Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Where You Invest Your Love You Invest Your Life EP 104

Episode Date: February 4, 2022

"In these bodies, we will live. In these bodies, we will die. And where you invest your love, you invest your life." - Mumford & Sons. This is one of the most potent lyrics the band has ever written, inspiring this podcast episode. I believe this quote is about self-love and finding out about yourself and who you are. When we learn to love ourselves, we also express love to others more powerfully and intentionally. You can alter the way you see things, and it is your self-love that helps you become the best version of yourself. In this episode, I take this lyric and define what self-love is and why it is essential. I explore the differences between healthy and unhealthy self-love and provide several examples of self-love that you can recognize in your own life. I use the stories of Asiya and Melissa to illustrate how they overcame their situations to find self-love and the change that it brought about. I then go into three ways to learn self-love and why it can be challenging. Lastly, I unpack five habits you can implement to encourage self-love and my final thoughts.  Thank you for listening to this Passion Struck Podcast episode on how to self-love yourself. I hope you keep up with the weekly videos I post on the YouTube channel, subscribe to, and share your learnings with those who need to hear them. Your comments are my oxygen, so please take a second and say 'Hey' ;). -- ► Subscribe to My Channel Here: https://www.youtube.com/c/JohnRMiles Athletic Greens and Ten Thousand Sponsor This Episode. Go to https://athleticgreens.com/passionstruck and receive a FREE 1 year supply of Vitamin D AND 5 free travel packs with your first purchase! The Ten Thousand Pro-Line is a collection of gear designed to meet the needs of highly-specialized training, developed in collaboration with world-class athletes and military members. Go to https://tenthousand.cc and enter code PASSIONSTRUCK for 15% off your purchase! SHOW NOTES 0:00 Introduction 2:30 Athletic Greens and Ten Thousand 5:25 Why is self-love so important? 6:56 What is self-love? 8:28 What are examples of healthy self-love? 9:05 Stories illustrating the power of self-love 11:19 Three ways you can learn how to self-love 12:13 Why is self-love so tricky? 13:22 Five habits that encourage self-love 15:00 Why self-love is the key to finding fulfillment FOLLOW JOHN ON THE SOCIALS * Twitter: https://twitter.com/Milesjohnr * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnrmiles.c0m * Medium: https://medium.com/@JohnRMiles​ * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/john_r_miles * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/milesjohn/ * Blog: https://passionstruck.com/blog/ * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/passion_struck_podcast/ * Gear: https://www.zazzle.com/store/passion_struck/ -- John R. Miles is a serial entrepreneur and the CEO and founder of Passion Struck. This full-service media company helps people live intentionally by creating best-in-class educational and entertainment content. John is also a prolific public speaker, venture capitalist, and author named to the ComputerWorld Top 100 IT Leaders. John is the host of the PassionStruckPodcast. A show focused on exploring the mindset and philosophy of the world's highest achievers to learn their lessons to living intentionally. Passion Struck aspires to speak to the humanity of people in a way that makes them want to live better, be better and impact. Stay tuned for John's latest project, his upcoming book, which will be published in summer 2022. Learn more about me: https://johnrmiles.com. New to this channel and the passion-struck podcast? Check out our starter packs which are our favorite episodes grouped by topic, to allow you to get a sense of all the podcast has to offer. Go to https://passionstruck.com/starter-packs/. Like this? Please join me on my new platform for peak performance, life coaching, self-improvement, intentional living, and personal growth: https://passionstruck.com/ and sign up for our email list.

Welcome visionaries, creators, innovators, entrepreneurs, leaders and growth seekers of all types to the PassionStruck podcast. Hi, I'm John Miles, a peak performance coach, multi industry CEO, maybe veteran and entrepreneur on a mission to make Passion Ho-Viral for millions worldwide. do so by sharing with you an inspirational message and interviewing eye achievers from all walks of life who unlock their secrets and lessons to become an action-struck. The purpose of our show is to serve you the listener by giving you tips, tasks and activities you can use to achieve peak performance and for too much action-driven life you have always wanted to have now. Let's become PassionStruck. Welcome back to Episode 104 of the PassionStruck Podcast, and thank you each and every one of you who comes back weekly to listen and learn,

to live better, be better, and impact the world. And if you're new to the show or you would like to introduce it to friends or family members, we now have Episode starter packs. These are collections of your favorite episodes organized by Topic, which gives you a great way to introduce someone new to everything that we do here on the show. Just go to passionstruck.com slash starter packs to get started. And if you haven't checked out our YouTube channel at John Aramiles, we also have over 225 videos there. Now let me introduce our fan of the week in the United States whose name is

Geneffa and Geneffa writes, love this show so much. He interviews the best people and he seems so authentic. Thank you, Geneffa and for all of you who give us five star ratings. Both on iTunes and now you can also do them on Spotify. They help us so much to encourage this movement and bring more listeners to the show. Playdoh famously said, be kind for everyone you need is fighting a hard battle. We would do well to apply Plato's advice to ourselves. Who among us has not faced materials, adversities and losses. Life becomes more fulfilling as we cultivate the

art of self-compassion. Today I'm going to talk about why being compassionate towards ourselves also serves others. Having more inner peace, we have more to offer. By being more in touch with our own feelings, we can easily extend love towards the world around us. Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to live in a No Regrets Life. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is part of my desire and effort

to bring zero cost information to the general public regarding how to unlock an intentional No Regrets Life. And keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's episode. I am so excited about today's sponsor, Athletic Greens, because it is a product that I personally use and love. In fact, Athletic Greens is completely transforming nutrition and helping so many achieve peak performance. This product is so easy to use and make part of your daily morning routine. That's exactly what happened to me.

I just come down every single morning and the first thing I do is take one scoop of their powder, put it in an eight ounce glass of water, and it tastes amazing. The product consists of 75 different vitamins, minerals, immune supporting mushrooms, and probiotics. So much here to help your nutrition get the boost that it needs without you having to go to either the store or eat a salad or whatever it may be in our hectic schedules. And with all the stressors better around us,

this is such an easy way to solve your daily nutrition. Now, they are offering, my audience, a special when you subscribe. Get your one-year supply of vitamin D, those five travel packs by going to athleticgreens.com slash passion struck. Physical fitness is extremely important to me and forms the very foundation of achieving elite performance and high cognitive abilities, which is why I work out daily. And if you're like me, it's hard to find training products that are strong enough to stand

up to my gym days, spinning, cross fit, high intensity interval training, and long hikes. That's why I love 10,000 a barrel and it's dedication to continuous improvement. Their name references Malcolm Gladwell's prescription to perfection, and 10,000 is true to that philosophy and how they are making the highest quality, best fitting, and most comfortable training gear that I have ever worn. I especially love their versatile lightweight,

breathable shirts and interval shorts shorts which feature an optional liner. They actually have a team of 200 athletes testing their gear to ensure their dedication to creating perfect fit trims fabric and design. 10,000 is offering passion struck listeners 15% off your purchase. Go to 10,000.cc and enter code passion struck to receive 15% off your purchase. That is t-e-n-t-h-o-u-s-a-n-d.cc and enter code passion struck. Please consider supporting those who support the show and make it possible and free for our listeners. now back to passion struck. ["Fake Music"] ["Fake Music"]

In these bodies we will live, and in these bodies we will die, where you invest your love, you invest your life. I love this lyric from Mumford & Sons, because it profoundly expresses the importance of love. It illustrates the necessity of intentionality in our lives, and put our focus, time, and energy into those things and people we love. As the members of Mumford and Suns point out, we spend our entire lives in these bodies, therefore we can never separate ourselves from things we do or experience.

When we live intentionally, we emphasize those things that matter most to us. For instance, it's giving ourselves entirely to someone else, whether our kids, friends, or spouse, or partner. Through this love of others, we most intimately share our minds, hearts, and lives. Abraham Aslow said, we must understand love. We must be able to teach it, to create it, to predict it, or else the world is lost to hostility and to

suspicion. We often think about giving our love to others, but one was the last time you thought about giving it to yourself. I mean, seriously ask yourself if you even know what self love really is. Sure, you can say yes, giving yourself importance and prioritizing your peace and health over other commitments, is that all that self-love is and doesn't it sound a lot like being selfish to put ourselves before others? So many questions, right? What is self-love? When we think of self-love, we often think of it as a notion of loving yourself and prioritizing yourself over others.

But there's so much more to self-love than that. As Claire Nurk, a Holocaust survivor and pioneer and personal mastery put it, the only way to create love, safety, and acceptance is by giving them. Loving ourselves consists of performing such actions and thinking to support our growth physically, spiritually, mentally, and emotionally.

It is intentionally incorporating habits into your life to take care of your own needs and nurture those needs to encourage your growth in all aspects of life. At the same time, self love also requires us to avoid sacrificing our well-being to try and please others. By loving yourself, you can actually more easily express love towards others. Now, I think that's an extremely important point. Maslow observed this in his studies. He writes,

clinical study of healthier people who have been love need-satisfied shows that although they need less to receive love, they are more able to give love. In this sense, they are more loving people. One common question that usually comes to mind is how is self-love different from being selfish? After all, self-love does include prioritizing one's self over others. Well, there are definitely narcissistic unhealthy forms of self-love, not all forms of self-love are unhealthy. So that begs the question, what is healthy self-love? For starters, it can be preferring honesty over charm, not wanting anything from other people except their love and friendship, being authentically you, even if it may damage

your reputation. Treating others is valuable in their own rights, but not letting them take advantage of you. Taking the time to listen to others from all walks of life, but knowing also when to recharge, setting healthy boundaries, forgiving yourself when you're not being nice or true to yourself, prioritizing your own personal projects over the demands of others, and giving yourself permission to enjoy yourself, or just a few examples. So why is self love so important? Let's look at a few examples. I was reading the story of a 20-year-old woman named Asaya, who was in a caustic four-year relationship that undervalued her goals and aspirations. And through this experience and breakup, she realized the importance of self love. Asaya says, I, in the past, often acknowledged my friends and family's achievements by undervaluing

mine. My perspective in prioritizing myself was so distorted, I viewed my accomplishments as menial and constantly compared myself to others. I'm now learning that this isn't true self-love. Loving myself makes everyone around me more valuable because I recognize the work of my own efforts, trials, achievements, and appreciate my efforts to fight for myself and be a better whole being. I'm no longer divided by comparisons because I always choose me." Then there's Melissa, who had to radically change her life after undergoing a significant health scare leading to a kidney transplant. She explains that meant leaving a career that I felt to find me and accepting that I had to rework my life and not depend on others for the first time. I was lost and

terrified. One day my therapist asked me what I was doing for myself. I was stumped. I realized I wasn't doing anything for me. I began to carve out moments that gave me pleasure from that day forward. I started with baby steps, a manicure, a walk with my dog, getting lost in a great book, and now reached a point where I'm taking action to explore a life that I've always wanted to live and never felt worthy or free enough to have. I'm so grateful for the simple question that was past of me five years ago. It started me on an entire journey of my own making. These stories illustrate that the power of self-love is more significant than any other aspect of your life. After all, in the spotting you will live and in the spotting you will die. You will experience good times and bad,

no matter what. And it's not always an easy path. Self-love requires healthy selfishness, which is rooted in patients, compassion, and learning to grow and be happy. It's realizing that you can't make anyone else happy unless you are at peace with yourself. And for that, self-love is essential. That is the whole point. So how do you learn self-love? Well, one step is accepting your feelings. We often find ourselves running away from what we feel, especially in the face of negative emotions. This is a constant hindrance to achieve in self-love. Thus, the first step is to accept what you feel

and be okay with it. Don't invalidate your feelings and thoughts. Second, stop pressuring yourself to be perfect. The constant urge and pressure to be the most perfect person can really be a huge hurdle in one's journey towards achieving self love. Stop being so harsh on yourself and stop thinking that you are worth nothing without perfection. Third, embrace the uncertainty. We often beat ourselves over things that have happened in the past without realizing

that some things are out of our control and no matter how much we think about them, we can't change them. Let go and accept the void. So that begs the question, why is self-love so difficult? While it isn't easy to extend love and compassion towards others, expressing love and compassion for ourselves can be even more challenging. That is because inner peace and happiness are synonymous with cultivating compassion towards ourselves, which is easier said than done. Self-love and inner peace are more than just treating ourselves to a long walk, getting

a massage for taking the hot bath before bed. Although these things might help, self-love is an inner job. It has to do with self-compassion and how we treat ourselves and relate to our feelings. It means intentionally finding strength and resilience to embrace the full range of our human emotions that we encounter. It's about looking inwards so that we welcome our feelings rather than confront them with self-loathing or judgments. Being human means wrestling with uncomfortable emotions

and accepting and loving yourself the way that you are. So I'm gonna give you some habits that encourage self-love because no great feat is achieved without adopting certain positive habits. Similarly, self-love also demands development of such practices that encourage it. Let's go into some of the most effective habits. Take out time

for yourself. That sounds impossible, right? Because you're too busy, too busy to take care of yourself. That seems a little unfair, doesn't it? Sure, work is always important, and it isn't always possible to take out a ton of time for ourselves. So it's sensible for you to start small. Start by taking out 15 to 20 minutes and doing something for yourself. That could be anything from reading a book, having a cup of coffee, going for a walk, journaling, or some other activity. Second, take care of your physical health.

Taking care of your body is one of the most critical aspects of self-love. What better way to feel good about yourself than keeping your body in shape? Create a habit of exercising regularly to release stress and recharge your energy. Third, choose your company wisely. Self-love requires that you take time to sit alone

and be at peace with your thoughts. It can be challenging if those around you do not have an understanding and supportive attitude. Let go of the negative influences and surround yourself with people who make you a better version of yourself. Our company has a significant impact on us, so spend your time with the people you love. This will make your journey of self love so much easier.

Fourth, be mindful and stop degrading yourself. Tell yourself daily that you can achieve whatever goal you have in life and you can do it whenever you want it. Start the practice of journaling three things a day that you're gratified and receiving. Fifth, don't compare yourself with others. Be content with what you have and stop thinking that you can beat with someone else. So what can you take away from today's episode? The importance of self-love is immense because only through loving ourselves can we love others and bring positive changes in other people's lives. Self-love is key to finding fulfillment and achieving meaningful success in every aspect of life. Those who have

an altruistic and loving orientation towards others tend to foster that very same light. This ability to shine the spotlight of love is made possible in large part by the capacity to silence the ego. Remember, there has never been nor will there ever be a single person who ever lived on this planet that was you. You are unique, and this uniqueness is your superpower. Don't waste it. Live intentionally and start celebrating yourself. And if there's a topic like today's, you'd like to see me discuss, or a guest that you would like to see me interview, please DM me on Instagram at John Armiles.

We have some amazing upcoming guests, including next week's episode with singer-songwriter Kate Shutt, there are a list in New York Times best-selling author, Jen Brickerbauer, in rural Tim Gallaudet, the former acting under Secretary of Commerce and no administrator. Lastly, I'd like to bring up again

that March 4th through 6th, I will be participating in the four by four by 48 challenge. That's four miles every four hours for 48 hours and we'll be doing this in the outdoors so that we are even more out of our normal comfort zones. I'm doing this challenge in support of veteran nonprofit organizations who are on the cutting edge of helping veterans overcome traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder. And I'll put links where you can contribute or be a part of what we're doing in the show notes.

Now, live life passion struck. Thank you so much for joining us. The purpose of our show is to make passion go viral. And we do that by sharing with you the knowledge and skills that you need to unlock your hidden potential. If you want to hear more, please subscribe to the Passion Strike podcast on Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to your podcasts at.

And if you absolutely love this episode, we'd appreciate a five-star rating on iTunes, and you sharing it with three of your most group-minded friends so they can post it as well to their social accounts and help us grow our passion-struck community. If you'd like to learn more about the show and our mission, you can go to passionstruck.com where you can sign up for our newsletter, look at our tools, and also download the show notes for today's episode. Additionally, you can listen to us every Tuesday and Friday, or even more and remember make a choice, work hard, and step into your sharp edges. Thank you again for joining us. you