Episode #50:

How to be ALL IN on You

May 12, 2022

Shownotes:

Episode #50: How to be ALL IN on You

Learning how to love yourself no matter what is one of the most rewarding journeys we take in life.

This matters because the relationship you have with yourself is the foundation for the relationship you will have with everyone else around you. The more you love yourself, the more love you can give to others.

Though this journey is incredibly important, it can feel overwhelming and intangible at times.

It's not always as simple as some people make it seem, you've probably heard people say: "You just have to love yourself." But what if you don't even really know yourself (like me when I first started my journey towards self-love)?

This week on the podcast I go into detail on the importance of cultivating an unwavering sense of self-love. I also walk you through, step-by-step, exactly how to do it.

And, btw, in case your curious I share my experience going from a devout people-pleaser addicted to external validation, to a self-assured, madly-in-love with herself mujer.

If you have a friend who you know would benefit from creating healthier boundaries or more self-compassion, please share this episode with them.

Enjoy!

Coaching for Latina Leaders

About the Podcast

Leadership ability is equally distributed but opportunity to lead is not. This podcast is for all women, those that identify as leaders and those that don't, yet. You'll learn how to let go of guilt and self-doubt so you can show up with confidence everywhere you go. No more questioning if your idea is good enough to share, if it's worth it to speak up, or if you're a good enough leader. All that self-critical B.S. stops now. Listen in as masterful educator and Harvard grad physician, Dr. Vanessa Calderón, teaches you how to let go of the things standing in the way of your success as a leader. Get ready, this podcast will accelerate your personal and professional growth.

Dr. Vanessa Calderón, MD, MPP has over 20 years of leadership experience. She is a Harvard grad, ER physician, Life and Leadership coach, and a mother of 2. She's a first generation Latina and is dedicated to uplifting her community. She's the founder of the Latina Leadership Accelerator, where she uses education and coaching to support the personal and professional development of women at all stages of their lives and careers.

Leadership Accelerator

Is a 12-week Life and Executive Coaching program that will help you execute at a higher level, thrive in all areas of your life, and improve your self-compassion. You'll be able to:

• Improve your productivity by 60%
• 10X your Emotional Intelligence
• Have more time for the people you love
• Cultivate an unwavering sense of self-compassion

The next cohort starts in Fall 2022. Learn more and join the waitlist at: www.vanessacalderonmd.com

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50. How to be all in on you

SPEAKERS

Vanessa

Vanessa 00:00

Welcome to coaching for Latina leaders, the only podcast dedicated to the advancement of Latinas at every level of life with your host, Dr. Vanessa Calderon, a Latina with over 20 years of leadership experience, Harvard grad physician, and mother of two.

Vanessa 00:16

Mujeres! What is up. Welcome. Listen, I am coming to you today with episode number 50. And that's a huge deal. Did you know that less than 20% of podcasts actually make it past the very first year? And I'm really proud of all of the love and the effort I've put into this podcast, and the fact that it's helping so many people. And that amount of self-love that I have is what I wanted to talk about today. I wanted to talk about today, how all of you can be all in on you no matter what. And what I mean by that is, how can you get to know yourself except yourself, like yourself, and then fall madly in love with yourself. Now for some of you might be super obvious why this matters. But if it's not, let me tell you three reasons why it matters to have this level of self-love. It matters because number one, the relationship you have with yourself is the foundation for the relationship you will have with everybody else around you.

Number two, when you love yourself unconditionally, you will have a more balanced relationship with your goals in life, specifically your successes and your failures. And number three, the more you know and love yourself, the easier it is to live a life of intention that's aligned with your values. Now I'm going to talk about each one of these. And before I do, I want to start by sharing my own journey towards self-love. Now, when I first started this journey, I wasn't even sure I really even knew myself. You see, I have had such a deep people-pleasing relationship like I have been such a people pleaser. And I've been doing so many things in my life. Up until that point, I had been doing so many things in my life to make other people around me proud. First, it was my parents then it was my teachers. And then it would be people I would date. It even showed up with my husband at the very beginning of our relationship before we got married. And I did this because, at a very young age, I had equated this external validation, making people happy and proud of me with love. And a lot of us do this, a lot of us are driven by external validation. And we're driven by that for different reasons. For me, it happened because you know, I was naturally born to be ambitious, and disciplined, and I was really good at school. And every time I'd succeed, you know, I'd made the honor roll or I'd bring home straight A's, I'd get so much attention at home.

Now I lived in a house that was really loud in DC, we had a lot of our immigrant family that would come and stay with us when they first come to this country as they were finding jobs and homes of their own. So getting any attention and recognition at my house, especially for me, I was kind of a quiet, curious kid was really a big deal. And at a very young age, I learned that the more I succeed, the more attention I'd get. And I made that mean that the more I would be loved. What this ended up looking like for me as I got older was I was always looking for the next way I could achieve. And I had tied my self worth to my achievements to all my successes in life. I was also super quick to share all of my wins. Anytime I do anything, I was really quick to celebrate and tell everybody about it.

But I was also deeply ashamed of anything that could be thought of as a failure. And six years ago, when I had my very first experience with coaching, I started questioning all of this. And I had a huge moment of awareness. I realized that I had created this image of outward success, that my life was this image of outward success. I had a great career. I had a nice home, I had a beautiful family. And all of that was because I was so driven by external validation. Because what I had avoided along the way was all of the intimacy, intimacy with myself, and intimacy with people around me. And I had avoided that because I was so afraid that if people really knew me, they'd know all of my failures. And it wasn't just about, you know, fear of vulnerability. I wasn't just afraid of vulnerability. I was deeply ashamed of anything that I thought would make others think that I wasn't perfect.

Vanessa 04:53

So that was one of those times in my life where you know, life offered me an inflection point, sort of this fork in the road. I could choose to keep living the sort of fake disconnected life. Or I could choose to do the inner work to get to know me, to love me, and in turn to live a life of intention connected to myself and the people I love. And that's where my journey of self-love began. And by the way, I'm still on this journey. And I call it a journey very intentionally because I'm still learning so much about myself about my preferences, my insecurities, my triggers, and my ambitions, the things that drive me. And getting to know yourself and love yourself is a lifelong journey, one that I pray will never end for me. Because I've realized that the more I get to know myself, the more I get to fall in love with myself. Okay, so I'm going to briefly talk about the three reasons why this matters. And then I'm going to share with you a few ways that you can get started on your journey today.

Okay, so I mentioned that three reasons are this. Number one, the relationship you have with yourself is the foundation for your relationship with everyone else. Number two, it allows you to have a more balanced relationship with your goals, specifically, your successes and your failures in life. And number three, the more you know yourself and love yourself, the easier it will be to live a life of intention that's aligned with your values. Alright, so let's start with the first one, the relationship you have with yourself is the foundation for your relationship with everyone else. What do I mean by this, I mean that the more you're able to love yourself, the more love you're going to have for other people. Because the more you can look, you can look in the mirror and see all of the beauty in you, the more you will be able to see look in other people's eyes and see the beauty in them. You are able to give them so much grace, when they do things that kind of trigger you or they do things that you might think are imperfect, you're able to be so much more patient with them.

And you're able to hold space for them wherever they currently are in life. The more you love yourself, the more you're able to love others. And the second part of this is, that the more you love yourself, the safer you feel creating boundaries and not being a people pleaser. And this is huge. Because when we're

feeling insecure, when we haven't created that place of love, or that place of real internal validation, as opposed to external validation, then we think we need to do a bunch of stuff to get people to like us, we need to do things, so people aren't disappointed in us. So we say yes to a bunch of things. And we don't actually want to do it, and we don't respect our own boundaries, we sometimes don't even set healthy boundaries. Now I want you to think about this right now. Think about your relationships. Think about every time you've set a boundary, and somebody's you know, crossed the boundary, and you think to yourself, that person isn't respecting the boundaries that I've set. And I want you to just be really honest with yourself right now. Because probably what's happening is that you aren't respecting those boundaries yourself, you're letting people cross those lines all of the time. Because you're insecure, and you think you need to do that to make them happy so that they're not mad or angry with you.

Now, when you love yourself unconditionally, you're able to love others unconditionally as well. And this means that no matter if someone gets upset with you with the boundary that you set, for example, you know, it's okay, because you set those boundaries coming from a place of integrity, a place of self-love, which means when people get upset with you, you don't have to feel guilty, you didn't do anything wrong, you checked in with yourself, and you knew that boundary was the right thing to do. So when they get upset, you get to love them unconditionally, just the way you love yourself unconditionally, even if they don't like the boundaries, and even if they do get upset, you get to love them. Either way. All right, number two, it allows you to have a more balanced relationship with your goals and life, specifically your successes and your failures.

Now most of us have no problem loving ourselves when things are going great. When we're at our goal weight when we get that negotiated raise we wanted when that person we went on a date with asks us on a second date. We think we're awesome, and it feels great. But when things aren't going so well, when you feel like you're failing at your weight goal, or you're not meeting your business goals, or what if that person never calls you back? We tend to be really mean to ourselves. We go through these deep lows when we feel like we're failing, where our inner critic will start being really active really mean saying things to us Like you're such a failure, you're such a disappointment, you're such a fat ass, you'll never lose that weight, whatever it is that your inner critic says to you, it gets super loud when you're feeling down on yourself.

Vanessa 09:57

Now the thing is this, when you start your journey towards self-love, you'll still have those feelings of disappointment. But the difference is that you're able to bounce back from those feelings much much quicker. When you love yourself without condition, you're able to lovingly hold space for those failures. When you love yourself without conditions, those feelings of disappointment, don't feel like you did anything wrong. Because you know that at your core, you are an amazing human and that you are doing your best. And yes, of course, listening should happen in life. But you won't make it mean that there's anything wrong with you.

Vanessa 10:36

And the last one is this, the more you know, and love yourself, the easier it will be to live a life of intention that's aligned with your values. Now, this one matters, because what really matters at the end of our days, what really matters, you know, when we're on our deathbed, it's not going to be how much money we have saved, it's not going to be our titles, it's not going to be you know, that really lavish vacation, we got to go on. What will matter at the end of your life is that you lived a life that was really true to who you were as a person, and that you cultivated those relationships that matter to you. That's what's going to matter at the end of life, that you live the life aligned with your values with integrity to who you are, and that you cultivated the relationships that matter.

Okay, so now that you know why it's so important to love yourself, let's talk a little bit about how to do it. Now all of us listening right now we're all at different stages in our lives. So I want you to start with the one part of this that really resonates with you. Okay, so if you're hearing this podcast, and you're thinking, wow, I don't even know if I really even know myself, then I want you to start by just getting to know yourself, start by taking a day to get to know your preferences. You don't have to do anything special, call it a date if you want. But just set the intention that today, I'm just going to get to notice the things that you know, I prefer. And ask yourself, if I didn't think I needed to make anyone else happy. What would I choose to do? And be really specific. What would I have for breakfast? What would I choose to wear? What would I order at a restaurant? Where would I shop? How would I dress? What music that I listened to. And then whatever comes up for you, try it out, do it and see how that makes you feel. Now know that this is going to be a process.

You will not have all of the answers in one day or one week, but keep trying it out. Because when you commit to this journey of getting to know yourself, the process becomes easier, and it becomes so much more fun. It's kind of like you're going on a date with yourself. It's so fun to just say I think I would like to do that and just see how that feels in your body when you do it. Is that aligned with you, you know, does that feel in alignment? That sort of journey I was on a few years ago. And it felt so uncomfortable in the beginning when I started because I was shocked that I didn't even know the answers to some of these questions. And now I love it. I love getting to know these things about myself. So commit to the process, it will become easier and much more fun. Okay, so if you're someone who you know, you know yourself pretty well, you're pretty good with your preferences, but you're not entirely sure that you love yourself much less even like yourself, then you want to start by getting clear on the things that you do really like about yourself. And I want you to start small, I want you to just write a list of all the things that you like, or that you love about yourself. Now, if you're struggling to find things you like about yourself, then I want you to reflect on the people around you that whom you enjoy spending time with and write a list of the qualities in them that you like.

Vanessa 13:54

Now, the reason why you do this is we're often drawn to the qualities and others that we love in ourselves. So once you write out your list of the things that you like, in other people, I want you to come up with at least one example of how it's true that you exemplify that quality yourself. And you'll start noticing how oh wow, look at that. I am pretty awesome. That is really cool. That is really nice. For example, I remember when I was trying out this example for myself, I was like man, so who in my life do I really like respect, and what would I write about them? And I'm gonna tell a story of one of my really dear friends so Sasha if you're listening, this is a shout out to you, my darling.

So I have this friend who is just so kind. She's like, so nice to everyone she needs. She's really like open-minded. And she is 100% committed to social justice. That's what she does for a living. And so I was writing out like, Sasha is kind such as committed to social justice. And then I was like, How is it true that I'm like this And at first I was finding all the evidence that it wasn't true that I'm not as nice as she is. But I'm not as patient as she is. But then I'm like, wait a second. Hello. Like, what is my biggest value in life is compassion. I mean, look at everybody I interact with within the emergency department, I treat everybody so kind, I know everybody's name. I'm so respectful. So there's an example of how I'm also kind. And how is it true that I'm committed to social justice? Again, I keep trying to disprove it, I'm not doing enough.

There are so many more things that could be doing, you know, and I was like, Wait for a second here, I was a community activist for a really long part of my life. And I'm still 100% committed to social justice. It's what I teach my kids every day. So do this for yourself, write a list of those qualities that you like, and other people around you, and then come up with examples of how it's true for you. And just know that the very first thing your brain will probably want to do is to come up with reasons why it's not true, it's going to feel really uncomfortable, but hold space for that discomfort and just keep going. Okay, so the last one here, so if you're in this last group, which is you know, yourself, you like yourself, and you even feel like you love yourself most of the time, then you get to just hold space to continue this journey and find those gaps, where you know, like when, where, or when aren't you loving yourself unconditionally. Now I consider myself being in this last group. And for me, I recognize a few areas where I'm still learning to love myself unconditionally, for example, a huge one for me is failures. Now, I shared earlier how I had tied my self-worth to success.

I was so ashamed at the thought of failing that I was really hard on myself, I would work these really crazy long hours, and I would sacrifice quality time with friends because I would do whatever it took to avoid failure. And now I'm accepting that failure is just part of what's included in life, if I'm going to keep setting big, audacious goals, like if I'm going to keep setting big, audacious goals to make a huge difference in this world, to give back to keep helping as much as I can and to be in service, then part of that means I'm going to fail. And what really matters isn't if I failed, not at all, what truly matters is what I choose to do when I failed, how I treat myself when I failed, how I talk to myself, how I love myself, and how I support myself to get back up again and keep going. Because failure will never ever define you. It will never define me. It's what we do after we fail that defines our character that defines who we are in life, and who will we be who will we keep continuing to be.

Vanessa 17:47

Well, I got a little emotional there at the end. Okay, today we've covered a lot in today's 50th episode on self-love and being all-in on you. And again, we talked about the three reasons why this matters, the relationship you have with yourself is the foundation for the relationship you will have with everyone else. And when you love yourself unconditionally, you create space to receive love from others around you and to really love them back. And you don't have these like huge ebs and flows when you fail and when you succeed, you're able to hold space for all of that. And again, the more you know and love yourself, the more you will be aligned with your intentions in life and live a life true to your values.

Okay, so I gave you a ton of exercises to help you get started on your journey. And I want to leave you with this self-compassion meditation that I've been doing for myself over the last 120 days or something like that since the very beginning of this year, January 1. I want you to feel free to use it as is or adapted to meet your needs. And this is part of my meditation every morning. When I sit and meditate part of what I say to myself are the following three things. May I love me as I am? May I accept me as I am and may I live at ease with who I am. And I want to reflect this back to you. May you love yourself as you are. May you accept yourself as you are and make you live at ease with who you are. Okay, my darlings. Hasta la proxima. I am sending you all so much love. Adios.

Vanessa 19:32

Hey mujeres, if you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe rate review, and share it with a friend. And if you love what you're learning here, then you have to sign up for my weekly love letters. I send you all the good stuff, doses of inspiration and all the skills you need. So you can live lead and make money like the chingona that you are. Subscribe to my website at VanessaCalderonMD.com. I'll see you there.