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Learning to love ourselves is key to finding happiness and freedom. I’ve been on this journey for years, and I still find it tough, which is a real struggle. We often hold onto our past mistakes and the things we wish we hadn't done, making self-love feel almost impossible. It’s easy to compare ourselves to others and think we have more skeletons in our closet than they do, but everyone has their own struggles. In this podcast, I dig into why it's so hard to embrace self-love and share some thoughts on how we can start being kinder to ourselves.

Do you find it difficult to love yourself? Forgive yourself? You are not alone. One of the hardest things I've found my whole life is the ability to love myself.

Why is it so difficult to love ourselves?

I answer that question on today's podcast, and I think it's something that when we really become aware of this realisation, we might start to actually cultivate that compassion that we do need to be able to love ourselves.

Loving ourselves sounds easy, right? But in reality, it's a tough journey filled with bumps and hurdles. We often find it hard to love ourselves because we remember all those mistakes we've made over the years. In this podcast, I dive into why self-love can be such a challenge. It’s not about being narcissistic or thinking we’re the best thing since sliced bread. Instead, it’s about having compassion for ourselves during those moments when we mess up or feel down. I share my own struggles with self-love, revealing that even after years of trying, it still doesn’t come easily. We discuss how our past experiences shape our ability to love ourselves and how comparing ourselves to others can make it even harder. It's a real conversation about recognizing our flaws while also trying to embrace them. We might look at others and think they have it all together, but trust me, everyone has their skeletons. The key takeaway? Go easy on yourself, because you’re human. Self-love is a journey we’re all on, together.

Takeaways:

• Learning to love ourselves is crucial for happiness and freedom in life.
• We often struggle with self-love because we hold onto our past mistakes and regrets.
• Everyone has their own skeletons in the closet that make self-acceptance challenging.
• Comparing ourselves to others can make us feel worse about our own issues and mistakes.
• Having compassion for ourselves is key to overcoming difficulties in self-love.
• It's important to recognize that everyone is human and deserves kindness, including ourselves.

If you want to be happy and free, just learn to love yourself.

It's that whole spiritual E foster out there and all we need to do is learn to love ourselves.

And there's book after book written about this.

I've listened to podcasts, I've watched YouTube videos.

I've and over the year, over the last seven years, I have done my utmost to love myself.

Yet I still find it so incredibly difficult.

Why?

Why is it so difficult?

And it's quite funny because we had a conversation between a couple of friends of us yesterday and I think I know why it's so difficult to love ourselves.

But that's what I'm going to cover on this quick, short podcast.

I'm Stephen Webb and this is Stillness in the Storms.

And I help you to find a little inner peace in life, especially when you don't have it, especially when times are a little bit difficult.

So if you could subscribe to the channel, that'd be awesome.

There's a little subscribe button just below and you can listen and subscribe on your favorite platform, itunes, Spotify, Google, whatever.

It doesn't matter which one you choose.

And you'll be notified when I put a new podcast out.

But I want to return to this self love and not a self love narcissistic that I'm amazing, I'm really awesome and you know, I love myself.

Not that kind of one.

The kind of one that you have compassion for yourself that when you say something wrong or when you have those voices in your head that are just not that pleasant when you're hard on yourself where you can just go, okay, let's not be so down on us, but why is it so hard to love ourselves?

I've got a meditation that's about loving your inner child and it really does have a profound effect if you listen to it for a few weeks.

And I will link it below this podcast in the show notes.

So on Insight Timer, it's also on ORA and it will be on my other podcast, Inner Peace Guided Meditations.

And that's the podcast that's just my meditations, Guided meditations helping you with sleep or different aspects.

It's not on all the platforms yet, but it will be given the next few weeks it's been submitted.

It will take a little time, but I will link to it below in the show notes.

But anyway, why is it so difficult to love ourselves?

There's lots of reasons about how we're treated as children and how we have certain protection mechanisms and all that not to become Too narcissistic in the way that, oh, my God, I'm amazing, and all that.

Because that doesn't help and it doesn't get us very far.

So there's lots and lots of reasons.

But I think one of the reasons is this, and it came to me yesterday in the conversation.

I think it's because when we look at ourselves, we can see all of the skeletons, all of the closet, all the things we've ever said wrong, all of the mistakes we've ever made, all the times when we've looked at someone in a way that we probably shouldn't have done, all the times when we said something that wasn't all that lovely and spiritual when we were at school.

I used to be a real asshole when I was a teenager.

And even in my adulthood, Adulthood, adult life, I wasn't always that nice.

I thought I knew everything.

I thought I. I thought I was a doctor, I thought I was a trained vet or anybody come to me for an opinion or any advice, I would give them my advice.

I would offload it and I would tell them as if it was fact, and I would argue.

And I look back on that now and I shudder.

I was like, ah, really?

Was I really like that?

Yeah, I was.

And I can be like that sometimes.

Now I got to catch myself, but I can be like that sometimes now, you know, sometimes I say something, even now when I know better.

Sometimes I'm really mean to myself internally in my mind.

Sometimes I'm really hard on myself.

Sometimes I really, you know, be up on myself.

So when we look at.

And if you think about it for yourself as well, when we look at how to love ourselves and trying to love ourselves, we see all of this.

We see every skeleton we've had in the closet.

We see every time that someone has shouted upon us, someone that shamed us or we shamed ourselves.

Every time we feel guilty for not doing something, we see all that.

We feel all that.

That's all part of who we are.

Part of the experience is part of the story that we give ourselves.

So when we try to love ourselves, we're trying to love every single bit of that.

And it's hard enough trying to love somebody else that you're not that keen on, that someone that's hurt you.

So turning that love onto ourselves, it's really, really difficult because we have a whole load of history and we're aware of it.

If we were to see everybody else's closet, if everybody was to put all their skeletons on Facebook and social media and in the public, first thing we'd notice is, wow, you as well, you were a dumbass like me as well.

You made mistakes like me as well.

But the problem is we only ever see.

And as we get older, we only tend to share the.

After the work we've done on ourselves.

So we only ever really see the.

The improved version of everybody else.

And especially Facebook and social media now that's even worse.

We only ever see the highlights that people want to share.

They're not sharing with you the real struggles and the real pains they're going through.

And you know, they're not sharing with you when they make a mistake.

And they scream at their kids in the morning when really they post on Facebook and say, oh, no, me and the kids have had a lovely day.

We've been to the beach, we've done all those other things.

They don't tell you the way it come to tea time and it was a.

It was hell in the home.

So that's why we look at ourselves in this shame and we feel guilty and we.

We can see all these things.

You imagine trying to love someone that you could see every single skeleton of theirs, every single thing they've ever made a mistake.

And I think that's why it's so hard to love ourselves.

You would find it really difficult to love someone that you could see everything if they bear at all, if they.

Even in a relationship, even in the closest of relationships, there's still an element of the other person you do not know, you do not see, which is fine.

I'm not saying we want to see every skeleton, every closet and put it all out there, but recognize that that's part of the difficulty in loving ourselves.

And when we compare ourselves to others, we often think that we're the ones that have done so many terrible things, so many more skeletons than others.

But the reality is everybody's got them.

You know, if you get to the.

Get to my age, well, I'm nearly 50, you know, I've got as many skeletons, if not more than everybody else.

And I, I may be working on it.

People may see me as a loving person.

I'm not really.

I'm trying.

I'm working on it.

I'm trying to open my heart as much as possible.

I'm trying to love myself.

I'm trying to love you guys.

I don't always achieve it, you know, so, yeah, and this spiritual journey, we try not to gossip and then we gossip and then we feel guilty and then we cannot love ourselves because we gossip.

Go easy on yourself.

That's love.

Just take it easy.

Just have a bit of compassion that you're human and be okay with that.

Foreign.

I'm Stephen Webb.

This is Stillness in the Storms.

Hit us up.

That'd be awesome.

Whether you're on itunes, Spotify, or anywhere, be notified when I bring out more podcasts.

I'm going to do more shorter podcasts like this.

Just my thoughts and we're going to do some interviews.

That'll be a bit longer coming up soon.

Take care, guys.

Have an amazing week.

You are awesome, and I love you.