3141: [Part 1] How To Love Yourself Unconditionally, Even When You're Suffering by Sabrina of The Budding Optimist on Self Compassion

[00:00:00] Hey, it's Justin from Optimal Living Daily. Before we start, I want to share a super powerful practice I use called NSDR or Non-Sleep Deep Rest. In just about 10 minutes or so, this Yoga Nidra practice leaves you feeling as refreshed as after a nap without actually sleeping. Experience it for yourself on our guided podcast. Search NSDR and look for the one from Optimal Living Daily.

[00:00:24] This is Optimal Relationships Daily, How To Love Yourself Unconditionally, Even When You're Suffering, Part 1, by Sabrina of BuddingOptimist.com Do you struggle with any of the following feelings? You feel sorry for yourself. You feel ashamed about yourself in some way. You feel like you're not good enough. Then it's time for a wake-up call.

[00:00:50] You're not getting enough love from the one person who matters the most. Yourself. Hey, I'm there with you. I used to feel all of the above and I still do sometimes. But it's much better now. I grew up hating myself. Hating my immigrant background. Hating the coupon-clipping lifestyle we lived. Hating going home to a home filled with anger. Hating my acne and broad-set shoulders. And pretty much everything else about me.

[00:01:17] It's been a long journey getting to a place where I'm comfortable and happy with myself. Where I feel love within me and not pain. I want to tell you the story of how I learned to love myself unconditionally. How I let go of those feelings that made me feel ugly, unworthy, and small. How I learned to accept myself wholeheartedly, believe in my own power, and appreciate myself deeply.

[00:01:40] And ironically, my journey to unconditional self-love started during a period of tremendous pain and suffering in the midst of a cancer diagnosis. Finding unconditional self-love in the most unlikely of times. One day when I was 19, my world fell apart in the most spectacular fashion. One Saturday morning, I went to the doctor's office.

[00:02:05] And before dinner even got to the table, I found myself crying in disbelief on a hospital bed. A few days later, the doctors told me I had blood cancer. So began several years of despair, disappointment, pain, and fear. There were times when suffering was all I knew. There were days, weeks, even months where I couldn't remember what it was like to feel good. And yet that was when I learned it was possible to love myself.

[00:02:33] How I learned to love myself unconditionally in the midst of suffering. First, I had to give myself the permission to heal old wounds. If you want to love yourself unconditionally, first you have to accept yourself. But I couldn't do that for the longest time. Why? Because I had held on to a few old wounds inside of me and kept tearing them open. Those old wounds had to do with my family.

[00:02:59] For years before my cancer diagnosis, I lived in the dark shadows of family drama. For as long as I could remember, my parents were always in a cycle of fighting and making up. The arguments were violent and regular. And the good times were few and far between. We were the family relatives shook their heads at and neighbors whispered about behind closed doors. Because of this, I was deeply ashamed. I was in every way trapped in my own self-hatred and self-pity.

[00:03:27] The cocktail of shame, self-blame, and self-pity I fed myself was toxic. It was as if I walked around with an open wound that festered and would not heal. Every time I saw something or someone that triggered me, a father lifting a child on his shoulders, or a family having a barbecue at the park, I would cut the stitches open and say to myself, Look what you don't have. At the time, it didn't seem like I could ever love myself.

[00:03:54] How could I when I was the one who kept tearing open the scars of the past and making myself bleed inside? But what I didn't know was that the path to unconditional self-love would open up for me unexpectedly in the aftermath of a cancer diagnosis. Soon after my diagnosis, I found myself at a crossroad. I either had to face up to the fight or go cower in a corner and continue to cry all day.

[00:04:20] After doing the latter for a few weeks, I began to realize I had to do something different. The wallowing in self-pity did not help one bit. I still had cancer. I realized in order for me to conquer this heck of a battle in front of me, I had to be stronger mentally. And I couldn't do that if I continued to pick at the scars of the past. And once I made the decision that I was going to heal, everything changed. I stopped focusing on those old wounds.

[00:04:48] The suffering I was going through helped me put things in perspective. Sure, my childhood was far from perfect. But in front of life and death? The things that had happened to me didn't seem so bad. I had let a few punches early in life keep me on the ground for far too long. It was time I got up. I spat out the blood in my mouth and moved on. And so I did. One day I caught myself thinking about the past and it didn't hurt as much anymore. And I realized the scars have healed.

[00:05:18] That's when I finally started to accept who I am and everything that's happened in my life. To be continued. You just listened to part one of the post titled, How to Love Yourself Unconditionally, Even When You're Suffering, by Sabrina of BuddingOptimist.com. Okay, and thanks so much to Sabrina for sharing, not just her wisdom, but her story as well.

[00:05:46] Certainly it can be very difficult to relive these chapters of our lives. But when done properly, and with a little bit of luck too, doing so can generate a lot of motivation for not just ourselves, but also for those who we share the stories with. I love where this post is going already. Sabrina's already doing a good job of letting us know that the opportunity to increase self-love is not at all contingent on what else is going on in your life, or what you're struggling with, or what pressure you're under.

[00:06:15] This is a really great way to begin the post, as I think many of us, you know, we almost wait for self-love to just show up as a byproduct during a time of life when so much is going right. It's easy to forget that we can and should take action on this and create self-love for ourselves, no matter what season we're in. So Sabrina is going to have more to say about that tomorrow. I'm going to save the rest of my commentary for then, once we've heard the post in its entirety. Until then, ponder what you've heard today.

[00:06:42] Be sure to share this show with someone who you think would enjoy it. That really helps us continue to keep it all going. And I'll look forward to talking with all of you again tomorrow. That's where your optimal life awaits.