who has to fit in. If people can just embrace who they are, then I think this place would be a much better place to live. But the problem is we are now bombarded with the superficiality of conformity, congruency, looking alike like everybody else. I have done a video many months ago about the Rise of Deception because now we have this celebrities and influencers who want to just be look alike like a clone, look like a robot.

They no longer embrace their individuality. They’re no longer embracing their variety of how they were brought up into this world. We get so obsessed with looking like the same. When it when everybody looks the same, it becomes dull. It becomes monotonous. That’s why God created variety. There are different kinds of fruits. There are different kinds of animals. There are different kinds of flowers. There are different kinds of mountains. There are different kinds of the body of water, lakes, oceans, brooks. Because God hates conformity. He doesn’t like He likes variety. When there’s variety, it brings beauty. When everybody looks the same. Now, you probably think that conformity is going to be appealing. Actually, it becomes boring. It is no originality. It becomes monotonous. it becomes so out of it’s no longer it doesn’t really separate between who really is standing out and who isn’t. You cannot separate between who is the most beautiful versus the average because life is not supposed to be that way.

And when people get sucked into this idea that they have to follow certain standards of beauty, you are no longer accepting yourself. You’re accepting the voices of the world. to accepting the standard of society that is actually crooked and if you are not careful you yourself are going to get sucked into it. And I love what Audrey Hepburn she had this interview many years ago that she was in her 60s I think and somebody asked her if she had a surgery done on her face and she said never had any surgery done. It was very natural looking and she embraced her growing age. She aged very well because if you are a person who really cannot accept yourself then you’re going to do more harm to your body and your physical appearance. Because as I said, you get sucked into the standard of the world that is sometimes actually egregious. It is shallow. I am not trying to make people embarrassed if they have their buttocks done or facial appearance surgery done. I’m not saying to disrespect these kind of women, if that was their choice. What I’m saying is for those of us who are more aware. I’m not saying that they’re not aware either. But not going into that kind of ideology or following the footsteps than it is actually to each has its own.

But I think because for many years, we have been lied to. Women have been lied to. We have been lied to that we’re not good enough. We’re not beautiful enough. We’re not skinny enough. We’re never enough. And do you know who started that? It’s Satan himself, right? It started from the Garden of Eden. The lies of the devil. Did God really say that you’re not beautiful? It’s always the tactic of the enemy himself. When Eve was being tempted, she was asked the question, “Are you sure God said that thou shalt not touch of this tree of good and evil?” And the same thing with women. Are you sure you’re not beautiful? Are you sure you’re beautiful enough? Are you sure you shouldn’t lose the weight? Are you sure your husband is going to love you and accept you just the way you are? Are you sure, you know, are are you sure that you’re doing the right thing?

This constant bombarding of questioning whether we’re more than enough. And if we are not going to drown out the noise and we get sucked into those narratives and the questions, then we’re going to end up giving in and caving into the standard of society. When you do not love yourself and accept yourself, you become persuaded instantly by the noise of the world. You are like a wishy-washy person by what the Bible called it’s like you’re a wave tossed and to and fro. If everybody says you have to lose the pounds you will lose the pounds. If you have to lose 10 pounds then you are going to lose 10 pounds because everybody’s dictating to you. But if you actually are comfortable with your body and you love yourself, no matter what people say, they can say whatever they want. They can’t really do anything about it. So that is why I want to remind you that if you are still in this journey of loving and accepting yourself, it has to come with a place of really enjoying your own company, knowing who you are, your likes, your dislikes, your standards.

Because guess what? You’re stuck with you for the rest of your life. Your friends come and go. Your family might not always be there for you. Even your own spouse, even though if you’re married, your children will also leave you someday. And you’re going to be there stuck with yourself. Might as well get to know her now. Might as well be comfortable of being alone, enjoying your own company, because you’re going to die alone. And that is the truth. I know it’s very sad, but it’s just reality. When you were born out of your mother’s womb, nobody was there with you but yourself. Unless of course you had a twin. Nevertheless, you are always going to be by yourself. And that is why being your own company, enjoying your own company, being your own best friend, it is a great investment.