 Do you have a problem with loving or even liking yourself a lot of the times? Well, make sure that you stay tuned as we talk about the topic of self love. What is up everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem, but focus on the solution and welcome back to another video where this week we are diving into the topic of how to be a better person and what better way to be a better person than to actually start liking yourself. So before I get this video rolling, this is the first time I'm doing a video like this where this topic actually came from one of the people who is supporting me over on Patreon and helping support the channel and what I do and trying to spread the message. So if you get the chance, go check out the Patreon, you can support the channel for as little as a buck, but I also take your feedback and get ideas from you about what topics you would like me to cover in a video. So this topic actually comes from my buddy Kaleila over at the channel Post Traumatic Victory. So Kaleila is a mental health channel and her channel is a lot about PTSD. Like I stumbled across her channel and she's one of the smaller YouTubers out there and like please, please, please do me a favor. If you struggle with PTSD or any kind of like trauma, like go check out her channel. Like she does a lot of stuff on trauma. She also has a service animal. So she talks a lot about that. I keep trying to get her to do a guest video on my channel, but she's a busy gal. So I can't blame her. But yeah, she helps supporting, support the channel over on Patreon because she's a fellow creator. She knows how important that kind of thing is. And you know, like it's amazing seeing creators supporting each other and stuff. As we go on this journey, especially other mental health YouTubers, where we're just doing this thing, trying to spread a message of hope and help out other people all over the world. Alright, so thank you so much, Kaleila. And again, go make sure that you subscribe to her, her channel is Post Traumatic Victory. I will link it down in the comments as well as in the description below. Alright, but first, let's get started by me talking about my struggles with self love and self compassion. So if you're like me and you had a rough childhood, right? Like I had an alcoholic mom, you know, my dad, he, you know, he was around, but, you know, affection and emotions wasn't really something that we, you know, we really talked about or dove into as a child. And I don't know, maybe there's where therapy comes in. I don't know how much of my childhood like, I felt like I wasn't loved. I felt like I wasn't good enough, especially with an alcoholic mom. Like I figured if I was a good enough kid, if I was better, then maybe she wouldn't have to drink so much or maybe she would stop, you know, maybe, you know, I could, you know, make her love me and all these other things. So I had a lot of self esteem issues growing up because of this. And like, it's very hard to expect anybody to like you when you can't even like yourself. And a lot of this manifested into anger. And I know it's like a cliche thing, but I'm going to do videos about this. But like, I was kind of a jerk. Like I was, I was, I would try to be nice to my friends and stuff. But like, I picked on other kids and stuff like that. But it's because I was hurting. I didn't like myself. So I would lash out at you. And it was a terrible way to live because I hurt other kids who also probably struggled with the same things that I did. And that's awful to even think about, you know what I mean? And like, just, you know, I've never been this heavy in my life, even though I've lost some weight, like I was actually not that big in high school. You know, I was a triathlete. I played sports, I dated girls and stuff like that. But I still didn't like myself or love myself. And this resulted in a lot of social anxiety. Like it's hard to hold a conversation with somebody or even meet somebody new or anything like that. Because when you don't like yourself, you're constantly worried about how these other people are judging you. And a lot of you might be able to relate to that. It's hard for you to go into social situations because you think other people are as critical of you as you are on yourself. You know what I mean? And this is why it's such a big issue. The other reason why it's such a big issue when it comes to self love and self compassion is because you really can't expect to truly love or care about anybody else until you really love yourself. Like I know we have a love for our kids or a love for our family or a love for our friends and things like that. But like let's focus on relationships real quick. It was really hard for me to be in a relationship because I always needed more. I needed more love, more attention, more affection, all these other things because I don't love myself. So I need you to just shower me with it constantly. And that's not fair to the other person. This is why if you go check out my broken picker playlist, so much of it is when we're broken and we try to fix ourselves with relationships, it never works. It never works because we don't love ourselves. So the other person isn't giving us an ever, they're never giving us enough love and attention or affection. And that's a problem because we are holding that person as an emotional hostage, trying to get them to give us something that we're never going to be fully satisfied about. So like I never really got into a healthy relationship like the one I'm in with my girlfriend. Like until I learned to love myself, until I learned to love myself, no amount of love or affection she can give me would help me out. You know what I mean? And we've been together for almost two years, but I did a lot of work on myself before her and I got into this relationship. So like how do you do it? How do you love yourself? All right, a lot of this man, there's always a balance between confidence and loving yourself and also being humble. But like you got to remember like you're a badass. You are a badass human being. Like you have accomplished things. You have done things. There are things that are great about you. And these are the things that you have to remember. And if you can't remember them, especially when you're in a dark headspace, write them down, keep them on you. Look at them and say these are the things I am. These are the qualities I have. Like are you caring and compassionate? Are you there for your friends? Are you smart? Are you creative? What things are you good at? Look at those things and remind yourself of those things. Start to acknowledge that you're not a terrible person. Like one of the reasons so many of us struggle with self-love and self-compassion and all these other things is because we have this insane idea that somehow someday we're going to be perfect. And if we're not perfect, if we fall short of perfect, then we're a failure. But we have to remember on a regular basis that nobody's perfect. We're never going to be perfect. When I was able to let go of this idea that I was ever going to meet perfection, like things got started getting better. I started to accept myself. Part of loving yourself is accepting yourself, accepting yourself exactly the way you are. Now that doesn't mean slack or stay stagnant, always try to be improving, but be grateful and happy for who you are that day at that moment. What have you done? Do things and if you're not happy with it, like do little things, accomplish small goals, start doing things to start boosting your self-esteem. Nothing breaks my heart more than people who don't like themselves, but they don't try to do anything. They don't try anything like, here's what I mean by that. Call somebody up, ask them how they're doing, right? Do something that boosts your self-esteem. Like, oh man, I did something nice for somebody today. You know what I'm saying? Help somebody with their groceries. Help your neighbor with something. Help your parents out with something. Help your friends out with something. Do things that help boost your self-esteem. I swear to you. I swear to you. The more you start to do nice things for other people, the more you will love yourself because that negative voice, that narrator in your head that is telling you how you're a bad person, you're an awful person, you're a no good person, that voice will start to get quiet and the voice in your head will get louder that says, no, you just did a bunch of good things today. You helped out other people because you have proof. You have proof that you did it, but if you're sitting around all day watching Netflix, you're not really doing anything, you're not contributing. You know what I'm saying? So do things. Help other people. The more you do that, I swear to you, you'll start liking yourself more and maybe even loving yourself. The last thing I will talk about is self-compassion. The best practice that you can do for self-compassion is treat yourself like you would somebody you love. For all of you parents out there, ask yourself, what would you say to your child in this situation? Would you yell and scream at them? The negative things that you say to yourself, would you say those to anybody that you loved or cared about? Hell no, you wouldn't. So why are you saying them to yourself? Take that same dialogue that you would say to someone you love and use it on yourself. If you don't have a kid or a family member or a friend or whoever, what about a pet? What about that unconditional love that you have for your dog or your cat? How can you treat yourself with the same love, kindness, compassion, patience, tolerance that you do your pet or someone you love? Think about that for a second. This doesn't happen overnight, but over time, you start treating yourself with a lot more kindness. I still got to do it to this day. Sometimes I catch myself just having a lot of negative self-talk and sometimes it takes me hours, sometimes days to even snap out of it and be like, man, I've been really mean to myself lately, right? I would never say these things to anybody, my girlfriend or my son or my friends. I would never say that to them. Why am I saying it to myself? Treat yourself with some compassion. Forgive yourself. Forgive yourself for not being perfect. Remember, nobody's perfect. Forgive yourself for screwing up. It's cool. We all screw up. It's all right. Be kind to yourself. Treat yourself with kid gloves, niceness, kindness, compassion, all these things. Treat yourself with that because you deserve it, all right? But anyways, I would love to hear from all of you. What are your best tips for building up your own self-love? How do you treat yourself with compassion? And if you struggle with this, let's do this. Leave a comment below. Do this for me. Leave a comment below and let me know what your goal is for the next week to treat yourself with a little bit more compassion. Let me know down in the comments, all of you, and let's learn from each other and build off each other, all right? But anyways, thank you again, Kalayla, from Post Traumatic Victory for giving me this topic. And again, please, please, please go subscribe to our channel, especially if you struggle with any kind of trauma. I want to learn more about trauma and service animals and just mental health in general. Go check out Kalayla's channel. Again, I will link it down in the description as well as in the comment section, all right? But if you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. And if you're new here, I'm always making videos that help you out with your mental and emotional well-being. Go ahead and click that little round subscribe button. And a big, big, big thank you to not only Kalayla, but everybody else supporting the channel over on Patreon. And if you would like to help me spread a message of hope, you can click or tap on that Patreon icon right there, all right? So thank you so, so much for watching. Love yourself and treat yourself with some compassion. And I'll see you next time.