Mike Robbins

Infusing Life and Business with Authenticity and Appreciation

self-love

Love Yourself, and the Rest Will Follow

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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.   

 

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This article was originally published in February 2010 and updated for 2023.

Love Your “Flaws”

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If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably spent more time than you’d like to admit trying to “fix” your “flaws.” Although I may pretend otherwise, many of my goals, desires, and even my motivation to grow and change has often come from a deep place of insecurity within me – thinking that if I could fix what was wrong with me, then everything would be okay. I recently had an insight (one which I’ve had before but this time, it came to me at a deeper level) that maybe instead of focusing on “fixing” my “flaws,” it’s more important to love your flaws and accept them instead. 

I’ve resisted this notion of loving my flaws for most of my life, worrying that if I loved the things I thought were wrong with me, they’d somehow never change, and I’d be stuck with them.

However, it is really love that leads to healing and transformation – which ultimately can create the actual change we say we’re looking for, or a true sense of acceptance that gives us access to authentic freedom and liberation, regardless of circumstances.

At a deep level, our “flaws” are subjective and based on our interpretations, perspectives, and judgments. We obsess about certain aspects of our body or appearance, personality, life, or work circumstances and deem them unacceptable.

But, the truth is, these things are just as they are – we add meaning and interpretation to them.

Regardless of how philosophical we get about it, most of us as human beings experience a sense of feeling flawed in certain aspects of our lives and at particular times in life. There is nothing wrong with us for feeling this way. Although, as we each know from experience, feeling flawed can rob us of our energy, passion, happiness, confidence, and life. It’s one of the most painful ways we allow our ego to run our lives, and it can have devastating consequences if we’re not conscious of it.

How to Love Your Flaws

Here are some ideas about how we can move through our experience of feeling “flawed” and to a place of acceptance, compassion, and love.

1. Acknowledge what’s true for you. 

The first step in almost every process of growth and change is about telling the truth instead of trying to avoid, run from, or pretend our “flaws” away. 

But, if we relate to some aspect of our bodies, personalities, relationships, careers, or lives in general as a flaw, we first have to get real about it if we’re going to do anything about it. 

2. Admit and express the underlying emotions. 

If we can identify, acknowledge, and ultimately express the genuine emotions we’re experiencing related to this perceived flaw, we can create a real sense of liberation for ourselves. 

If a specific aspect of your personality, body, or career bothers you and you find yourself feeling ashamed – as uncomfortable or negative as it may seem, the best thing you can do is acknowledge and express your shame. 

Emotions become positive when they are appropriately expressed. They turn negative when you deny and repress them. 

Although this is a different understanding of emotions than we’ve been taught, we’ve all had many liberating and positive experiences when we’ve expressed “negative” emotions (like sadness, anger, fear, and more). 

By expressing our real emotions, we can unlock and unhook ourselves from the drama and suffering of the situation, which is caused by our denial and repression of these emotions, not the feelings themselves.

3. Forgive yourself. 

Forgiving yourself plays a huge role in learning how to love your flaws. This is something that many of us, myself included, don’t have a lot of experience with. 

Most of us have been trained to be hard on ourselves and that forgiveness must come from someone or something outside us. However, true forgiveness comes from within us and is what ultimately sets us free. 

When we feel “flawed,” we often have a lot of blame and judgment – some of which may be directed towards other people or situations, but beneath that, most of it is directed at us. When we can forgive ourselves authentically, we create the space for real change and healing.

4. Appreciate.

The word appreciate doesn’t necessarily mean like, agree with, or enjoy. 

Appreciate means to recognize the value of something. 

What have you learned about yourself and life by dealing with this “flaw?” 

While pain and challenges are not the only ways to grow in life, one of the many benefits of our issues is that we get to learn a great deal about ourselves, others, and life in the process of dealing with them. 

When we reach a state of genuine appreciation and gratitude for the learning associated with the difficulty, we can move out of feeling sorry for ourselves (which never helps). It’s impossible to experience gratitude and victimhood simultaneously.

5. Love. 

The ultimate antidote for all suffering is love. Your ability to love your flaws and care for them with kindness and compassion (as you would for a child, a pet, or a loved one) will ultimately heal you and allow the true transformation you’re looking for to take place. 

Love is the most powerful force in the universe. When we love our flaws, we create an environment where we can either make the specific changes we truly want (from an authentic place of intention) or learn to love and accept ourselves whether an actual “change” takes place. 

Any issue, malady, or problem that shows up in our lives is an opportunity for us to deepen our capacity for love, acceptance, and compassion.

All of these things, in my own experience, are much easier said than done. And, when we can tell the truth, express our real emotions, forgive ourselves, appreciate our flaws, and bring love to all aspects of our lives (both light and dark), we allow ourselves to transcend our flaws in an authentic way. 

Loving your flaws takes a great deal of intention, support, compassion, and patience. It’s much easier to take a pill, avoid ourselves, get busy and distracted, whine and complain, pretend things are “fine,” and various other things we’ve learned to do in life. 

Leaning into our “flaws” authentically and doing so with acceptance of ourselves is how we can genuinely heal and end the cycle of suffering.

How can you appreciate and love your flaws as a way to create freedom 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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This article was originally published on January 11, 2010, and updated for 2022.

New Year, Be You

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With the New Year upon us, the annual “new year, new you” phenomenon is all around – in the worlds of advertising, media, self-help and more. And while this time of year can be a great catalyst for positive change in our lives, what if we made a commitment to live our lives in 2015 focused on who we are, and not so much on what we do, what we accomplish, what we look like, what we’re striving for, and more? One of best things we can do in this New Year is to focus on who we really are and what’s most important to us, instead of who we think we’re supposed to be.

Who would we be without our accomplishments (or failures), our degrees (or lack thereof), our bank accounts, our experiences, our title, our home, our status, and more? As simple of a concept as this is for us to think about and discuss, at least on the surface, it’s actually quite difficult for many of us, myself included, to genuinely separate who we are from what we do (or have done or not done). These past few years have taught many of us, in some cases quite painfully, how quickly the external circumstances of our lives (and the world) can change dramatically and things can be taken away.

The deeper question for us to ponder here is really one of the big philosophical questions of life, “What makes me valuable?” While this is something we have all thought about to some degree, most of us don’t really engage in this inquiry on a regular basis. And, when we do, we often think that if we just got more done, lost some weight, made more money, took a vacation, accomplished a goal, had more meaningful work, made it to retirement, or whatever, then we’d be “happier” or feel more “valuable.” Sadly, as we’ve all experienced, this is not usually the case and is also one of the main reasons why most of our New Year’s “resolutions” don’t really last.

What if, in addition to having important goals, we could also expand our capacity for appreciating ourselves and being who we really are this year – having nothing to do with our external circumstances? What if just being ourselves, the way we are right now, is good enough?

Being ourselves actually takes a great deal of courage, commitment, and faith. It’s a process of letting go of many false beliefs we’ve picked up from the collective consciousness – that we have to look good, be smart, know the right people, say the right things, have the proper experience, make a certain amount of money, and more, in order to be happy and successful in life. Being ourselves can be scary and counter intuitive, difficult and even off-putting, and, at times, lonely.

However, being our authentic self is liberating, exciting, and fulfilling. When we have the courage to just be who we are, without apology or pretense, so much of our suffering, stress, pressure, and worry in life simply goes away.

Here are a few things to consider and practice as you deepen your awareness of and capacity for being who you truly are in this New Year:

  • Tell the truth to yourself. Think about and own how much of your self-worth is based on what you do, how you look, who you know, what you’ve accomplished, etc. (i.e. the external stuff). The more we let go of being defined by the external, the more freedom, peace, and power we can experience. And, as we really get honest with ourselves, we may realize that outside of these external things, we don’t really know who we are. As scary as this may seem on the surface, it’s actually great news and can give us access to a deeper and more meaningful experience of who we are.
  • Appreciate who you really are. What do you appreciate about yourself that has nothing to do with anything external? In other words, what personal qualities (of being, not doing) do you value about yourself? The more we’re able to tap into what we appreciate about who we are (not what we do), the more capacity we have for real confidence, peace, and self-love.
  • Practice just being you. As silly as it may sound, we all need to “practice” being ourselves. We have a great deal of experience being phony or being how we think we’re supposed to be. It actually takes conscious practice for us to be able to just show up and be who we are. We can practice alone, with people we know, and with total strangers. This is all about awareness – paying attention to how we feel, what we’re thinking, what we say, and how we show up. It’s not about getting it right or doing anything specific, it’s about letting go of our erroneous notions of how we think we’re supposed to be, and just allowing ourselves to be who and how we are in the moment.

Have fun with this, talk to others about it, and have a lot of compassion with yourself as you practice – this is big stuff for most of us. This year, instead of trying to be a “new” you by fixing a list of things you think need to be fixed about you, just be yourself and see what happens.

How can you accept, appreciate, and simply BE yourself in 2015? What does this mean to you? What support do you need in your life this year to step more fully into who you really are? Share your thoughts, ideas, insights, actions, and more here on my blog.

Love Yourself, and the Rest Will Follow

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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.

For me, I’ve spent much of my life – as a student, an athlete, in business, in relationships, and in general – demanding perfection of myself, and of course, falling short and then feeling inadequate on a regular basis. Most people I know and work with have some version of “I’m not good enough” that runs their life, their work, and their relationships.

As we lead up to Valentine’s Day this weekend 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.

Self love is what we’re all 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 in life and relationships, 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.

Especially when it comes to relationships, self love is essential.  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.”

Here are a few things to think about and practice as you deepen your own capacity for loving yourself:

1) Notice your relationship to self love.  How do you feel about it, how comfortable are you with it, and what resistance do you have to loving 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.  And, 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 relationship 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 in the unconditional, like how 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 our emotions, pampering ourselves, celebrating our successes (and failures), appreciating 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 at this, 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, and more – flows from there with a sense of ease, joy, and, most important, 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.