Why You Need to Love Yourself and Find Your Purpose | CPTSD and Trauma Coach

HOW TO DEVELOP PROFOUND SELF-LOVE AND SELF-TRANSFORMATION WITH STEPHEN SHAW 

Michael: One of the things that for me in my journey I've found, and this is kind of the direction I wanna step into is having to face the reality that intimacy only comes through ultimately letting your guard down, the willingness to let people win, the understanding that the truth, realistically, most people are not out to get you. And so, I'm really curious about not only in your journey, but in a practical sense, how can folks’ step into that place of being open to intimacy?

Stephen: All intimacy starts with self-love, and this is the stepping stone. And it sounds like a cliché, I get, you know, you gotta love yourself to love other people. And for years I thought that was total cliche, but the truth is you need to learn to love yourself and that means overcoming your childhood traumas, your personal history if you've been through abuse or loss, it could be being betrayed as an adult, you know, all these things in life are setting you up to make decisions. You come to a crossroad in life that no matter how many bad things happen to you, you have to make a fundamental choice if you're gonna go left or right. Are you gonna love yourself or you're not gonna love yourself? Now, part of that is a choice. Now, when I was Tibet, alarmer said to me, and I thought it was profound, he said to me, you are what you choose to become. And I was like, what about my past, my parents, the things I went through, the loss of my mother, you know, being betrayed and PTSD and he said, at some point you have to choose what you want to become. And that was profound to me. Right. So, self-love is partly a choice, it's partly, as you said earlier, which I thought was beautiful is looking at yourself in the mirror and accepting who you are. Now, I think that the foundation stone of self-love is self-acceptance, right? And that's a choice you have to make, because if you don't accept yourself, it doesn't matter who you are with and no matter what they say to you, how kind amateur love you, you'll still not accept yourself. You've got to start with yourself. So self-acceptance and I read this in the first book I am, which is still the best-selling book of all my 12 books, it's amazing. I said that if you imagine that you're a flower and there are thousands of different flowers, you accepted flower as it is. So, let's just say hypothetically, like, I don't know, I'm a Crescent and you a rose, now, a totally different flower. So, I don't want to compare myself to you and say, wow, look at the colors you have and look at the way you're growing and all these different things. I'm gonna say, I'm the Crescent, I'm gonna accept myself as I am and you accept who you are. So, I'm not gonna compare and contrast to other flowers, I'm just gonna accept myself completely. And accepting yourself means that there is full ownership of who you are. And this is something again that I was taught, by a Charman about total ownership. You see, when we have trauma in life, we often become a victim which is natural and expected, and it should be like that for a while you feel poor me, I need help, I need support, I need a therapist, I need friends, whatever, but at some point in life, you can't stay a victim, you have to practice ownership. And ownership to me is more than self-responsibility, it's owning every bit of who you are. In other words, you look in the mirror, not just owning your physical attributes, your race, your color, your gender, your sexual orientation, it's owning your mind, your thoughts, your emotions, owning the person, looking out through these eyes because you're not just your body, you're an inner person which is beautiful and special and has never been damaged. So, this acceptance is the absolute acceptance of who you are and no more compare, contrast, stay away from magazines on social media if you have to, you know, there's so much in this world, that's trying to tell us to be something else. You should be an action hero. You need to have ripping muscles. If you're a woman, you have to have sexy curves. It's always more and more and more and more, and those things don't help us.

There's so many things I'd like to say, one of the most profound things I was taught by a tantrum master is that you are not your body. And I know some of you might think, wow, that's esoteric for me and so on. But I'd like you to think about this when you see a car driving by there's somebody driving that car and what's more important, the car or the driver? So, if you imagine that your body is like a car that you have, and you have one car for this entire journey of life, and the car comes in different brands, sizes, model shapes, colors, and it's okay, these thousands of different kind of cars. When we meet someone, we shouldn't care what the car looks like, we care about who's driving the car, right? So, when I'm meeting somebody, I don't care about your race, your sexual orientation, your gender, ethnicity, all those things are nonsense and meaningless, I'm interested in who you are driving the car. Who are you as a person? What are your, as you said earlier, which I loved. What are your core values? Because your core values define who you are and then define how you interact with other people. And when you have what I call healthy core values, you are on the road to self-acceptance and self-love.

HOW TO FIND PURPOSE AFTER HITTING ROCK BOTTOM WITH DANIEL MANGENA

Michael: I want to talk to us about this one because I think it's essential. After all, often, I say this about many things in life. The signs are there. It's there that thing that you've wanted something, and you're longing for the thing you desire. It's there, but you're not open to it because you've already made a decision that you can't have it, right? What was this moment? Like for you, where you made now, there's a choice being made right, there you go. Okay. Oh! I have this new understanding I'm going to move towards it in this way instead of what I was doing. What was that like to develop that understanding within yourself?

Daniel: To me, it was just a shift in the intention because I was still intentional in going down into the Shadows, but we just shifted the purpose to oh, Well, I'm still going to continue this journey of learning. I'm still going to continue this journey of being deliberate. We're going to continue this journey of creating, and the great thing was is that I saw that it wasn't a big shift in what had gone wrong before; it was a simple matter of, for example, gratitude moving beforehand, understanding that. I'm human, and I'm fallible, and I'm going to make mistakes, and there were some tears, but mostly it was really just coming. To love me enough to let myself get away with the shortfalls in myself and being human. And that's what it really was; it was really about coming back to self and loving myself enough to be okay with the fact that, yeah, I've made some mistakes. Yeah. It hadn't all been Rosy and lovely, but I get to have another chance.

Michael: Yeah, I think about this often. This place in which shame and guilt and self-sabotage exist, I know that's a part of it for you. I'm going to name it even though you're not because the same as Insidious and a part of it. What is that journey like right from this place where it's something that consumes you to which you understand and move through? Because I recognize shame, man, it ruins everything when it has hold of you.

Daniel: So the first step in my Motto Beyond intention is to accept and accept is about stepping into the fullness of our knowledge that was the author and creator of our life. And I'm one of the reasons why I love the work that people are doing out in the world with Shay, one of my friends, and Hastings got a great book on it is because shame is one of those insidious things that rob us of the ability to step into it because we're giving our power away to these illusionary Shadows. For me, it recognized that I don't have everything; they mean there's this me. So Lord saved me from my haters, and then there's the god saying, dude, nobody's thinking about you. It's like I don't even see that word, but it's like that hit home for me because there's an aspect of self-importance, and I don't want to crap on anyone listening in on this. But there's an aspect of like an elevated superiority that comes from the idea of shame other people care about me so much that I'm going to take their opinions that often on even voiced project them onto me, beat myself down on the back of that, and don't allow me to love myself as a result.

Michael: Yeah.

Daniel: And loving myself. I mean, I love that, I love that, I love that love. It's been scientifically demonstrated that the experience of Love Changes. The brain frequencies to be more coherent, and when we look at the science of coherent and incoherent when you introduce a coherent frequency into a confusing space, it has to change, it's been scientifically, demonstrated, so learning to love me when I had the awareness. Awareness of what I was allowing shame to do to me did a lot of the heavy lifting of transmuting that space of shame and guilt and give me the breathing space to make that new choice of Life.

WHY UNDERSTANDING WHAT WE LOVE REALLY MATTERS WITH WARREN KENNAUGH

Michael: So, one of the things I think is really fascinating in the dichotomy of relationships, is, when you have these polar opposites, sometimes you have this narrative that begins to play out where suddenly one person once the other person to kind of come on board to their lifestyle. What is that control thing? Is that a like this is a comfort thing, where does that aspect come from? Because I've seen it just as some people want more control, some people want freedom and then there's this ebb and flow of like, can I bring you to my side?

Warren: Yeah. Look, and welcome to the human race, right? We're not trained in relationships, right? We're not trying in that stuff at all and when we get a few years under our belt, we kind of work, I understand where my first seven marriages went, right? I said that with a smile on my face right there, but, you know, understand we're kind of trying to grow up and the quarterback, marries the cheerleader, and all of that type of, all of that type of things. And so, where this kind of comes to, if we can value differences, if we can kind of go and let's say, I'm the fruit and person and relationship, and if I can kind of go, I really value how when we go away on a holiday, when either you open your bag, or I open my bag, this everything in order, I can absolutely see how everything's in order. I really kind of value that and that really helps this as a couple. So what I've now done this is not about you need to dial down on the perfectionistic, you know, get it right stuff all the time you need to come across to my side this is not the moment that happens, there's either a blip in the relationship or the moment the cement sets around that, Michael, I can tell you where the relationship is headed. We're heading for divorce and we're cutting up the dog, where there's the heart, your half of the dog there's my heart at that, never it goes. Well, so when it becomes about, you need to come to mine or I need to go to yours, I can tell you long term that's not going to that the relationship is the beginning of the end.

Now, if it's a little blip, there's nothing wrong with that but the moment it sets, it's a problem, what were actually meant to do, we're almost meant to create a co-created space we're at least 51 percent of the time I'm actually contributing to that, I'm contributing to our relationship, it's not about, you need to be more like me. And by the way, that would probably make me feel comfortable, but I'd get pretty bored with that, by the way, or I need to be more like you, which means, I need to give myself away at some point I'm going to get resentful and run off and find the next door neighbor, a bit attractive, and go and refined myself. I see it all the time in careers, where people get into a job, they want to of themselves, they overwork themselves, they take on too much, they lose themselves within a role, they lose their anchor, in their identity then all of a sudden they need to resign to actually go and find themselves again and start the whole process again; we see that in personal relationships the whole time. So, no one wants to not be themselves there's no doubt about that but it's this bit about this co-created space, about understanding the differences, and actually contributing to something greater than ourselves.

Michael: Where do you find the balance? And it's funny because we're coming back to this, where do you find the balance of (A) taking care of yourself versus (B) in other side of it really trying to focus on understanding your partner.

Warren: Look, that is such a great question and a that is correctly adjusted every day, that is correct adjust every day. So, there's got to be a balance for each individual and there's got to be a balance for a couple. And again, it's not the stuff that we kind of talked about, it's not the stuff that we that we tend to get into a relationship and basically say, look, I really like my time alone and my time alone looks like, going for long walks by myself on every Saturday afternoon, how does that fit with you? How would that work for us? So it's this is a negotiated process, this is a transparent process.

And I think that, really good long-term relationships we get to learn about ourselves and we get to learn about another individual and the challenge is actually how do we keep having these really important discussions about you feeling valued? Are you getting in needs meet? That's for each cup, each person in the relationship but also how we going as a couple? how we getting that balance, right? Am I listening too much? Am I talking not enough? Am I to unplanned? Are we counting too many socks on Thursday morning? I think those discussions that we need to become a lot more sophisticated about and I know that's a really simple and kind of come on morons, give me something a bit more headline and a bit more smashing than that, right? But I think that's the practicalities of any great friendship, personal relationship, business relationship, that really goes around calibrating around who we are and what we're trying to do.

THE TRUTH ABOUT CHOOSING YOURSELF WITH HATSU RAMADHAN 

Michael: I think the harder thing about it is and what you understand, and what I believe that I am understand is living life on your terms. How do you really like step into this idea? Like you can live life on your terms, you can have the life you want to have, the family you want to have, the career you want to have, when over here on the other side of the room everybody is telling you you better get in the box and do what the hell we tell you to do and raise your hand if you need to go to the bathroom.

Hatsu: Yeah. Why do you say that we got to get in the box? One of the things I say is don't just think outside the box, create your own. So I think everyone has a story and everyone has to gift. And the quicker, we can become owners; owners of our life is responsible, our life, our future, it's not a blame game, it's not someone else's responsibility, it's our responsibility. So this whole idea of thinking outside the box and creating your own it is really about, you know, what is somebody wanting their life and what I may want may not be the same as you and it may not be the same as someone else and that's okay, but it goes back to really an understanding of redefining success and normal. So the whole reason why came out with the stuff is really to challenge the status quo it's to make folks look from a different lens on is this the life I want or am I living someone else's life? Not only that, we can go deeper and say, is this someone else's painted picture of what success means? So each person's life different, not everyone's a parent, I get that. But what is it in there like what is there in your life that you want? And if we can work backwards from getting the finest taken care of, then we can begin to have different options about how do we do design, this may be for some folks is being a digital Nomad, there's a lot of folks in my space that they take pride in going country to country just using a laptop and a cell phone to make money, someone like myself that have kids, it's not as easy, but that flexibility and option is there, but it also comes with a lot of stress potentially. So there's always going to be ups and downs and pros and cons but at the end of the day, I think, if we're able to control the things that we can control and realize that it will come with some stress and some pressure then we can begin to start designing some, a different standpoint.

One of the things you mentioned was people are telling you don't do this and stay in this box. I think once you start talking to other people who believe what you believe and think like, you think you're talking to a different crowd of people but I agree, there's a lot of people who are telling you don't do it, it's stupid to waste your time, you're going to fail. But there's also the people like me, there's the people like Michael, we're talking to possible they're telling you. What if you took that first step in you did, come on the other side and we need more of encouragement, not discouragement, there's enough people out there telling you what's not going to work, there's enough people out there telling you don't do it. But there's not other one that you're going to meet every single day to come to tell you that you can do it if possible and for you go take a stuff.

So, I'm glad that we're having this conversation about it because everyone, regardless of where you come from, regardless of your background, regardless of the mistakes you made or the succession, that you have a story you have something special. It's your job to get that out to the world, it's your job to share that and maybe help somebody else.