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How do you feel about self-love?
More importantly, how well do you love yourself?
For most of us, loving ourselves is something we may know is important, but often have difficulty actually feeling, expressing, and embodying.
I’ve spent much of my life – as a student, an athlete, in business, in relationships, and in general – struggling with worthiness and perfectionism. Most people I know and work with have some version of “I’m not good enough” that negatively impacts their life, their work, and their relationships.
As we celebrate Valentine’s Day and think about the important people in our lives whom we love (or the fact that we wish we had more love in our lives), much of our focus tends to be outward and not inward.
Love Yourself, and the Rest Will Follow
Self-love is what we’re often searching for – in our work, our relationships, and our lives. Sadly, we spend most of our time thinking that someone or something else can give us what only we can give ourselves.
To be truly fulfilled, we have to find the love within us and give it to ourselves.
No other person, material possession, or accomplishment can do it. It’s up to us.
One of the best gifts we can give to the people around us is to love ourselves in a genuine way. As my mom used to say to me when I was young, “You can’t love anyone else, until you love yourself.” She was right, but this is often much easier said than done.
How to Deepen Your Capacity for Loving Yourself
Here are a few things to think about and practice as you deepen your capacity for loving yourself:
1) Notice your relationship to self love
How do you feel about self-love and self-care? How comfortable are you with these important things and what resistance do you have to loving and caring for yourself?
Being honest about your own relationship to self-love is the first step in altering it. Many of us have not been encouraged or taught to love ourselves. We have also not seen many healthy models of self-love around us.
We’re often much better at being hard on ourselves than we are at being kind and loving towards ourselves. Based on these and other factors, self-love can be a bit tricky. Once we tell the truth about how we relate to self-love, we can start to expand our ability to love ourselves in a more real way.
2) Let go of your conditions.
When it comes to loving ourselves, if we even put much attention on it, we often do so in a very conditional way. We love ourselves only when we do “good” things, “succeed” in specific ways, or take care of ourselves in ways we deem important.
While there’s nothing wrong with us feeling good about ourselves in relation to these and other positive things, truly loving ourselves is an unconditional process – which means accepting, appreciating, and celebrating all of who we are, both light and dark.
By letting go of our conditions and loving ourselves unconditionally, – like the way we often love babies, animals, or others we have little or no specific expectations of – we can start to deepen our authentic love for ourselves.
3) Start practicing, right now.
Do anything and everything you can to express love for yourself – right now, not after you think you “deserve” it.
Since most of us have some resistance to loving ourselves, taking any and every self-loving action we can think of is important.
There are lots of things we can do – both big and small – to practice loving ourselves. Speaking kindly about ourselves, taking compliments graciously, taking care of ourselves, honoring and embracing our emotions, pampering ourselves, celebrating our successes (and failures), appreciating and loving our “flaws,” and much more are all simple (although not always easy) things we can do to practice self-love.
Also, be willing to ask for help and look to others who seem to do a good job with self-love and self-care, so you can get the support and guidance that you need. Loving ourselves is a life-long, never ending practice.
Self love is the starting point, not the end game, of our conscious growth and development.
For most of us, myself included, it’s much easier to talk about loving ourselves than it is to actually practice it. However, when we put our attention on loving ourselves in an authentic way, everything in our lives that is important to us – our work, our relationships, our goals, our health, our team, our family, our community, and more – flows from there with a greater sense of ease, joy, and, most importantly, love.
What do you love about yourself? How can you expand your capacity for self-love in a way that will positively impact you, those around you, and your entire life? Share your thoughts, action ideas, insights, and more on my blog below.
Mike Robbins is the author of five books, including his latest, We’re All in This Together: Creating a Team Culture of High Performance, Trust, and Belonging. He’s a thought leader and sought-after speaker whose clients include Google, Wells Fargo, Microsoft, Schwab, eBay, Genentech, the Oakland A’s, and many others.
Liked this article? Here are three more!
Are You Avoiding a Difficult Conversation?
Facing Challenges: How to Appreciate and Learn From Them
This article was originally published in February 2010 and updated for 2023.
A number of years ago a mentor of mine said something really important to me. He told me that there is often one thing that stands between me and the kind of relationships I really want to have.
When I asked what that was, he said, “It’s usually a ten-minute, sweaty-palmed conversation that you’re too afraid to have.”
He went on to say, “It’s engaging effectively in these difficult conversations that help build fantastic relationships. But, if you do like most people and you avoid them, you’ll end up giving away a lot of your power to others and creating unnecessary difficulty.”
His wisdom and insight was spot on, and I’ve been sharing it with others ever since he said it to me.
And although I’ve had my fair share of difficult conversations over the years, and in most cases they have gone well, allowed me to resolve conflicts with others, and created a deeper level of trust and connection in my relationships, I’m still amazed at how easy it is for me to avoid talking about hard things due to my fear of the discomfort or repercussions.
Why Do We Avoid Difficult Conversations?
When we find justifications for not having these difficult conversations, it doesn’t serve us or those around us. In fact, it takes an enormous amount of energy.
So why do we do this? Why do we avoid sweaty-palmed conversations, or worse, end up gossiping, complaining, and actively blaming others for our own discomfort? I think there are a number of reasons we do this, but here are a few of the big ones:
1. We live in a culture of blame and avoidance.
It’s much easier and more socially acceptable to blame others when something happens we don’t like or to simply avoid dealing with a conflict. Most of us weren’t taught in school, at home, or as we’ve moved into our adult lives how to effectively deal with conflict in a healthy and productive way, so we aren’t all that well-equipped to address it.
2. We’ve all had painful experiences in our past trying to deal with difficult situations and conversations.
From the most extreme to the somewhat mild, each of us has experienced pain, hurt, disappointment, shame, failure, and more in our attempts to address a conflict, stand up for ourselves, or engage in a touchy discussion. These experiences often cause us to protect ourselves in one way or another.
3. Difficult conversations make us vulnerable
Talking about stuff like this makes us vulnerable and it can be quite scary, both because of our past experiences and also because by doing so we expose ourselves to those specific things we don’t want to experience – pain, hurt, disappointment, shame, failure, and more.
It takes courage to have these sweaty-palmed conversations (which sometimes take more than ten minutes, of course). More often than not, we’d rather be safe than risk looking bad, making things worse, or doing damage to ourselves, our relationships, and others.
It’s also important to acknowledge that our lack of safety can also be tied to our race, gender, orientation, positional power (or lack thereof), and a number of other factors, all of which make being vulnerable more difficult and even downright scary.
What to Think About When Dealing With a Difficult Conversation
Here are a few things to think about and remember when dealing with a conflict or difficult conversation:
1) Take responsibility
It always “takes two to tango.” Taking responsibility is not about being at fault or blaming the other person, it’s about owning up to the situation and recognizing that we are a part of the issue. It’s also about honestly feeling and expressing our emotions with authenticity.
2) Address the conflict directly
Conflicts are always handled most successfully when they’re dealt with directly and promptly. Be real and vulnerable when you approach someone with an issue and make sure to do so as soon as possible. Don’t let it fester.
3) Seek first to understand
As challenging as it can be, the best approach in any conflict situation is to listen with as much understanding, compassion, and empathy as possible – even and especially when you’re feeling angry or defensive. If you can understand where the other person is coming from, even if you don’t agree, you have a good chance of being able to work things out.
4) Use “I” statements
If someone does or says something and you have a specific reaction to it, that’s real. If you judge someone, make a generalization about them, or accuse them of something, not only is it not “true” (it’s just your opinion) it will most likely trigger a defensive response from them. It’s important to own your feedback as yours, not speak it like the “truth.” Using “I” statements allows you to speak from a place of truth, ideally without blame, judgment, or self-righteousness.
5) Go for a win-win
The only real way to have a conflict resolved authentically is if it’s a true win-win for everyone involved. This doesn’t necessarily mean that each person gets his or her way. It does, however, mean that everyone gets heard, honored, and listened to. And, when and if possible – it’s important to make compromises that leave everyone empowered and in partnership.
6) Acknowledge others
Whether it’s a one-on-one conversation or a situation that involves lots of people, acknowledgment is essential to our ability to engage in productive conflict and to be able to resolve it in an authentic and effective way. Thank the other people involved in the hard conversation and for being willing to engage. Thank them for speaking their truth.
7) Get support and have compassion for yourself in the process
Often these difficult conversations and situations bring up fear and cut to the core of your most vulnerable insecurities. Because of this, it’s important to reach out to others for authentic support (not agreement) who can help both in a practical and emotional sense. It’s also important to have compassion with yourself as you attempt to engage in these difficult conversations.
While these conversations aren’t usually all that fun or enjoyable, they are necessary and essential to your ability to build trust, navigate the complexity of work and life, and create the kind of relationships, families, and teams you truly want.
What can you do right now to have any difficult conversations you have been avoiding in a healthy and authentic way? What support do you need? Leave a comment about this here on my blog.
Mike Robbins is the author of five books, including his latest, We’re All in This Together: Creating a Team Culture of High Performance, Trust, and Belonging. He’s a thought leader and sought-after speaker whose clients include Google, Wells Fargo, Microsoft, Schwab, eBay, Genentech, the Oakland A’s, and many others.
Liked this article? Here are three more!
Why Taking Breaks Is So Important
The Importance of Letting Go of Control
This article was originally published in September 2014 and updated for 2023.
A few years ago, I got some specific feedback that it would serve me, my work, and my growth to start practicing the art of allowing in a more conscious and deliberate way.
While I was familiar with the concept of allowing, I realized I had little awareness or experience of it in actual practice.
As I looked more deeply at it, I realized that I had a judgment about the whole concept of “allowing.” It had always seemed weak, passive, lazy, or based on “luck” to me. I’ve always prided myself on being a hard worker and someone who makes things happen.
However, as I’ve come to realize, much of my intense work ethic has to do with a deep-seated fear that if I ever slow down, stop pushing so hard, or simply expect things to just show up with ease, the whole house of cards of my life and my work might simply come crashing down around me.
Can you relate?
The Power of Acceptance
The art of allowing is an essential aspect of life and growth. It’s also a critical aspect of our success and fulfillment. The first aspect of allowing has to do with us accepting things as they are. One of my favorite quotes on this is from author and teacher Byron Katie who says, “When you argue with reality, you lose – but only 100% of the time.”
When we’re able to allow people, things, and situations to be as they are without judging them, trying to fix them, or wanting them to be some other way than how they actually are, we begin to tap into the immense power of allowing. Ironically and somewhat paradoxically, when we truly allow things and people to be exactly as they are, we open up a space for real change and transformation to occur (if that is what we want).
Trust, Patience, and Faith
The deeper aspect of allowing has to do with trusting, being patient, and having faith that what we want to manifest, create, and experience can and will show up as it is meant to.
In other words, it’s an ability to allow things to happen and materialize without us having to manipulate, dominate, or control to make things happen. For those of us, myself included, who tend to be a bit controlling at times, this can be incredibly challenging.
The paradox that exists with allowing runs deep within us. So many of us were taught and believe the saying that “if it is to be, it’s up to me.” And while there is truth and wisdom in this philosophy, as many of us know, feeling as though we have to work hard, run fast, keep up, and make everything happen is exhausting and insatiable.
No matter how hard we work, what we try to fix, or all of the changes we intend to make, if we don’t learn, practice, and ultimately master the art of allowing – true success and fulfillment will always elude us. Never underestimate the power of patience. Action is important, but we have to also learn to balance it out with our ability to allow.
Allowing takes faith, patience, and trust – three things essential for our peace of mind and well-being in life. However, these are not things we focus on, learn about, or are encouraged to practice in our intense, fast-paced, results-oriented culture.
The art of allowing is truly an art and often runs contrary to societal norms and pressures. It has to do with remembering, as the well-known saying goes, “We’re human beings, not human doings.”
How to Enhance Your Ability to Allow in Your Life
Here are a few things to think about and practice as you enhance your capacity and ability to allow with more ease in your life.
1. Ask yourself how you relate to the concept of “allowing.”
Take some inventory of your relationship with this idea. How do you feel about it? How comfortable are you allowing things and people to be as they are and allowing things to manifest with ease in your life? For many of us, this is something we may understand but not practice. Tell the truth to yourself about how you relate to allowing and notice how this impacts your life – one way or another.
2. Pay attention to what you focus on in regards to your biggest goals and aspirations.
Think about your biggest goals, dreams, and aspirations in your life right now. How much of your attention and energy is focused on doing, and how much is focused on allowing? While both doing and allowing are important, most of us put a disproportionate amount of attention on action.
Increasing our focus on allowing and ultimately receiving can be a magical, relaxing, and incredibly effective way to relate to our goals and dreams. This is often one of the big missing pieces in our desire for success and, more importantly, fulfillment.
3. Create an allowing practice
This is a simple practice you can do daily (like prayer, meditation, quiet reflection, affirmation, etc.) where you put your attention and awareness on allowing – accepting things as they are, trusting that things are working out as they are meant to, believing that the feelings, experiences, accomplishments, and outcomes which you most desire are on their way, and allowing yourself to receive these gifts and blessings with ease and gratitude.
You may need to reach out to others for support, guidance, and feedback about creating or deepening an allowing practice that will work for you – but doing this is one of the greatest gifts you can give to yourself (as well as to those around you).
Remember – We’re All in This Together
Have fun with this, and have compassion for yourself as well. For most of us, the art of allowing is a lot easier to think about or talk about than it actually is to practice and embody. The more attention we put on it, however, the easier it gets. And, as we deepen our ability and capacity to allow – our whole life can transform with ease, grace, and gratitude.
How are you at allowing? What can you do to allow things to be as they are and also allow things to show up with ease in your life? Share your thoughts, action ideas, insights, and more on my blog below.
Mike Robbins is the author of five books, including his latest, We’re All in This Together: Creating a Team Culture of High Performance, Trust, and Belonging. He’s a thought leader and sought-after speaker whose clients include Google, Wells Fargo, Microsoft, Schwab, eBay, Genentech, the Oakland A’s, and many others.
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Why Taking Breaks Is So Important
The Importance of Embracing Emotions (Including Anger)
This article was originally published in March 2010 and updated for 2023.
Many people underestimate the importance of celebrating. In fact, many of us don’t celebrate enough.
How do you feel about celebrating? If you’re anything like me and most of the people I know, you probably enjoy it.
As much as I like to celebrate, at times I find it challenging too, especially these days.
Here are some of the reasons that can make celebrating difficult:
- We don’t have the time or money to celebrate right now because there’s work that needs to get done
- Things aren’t yet as good as they “should” be for us to stop and celebrate
- People will think we’re spoiled, naive, or arrogant if we celebrate too much
- With so much suffering in the world and people having a tough time these days, it’s not appropriate to celebrate
- We’ll celebrate, but not until everything turns out exactly as we want it to
Can you relate to any of these? If you can, you’re not alone. However, celebrating is really important for a number of reasons.
The Power and Importance of Celebrating
We’ve taken our girls, who are now teenagers, to Disneyland over the years…and we all love it there. One of the many magical aspects of the Disney parks is how they fully embrace the power of celebrating. Every day at Disney feels like your birthday, favorite holiday, and New Year’s Eve – all wrapped into one. They had a special parade down Main Street a few years ago called “Celebrate You.”
I think one of the main reasons people go to Disney is that it’s an excuse to celebrate. And while they do a fantastic job at the Disney parks with the rides, the characters, the shows, the fireworks, and more – the real magic behind it all is the power of celebration.
Too often in life, we think we have to have a “legitimate” reason to celebrate – a birthday, winning an award, an anniversary, the completion of a project, the accomplishment of a goal, taking a vacation, or some other “special occasion.” While all of these things can be fun to celebrate, we don’t have to wait for them to happen to feel justified in our celebration.
At Disney they celebrate just to celebrate – on Tuesday mornings and Thursday nights, on special occasions and holidays, and every single day throughout the year.
What if we did more of this in our lives, especially when things get tough?
While it may seem counter-intuitive, celebrating for no reason and counting our blessings when things are hard can transform our experience of being alive.
Treat Every Day Like a Good Day
I was in a cab in Houston many years ago, heading back to the airport after speaking at an event for Chevron. The cab driver and I got into an interesting conversation about life, family, and the state of our culture in America. The driver told me he was from Ethiopia originally but had been living in the United States for about twenty years.
I asked him, “What’s your take on American culture, given that you didn’t grow up here?” He paused for a long time, then asked, “Can I be honest with you?” I said, “Of course.” He said, “I think most people in this culture act like spoiled brats.”
“Why do you say that?” I asked, a bit surprised by his response. “Mike,” he said, “I’m from Ethiopia…every day here is a good day. I don’t understand why people don’t walk around here with their hands in the air saying ‘THANK YOU’.”
I appreciated his honest and poignant feedback. He offered such an important perspective.
Regardless of what’s going on in our lives and the world around us, we always have things to celebrate and be grateful for. While we all go through struggles, we also all go through triumphs in life. But we don’t have to wait until we close the deal, win the game, finish the project, get to retirement, fall in love, reach our goal, or whatever else it is we feel we need to accomplish in order to celebrate.
Sometimes the best thing for us to celebrate is the mere fact that we’ve made it to this point in life, especially if things have been challenging, which for many of us, they have been over the past few years.
Celebrating is not only an after-the-fact phenomenon; it’s a way of being and can become a way of life if we choose to live that way. Stop for a moment and think of all the things (big and small) that you can celebrate about your life right now.
As Oprah Winfrey says, “The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.”
Let’s look for things to be joyful about and grateful for…and let’s choose to celebrate ourselves, our lives, and those around us as much as we can.
What can you celebrate in your life right now? How can you expand your capacity for celebration? Share your thoughts, ideas, insights, and more on my blog below.
Mike Robbins is the author of five books, including his latest, We’re All in This Together: Creating a Team Culture of High Performance, Trust, and Belonging. He’s a thought leader and sought-after speaker whose clients include Google, Wells Fargo, Microsoft, Schwab, eBay, Genentech, the Oakland A’s, and many others.
Liked this article? Here are three more!
- Why Taking Breaks Is So Important
- Don’t Take Yourself Too Seriously
- The Challenge and Importance of Self-Care
This article was originally published in September 2010 and updated for 2022.
In today’s busy world with a never-ending “to-do” list of obligations, responsibilities, and commitments, it can be hard for us to take a real break.
But taking breaks in the midst of the daily grind is vital for our mental, physical, and emotional health.
Why Taking Breaks is So Important
Wherever you are in your career and life, it’s essential to build in time to rest, relax, and rejuvenate.
We used to get built-in breaks when we were in school (winter, spring, summer, and more), but in the real world, it can be a lot tougher to take time off, especially these past few years. Even if we do get vacation days, it can be hard to really disconnect and some of us even fear taking time off.
As I grew my own business, got married, and built a family, I began to see both the necessity and difficulty of carving out downtime.
Taking breaks means giving ourselves permission to unplug and let go, which is actually easier said than done for many of us. It gives us a chance to rest our brains, shift our daily habits, and let our minds wander. Doing these things are essential for our relationships, work, wellbeing, and creativity.
We are never promised tomorrow, and no one is sure what each day will bring.
I’ve experienced quite a bit of loss and grief in my life. As hard and painful as this can be, it does force us to stop and reflect on our own lives. It makes us ask why we’re doing what we’re doing and what really matters.
We all have deadlines, commitments, meetings, projects, and other things that are important. But we never know what’s going to happen. Tomorrow is not promised. That’s why it’s important to rest in between all of our activities and ambitions.
A break can be a nice vacation, or it can just be something simple, such as going for a quiet walk or reading a book.
You don’t have to plan an elaborate getaway, as nice as those can be. A break can be as simple as disconnecting for a few minutes to stare out the window and appreciate your life.
I keep one journal for thoughts/feelings and another specifically for gratitude. I find when I take the time to write in these books, it always gives me a nice built-in time for reflection.
Doing little things like journaling, or even going on a walk and being present with yourself and your surroundings can make a difference.
Staying busy can be a way to distract ourselves from our own feelings.
We have so many ways to numb and distract ourselves these days, especially with work, technology, social media, and more. Feeling our feelings can be hard, painful, and scary, but that’s where the juice of life happens.
The more time we give to fully feeling all of our emotions, even the uncomfortable ones, the more quickly we move through them.
We’re all in this together.
When we get down to the essence of who we are as human beings, we may be different in so many ways, yet we all know what it’s like to feel universal emotions like joy, sadness, gratitude, fear, peacefulness, anger, love, and more.
When we take breaks, we allow ourselves to get in touch with our humanity and who we really are. This helps us check in with ourselves and in turn allows us to connect more authentically with others.
As busy as we all are and as much as is coming at us all the time, it’s essential for us to slow down, step back, and engage with ourselves and each other in a conscious and deliberate way. Doing this reminds us that even though it may not always seem like it, we truly are all in this together.
Share your thoughts, action ideas, insights, and more on my blog below.
Mike Robbins is the author of five books, including his latest, We’re All in This Together: Creating a Team Culture of High Performance, Trust, and Belonging. He’s a thought leader and sought-after speaker whose clients include Google, Wells Fargo, Microsoft, Schwab, eBay, Genentech, the Oakland A’s, and many others.
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