The Self-Relationship Blueprint: Creating Your Foundation for Authentic Connections" - Freedom Friday on The Season of Self-Love Podcast

Welcome to the Season and Self Love Podcast. I am your host, Namibanks, and I am thrilled to have you joined me on this transformative journey. You see, every day we dive into a powerful conversation about self discovery, healing, and empowerment. This podcast is brought to you by Ax Naomi and Elevate Me Self Discovery what we believe that loving yourself is the first step to live in a fulfilling life. You can expect. Insightful discussions, practical tips, and inspiring stories. Plus we occasionally welcome special guests who will share their unique perspectives on self love and personal growth. So get comfy, grab your favorite beverage, and let's embark on this journey together. Because it's time to embrace the beautiful person that you are. So let's elevate our lives one episode of time. Now, let's get starting. Hey Dave, Hey, my beautiful people, and welcome to Freedom Friday. Here on the Season and Self Love Podcast. I am your host, Naomi Banks, and I am so grateful that you are tuning in today as we continue our journey from mindfulness into nurtury relationship. Well, this week has been such a beautiful transition. On Monday, doctor Will and I explored on how mindfulness create deeper connections, and yesterday we discussed the healing space that exists between us in relationships. And today we are completing this bridge between them all from our April and our main things by focusing on what I consider the most essential relationship all and that's the one that you have with yourself. I'm calling today's episode the self relationship blue print. Yeah, the self relationship blueprint, because the mindful awareness that we cultivate all through April finds, it's a perfect it finds it's a perfect application in how we relate to ourselves and how this self relationship becomes the foundation of the actual blueprint for every other connection in our life. This perfectly sets up for Monday's conversation about the foundation of healthy relationship because the strongest foundation always begin with how we how we treat ourselves. So when we talk about nurturing relationships, we often focus on techniques from communicating better with others or setting boundaries. But the truth is is that the relationships that you have with yourself, it creates the template that all that all your other connections follow. You know, the mindfulness practices that practices that we have been developing all in April. It gives us the tools to truly see ourselves clearly with compassion. But before we die in, I want to remind you that May is also Mental Health Awareness Month, and over the acts Naomi Bridging to Get Podcasts, We've just launched a very special series on love and mental health and I am excited that doctor Will is joining me on all four Thursdays of this month along with some amazing guests who are bringing their expertise on this crucial intersection between love and mental illness. But for now, let's take a quick break and when we come back, we'll ground ourselves and get into today's empower conversation. Its Shaguradi Goddess Nammy Banks here on the season and Suppler Podcasts, and we'll be right. We'll be right back, ready to transform how you think about love and mental health. This May, join host Naomi Banks and doctor Will Washington and expert guests on love and mental health Health a powerful four part series exploring relationships through the lens of mental wellness, every Thursday at six pm Pacific Standard Time on Ask Naomi Bridging the Gap. Do you have a story. To share your experience matters, email us at Asknaomi at gmail dot com and be part of the conversation that's changing lives. Washington wells into two focuses on healing. Always for me, if I look good, then I feel good. If I feel good, then I share the good. If I share the good, then I celebrate the good. If I celebrate the good, then I live the good. So I can be paid to be my greatest. But I have to learn the good to be the good. So what does it take to be the greatest. It's as simple as a free fifteen minute consultation. Be kind to. Yourself, and He'll always. All right, mayby to people will welcome back. So before we get into the day's supping, let's ground ourselves with a mindful moment. All right, So if you can find a comfortable position and just close your eyes, all right, now, take a deep breath in through your nose, anangela, exhale through your mouth. Let's repeat that, but this time when you inhale, I want you to inhale self acceptance, and I want you to exhale self judgment. Now I want you to imagine yourself standing before a mirror, but instead focusing on your physical appearance. I want you to see you. I want you you to see your complete self, your spirit, your heart, You're sure truest essence. Now I want you to look. Deeply into your own eyes with complete acceptance. I want you to notice how it feels to truly see yourself with your loving eyes. Now, I want you to place a hand over your heart, and I want you to sidedly say, I am worthy of my own love. Repeat it one more time, I am worthy of my own love. Feel the power of these words. Feel the power of these words. Through your body. Now, I want you to take one deep breath in one more embracing this connection with your tough and when you are ready, gently open your eyes, carrying this self connection with you. All right, all write to my beautiful people. So if you are new here to the Season and Self podcast, this is something we do every day Monday through Friday. This is a mindful moment that we share. We do something every day. I love this. I love this. It just helped us to ground us before we get into the topic. Can hand. All right, So today we're talking about self relationship blueprint blue print. Yes, I just tumbled on that for a moment. So the way that you relate yourself that creates the pattern for all your other relationships. You know, I've been on this healing journey for years now, and there's one thing that I've learned is that how I treat myself sets the standard for how others treat me. It's almost like we give people a manual on how to love us based on how we love ourselves. I want you try to think about this. So if you constantly criticize yourself, you find yourself drawn to critical people. So if you don't honor your own boundaries, you will attract people who cross them. And if you abandon your own needs, you will find yourself in relationship with people who do the same. Now, I want to be clear, this isn't about victim blaming. No, it's not not at all. It's about recognizing our power to create change and starting with how we show up for ourselves. I remember, in my own life, and I'm always honest with you all about my journey, there was a time when I didn't know how to truly love myself. Sure, I was confident, in some way successful in my career, but there was this underlying belief, this underlying belief that I wasn't worthy less, I was performing unless I was proving my value. And guess what kind of relationship I found myself here? Ones where I had to constantly prove my worth, where I never felt quite secure, and where I was always trying to earn love rather than just receiving it as a birthright. This is what I mean about a self relationship blueprint. You see, the relationship that you have with yourself becomes the template that all your other relationships will follow. It's like you're the architect of your connection of reality. You see, the blueprint that you're working from is how you treat yourself. So let's break that down. Let's break it down on what makes up this blueprint and how we can begin to redesign it if it's not serving us. First, first, let's talk about the foundation of all relationships. Your self talk. Your self talk is the foundation of your relationships. You know that voice in your head that narrates your life. Is it kind or is it cruel? Is it patient or is it demanding? Is it forgiving or is it punishing. I want you to take a moment right now, right now, and just notice what your inner voice says sounds like okay, now when you talk to someone you love the way that you talk to yourself, and would you be friends with someone who spoke to you the way that you speak to yourself. For years, my inner voice was so harsh. I remember the moment about two years ago when I was looking into the mirror getting ready for an interview, and I heard myself, you better not miss the south and I pause. I would never say that to a friend before an import in the moment, never hear I would never say that to my children. I would never say that to my husband before a point. I would not. Never I say something like, you got this, you could do this, whatever happens, I am proud of you for just showing up. That is what I would say to somebody else. But that was the moment, was my turning point for me, because I realized that I needed to befriend myself to become my own children instead of my harshest critic. So how do we begin to change this inner voice? First it starts with the awareness, just noticing when that critical voice pops up. Then, instead of believing it or fighting it, just simply acknowledging it. Oh, that's that critical person. Yeah, and then choose to speak to yourself with kindness instead. You see, this isn't about toxic positivity or denying real challenges. It's about approaching yourself with the same compassion that you offer to a good friend, to a family member, to your siblings, to your children. You know what I'm talking about. But another essential element of yourself is your self relationship blueprint is self trust. Self trust? Do you keep promises to yourself? When you say you're going to do something for yourself, do you follow through? Many of us are great for showing up for others, but terrible for showing up for ourselves. We'll move mountains to keep a promise to a friend, but easily will break that commitment to ourselves, whether it's about self care, boundaries, or even pursuing our dreams. You see, building self trust is like building trust with anyone else. It happens through consistent, small actions over time. You start with small promises to yourself and you keep them. Maybe it's as simple as you're saying, all right, take a five minute break to breathe deeply during my work day, and then actually do it. You see, every time that you honor a commitment to yourself, you strengthen that muscle of self trust. And when you trust self, you will naturally gravitate towards relationship with people who are trustworthy too. So now let's talk about self compassion, which I believe is truly the cornerstone, excuse me, of a healthy self relationship. You know, self compassion is treating yourself with the same kindness and understanding that you offer to someone else that you love and who's struggling. We talk about this a lot, and doctor Kristen Neff, who've done amazing research on self compassion, sit down into three components. Self kindness instead of self judgment, come in humanity instead of isolation, and mindfulness instead of over identification with our emotions. And that second one, that common humanity, has been particularly powerful for me because it's the recognization that suffering and personal inadequacy are a part of that shared a human experience. You know, we all struggle, we all fail, sometimes we all are imperfect. But when I make a mistake, now is stead aspiring into shame or thinking what's wrong with me? I learned to say this is a moment of suffering. Suffering is a part of suffering is a part of life. May I be kind to myself in this moment? May I be kind to myself in this moment. And when I say suffering, that means that something happened in my life that is unhappy for me in this moment, that I'm not feeling good about it in this moment. But I'm not going to tear myself down. I'm going to be kind to myself. I'm going to acknowledge what it is, and I'm going to see what I've learned from that, whatever that experience was or is. And you know, this might sound simple, but it's truly revolutionary when we think about it. When we stop seeing struggles. When you stop seeing your struggles as evidence of your uniqueness or brokenness and start seeing them for connections to you of all your humanity, something shifts. You feel less alone, You feel more worthy of compassion. And here's the beautiful thing. When you practice self compassion consistently, you will naturally become more compassionate towards others. You will recognize i shared humanity, not just in theory, but in practice. Now, another crucial aspect of self relationship blueprint is recognizing when you're abandoning yourself. This is something that I see so often in my clients. They'll compromise their values, they ignored their intuition, or they would suppress their true feelings to maintain relationships or avoid conflict. I share a personal example. Years ago. I was in a situation where I kept ignoring my intuition because I didn't want to disappoint someone important to me. I kept telling myself, it's not that bad, I'm just being too sensitive, But in reality, I was abandoned in myself. I was abandoning myself, betraying my own knowing to keep the peace. The turning point came when I realized that if I couldn't be loyal to myself, I couldn't truly be loyal to anyone else either, because I was bringing a fractural self to my relationships, a self that was divided against itself. That't so Learning to stay true to yourself, your values, your needs, your intuition is perhaps the most loving thing that you can do, not just for yourself, but for everyone everyone in your life, because when you show uphole, you invite others to do the same. Now I want to transition to talking about how this self relationship creates to bridge, creates the bridge to authentic connections with others, because that's really what we really seeking, right, We seek in deep, meaningful, authentic connections. See, when you are securely connected to yourself, when you're kind to yourself, when you trust yourself, when you honor your boundaries, you naturally create relationships that reflect that security. You don't settle for crumbs because you know you deserve the whole loaf. You don't want the size, you want the whole meal. I love what doctor Will has said on Monday about availability in relationships. When you available to yourself, truly present with your own thoughts, be present with those thoughts, with those feelings, with those knees, you could be authentically available to others too, and not from a place of emptiness seeking to be feeled, but from a place of fullness, seeking to overflow. And this is where the true freedom comes in. You see the freedom that we celebrate every Friday on this podcast. When you have a secure relationship with yourself, you're free from the need to control others or be controlled by them. You see, You're free from the anxious attachment that comes from abandoning yourself. You're free to love because you want to and not because you need to in order to feel whole. So let me share another personal freedom reflection with y'all. For years I struggle with people pleasing. I would twist myself into not trying to make everyone happy, abandon my own needs in the process. I thought, this is what love looks like, self sacrifice, always putting others first. But what I've discovered through my healing journey is that true love, the kind deliberates rather than bonds the bands, comes from wholeness, not lack of It comes from having such a secure relationship with yourself that you can give freely without depleting yourself. The turning point for me was realizing that every time I abandoned myself to please someone else, I was actually showing up authentically in that relationship. I was showing up as who I thought they wanted me to be. And that's not a real connection. That was a performance that wasn't even me. Now I've learned to check in with myself first before saying yes to anything to anyone or something, before making a decision, before expressing an opinion, I ask what's truth for me here? What do I really think? Feel or need, and I honor that truth even when it's uncomfortable, even when it's uncomfortable, even when it might disappoint someone. And you know what's the amazing thing is that the relationships that have remained in my life have deepened. They're more authentic, they're more vibrate, they're more alive because I'm bringing a whole self to them, not just the parts that I think are acceptable or lovable. That's the freedom that comes from having a strong self relationship blueprint, the freedom to be authentically you and to connect with others from the place of authenticity. Now, my beautiful people, before we wrap, I want to offer a powerful exercise that you can try this week. It's called the mirror of relationships, all right, and it helps you to see on how your self relationship is being reflected in your external connection and hear how it work. All right. Here's how it work. I want you to think about challenging relationship. Think about a challenging relationship in your life right now. It could be with a partner, a family member, a friend, or a colleague. Now complete this sentence in your journal. If I treated my friends the way I treat myself, I would, And I want you to be really honest here. So if you're constantly criticizing yourself, would you have any friends if you treated them that way? If you never keep promises to yourself, would anyone trust you if you treated them similar? Then I want you to identify one self relationship practice to commit to for the next week. Maybe it's speaking to yourself with more kindness. Maybe it's honoring a daily commitment to yourself. Maybe it's setting a boundary with yourself about how to use your time or your energy. And finally, journal about how this shift might impact your external relationships. How am I treating yourself with more love, respecting kindness, change how you show up for others. Remember, I want you all to remember this. This is in selfish. It's necessary, and as the sayings go, you can pull from an empty cup, but nurturing your relationship with yourself, you're actually creating more capacity to love others authentically. This also gives you time to fill your cup to where it can be overflowing and it can spill over into some amazing people. So as we close today episode, I want you to remind you that your self love is not selfish. It's the foundation for all love, the relationship that you have with yourself that creates the blueprint for every other connection in your life. So by honoring yourself, by treating yourself with kindness and respect, by showing up authentically, you invite others to do the same. So next week we wouldn tenure our exploration of nurture relationship as doctor Will joins us again for Mindset Monday, and don't forget to tune in to our special Mental Health Awareness Month series or Accident Envisioning Gap podcasts every Thursday this May at six pm Pacific Standard time. And if this episode has resonated with you, please share it with someone who might benefit. And as always I love hearing from you, so leave a review or a comment about how these conversations are touching your life. So until Monday, remember, as I am honoring my relationship with myself, I create the freedom to connect authentically with others. My self. Love is not selfish, It's the foundation for all of love. Thank you again for joining me here on the season and Self Love Podcast. Have an amazing, amazing weekend. Thank you for joining us on this journey of discovering and empowerment here at the season and Self Love Podcast. Remember, embracing self love is a continuous journey and we're so glad to have you with us. So if you enjoy today's episode, please leave us a review and don't forget to join our community on Facebook at Season and Self Love connect with like minded individuals who are also on their self love journey. Now, if you have any questions or topics that you'd like for us to explore, we love to hear from you. Email us at Season usseelf Love at gmail dot com and let your voice be heard. So until the next time, take a moment for yourself today and remember you are worthy of love, joy, and all the beautiful things that life has to offer you. A