The Mindset Mentor - How to Build Self-Esteem and Self-Love

Episode Date: August 20, 2025

What if self-love is simply self-acceptance? Today, I’ll explore how childhood conditioning fuels self-judgment and show you how to reparent your inner child, validate yourself from within, and build a daily habit of acceptance so you can finally feel enough. The Mindset Mentor™ podcast is designed for anyone desiring motivation, direction, and focus in life. Past guests of The Mindset Mentor include Tony Robbins, Matthew McConaughey, Jay Shetty, Andrew Huberman, Lewis Howes, Gregg Braden, Rich Roll and Dr Steven Gundry.   Here are some useful links for you…  If you want access to a multitude of life advice, self development tips, and exclusive content daily that will help you improve your life, then you can follow me around the web at these links here: Instagram  TikTok Facebook Youtube

Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there and you love this podcast, do me a favor. Send this podcast to someone that you love, someone that you think might need it. Only reason why is because then we can impact more people's lives and that's all we're really here to do. So if you do that, I would greatly appreciate it. Today, I'm going to be talking to you about how to build up your own self-esteem and also

your self-love as well. So many people struggle with self-love. I was running over the past couple of weeks my mindset university program and a couple different times. People had talked about self-love and self-acceptance and how they're struggling with it. And whatever that happens, I'm like, okay, the universe has given me a sign. I need to turn this into a podcast episode. And so that's what we're going to be diving into today because I have found that people can be so cruel to themselves. And what's crazy about is that we'll speak to ourselves internally, harsher than we would ever dare speaking to another person. Like, you would never speak to someone that you love the same way that you speak to yourself. But we normalize this

because we've been doing it for so long. It's such a habit. And we don't even notice that we're abusing ourselves as much as we are. And so when you look at self-love, what I think is actually a better phrase for self-love is self-acceptance. To be able to accept every part of yourself. Yes, every part of yourself. Because some of you guys are already getting trigger going, but yeah, but he doesn't know about this part of me. He doesn't know that I think this. He doesn't know about this. I want to keep this hidden from everybody. And the reason why I say self-acceptance is because it's not really about love. It's about acceptance. And the barrier to self-love is self-acceptance. When you fully accept yourself and you get past all of your self-judgment,

the only thing that's there is self-love. So the natural state of a human is love. If you've ever hung out with a baby, the natural state of a human is love. The only thing that's in the way of that is the acceptance of ourself. And so I want to prep you for how today is going to go. Before I talk about how to actually love and accept yourself, I think it's really, really important. to talk about why you don't love and accept yourself and how that happens throughout your life. Because if we don't talk about that, then this isn't going to really make any sense. And so when we talk about how and why and all of that stuff, I'm going to dive deep into childhood and how to actually raise a child and how most people are raised as children.

And then it's going to start to make a lot more sense why we have the habit of self-judgment and not the habit of self-acceptance. so when you see a baby you don't see a baby with self-love issues i've been around my son every single moment of his life almost and i've never seen him be like i don't love myself i don't accept myself like a baby arrives into this world on a unfiltered unapologetic like fully themselves they don't question if their laugh is too loud or if their body is good enough like my son has you know, a little, a little bit of fat that hangs over his pants when he wears a little tighter pants. He doesn't, like, hold that up and look at himself in the mirror or anything. He's just like,

yep, it's there. And so if that's the case, that means that we have been conditioned at some point in time to not accept ourselves. The conditioning happens later on in life. And that is learned, obviously, from adults. And so when you look at that, why is it so hard to accept ourselves? Well, it really comes down to just the way that we are socialized to fit in with society nowadays. You know, parents are under intense pressure to socialize you to make you fit in. And a child really just does not fit in with social constructs. You know, from the moment that we're able to start walking around and to speak and to be in public, it's kind of like we start to mold and shift a child to what is appropriator.

what is normal or what is respectable in some sort of way. And those rules that we learn over our young childhood, two, three, four, five, seven, ten years old, those external rules kind of mold and shift into our internal voices. So the reason why they say that most of the time your internal voice is actually the voice of your primary caregiver that you spent the most time with when you were a child. So if you guys that are primary caregivers, make sure that you're saying the right things to your

children. And so I've been trying for 15 years to try to figure out why it is the way that it is. And if there's a way to raise a child to get around this. And I don't think that there is. And the reason why is because most parents don't have a psychology degree. And even if they do have a psychology degree, they probably still have a whole lot of stuff that they inherited from their parents. You know, and the sad part about it is that most parents will almost always emotional reward or punish a child based off of how they act. Not on purpose, but it's just kind of a fact of the way that most people, you know, raise their children. If you're good, you get my love. If you're bad, I will remove my love. So even if parents don't consciously mean to withhold love,

they do. And then the other thing is even if they're mad, but they try to say the right thing. Children can interpret tones. They can interpret attention. They can interpret approval. All of those things is like currency. And they quickly learn what buys them connection to their parents and what costs them connection to their parents. And there's no, you know, this is a child we're talking about. There's no reasoning behind this. There's no processing behind this. The child doesn't understand everything. And so they just realize at some point in time, unconsciously, hey, certain ways that I act makes my parents love and accept me. Certain ways that I act makes my parents feel like they do not love and accept me. And certain ways that I act are not acceptable. And because the children are hardwired

for survival and attachment to their primary caregivers, they will trade authenticity for approval without even knowing that they're really doing it. You know, I was looking up statistics before this episode, and they find that about eight to ten times more than a child is actually like praised, they will be reprimanded, eight to ten times more. The average toddler hears no 400 times a day. And they hear yes, 30 to 40 times a day. So what happens is it turns into the child thinking, I'm not good enough the way that I am. I'm not doing things right. And so those numbers are not just statistics. Like they become a blueprint for a self-image. And so if you think about that, the majority of feedback that we get from parents or correction or disapproval

or any of that stuff comes from looking and going, well, you know, if I do this thing, my mom loves and accepts me. If I do this thing, she doesn't. Okay, I want her love and acceptance, so I'll just continue to do this thing and I'll stop doing this thing. What ends up happening, and this is a really, really important part of what I'm going to teach today is we end up learning to grow up, scanning for what's wrong with us, instead of recognizing what's right with us. So let me say that again. We grow up scanning, and we just unconsciously do, scanning for what's wrong with us so that we can course correct versus recognizing what's wrong with us so that we can fit in, which is why self-love and self-acceptance is so hard because self-judgment

ends up becoming a habit so that we just fit in with everyone else. And so the child learns that they have to change themselves. They have to let go of certain aspects of himself in order to be what they think they their parents want them to be. You can have a kid that's having the best time ever. They're three years old. They're running around. They're screaming.

They're having fun. And then their mom yells at them to be quiet. And so they think to themselves unconsciously, obviously, like, okay, I was having the best time in my life. I was screaming. I was laughing. As naturally as I am. And I got yelled at.

so that means that naturally as I am something is not right so then I must be wrong and so we learn from a very young age during the socialization process that we are not good enough as we are and so we must act a certain way in order to be accepted even if that certain way is not me in that result we end up feeling like we're unworthy because of the socialization process and we feel like love is conditional and we look at the lens of the world through that way. And then, you know, we start bringing that into everything after being raised by our parents. So every classroom we try to be accepted, every workplace we try to be accepted, every relationship, we feel like all of these things are like a test that we have to pass. And your personality, you have to realize the reason

why it's so hard for us to accept ourselves is because our personalities through the socialization process is built upon repressing who we truly are. Somehow I am bad and I need to look to others to see if I am right. I need their validation. And so then we get older and then we turn this into wanting approvals as others as I was saying. So then we seek other people's approval. If I do this, do you like me? Do you want to date me? Do you love me? If I get good grades and I get to number one and I beat everybody else. Will you love me? If I win this football game, do you love me? Do I look sexy enough for you? Do I look good enough for you? Am I fit enough for you? Am I too fat for you? Do I get enough likes on Instagram, Facebook? Show me that I'm accepted. You know, if I make more money,

will you accept me? Like, we do all of these things to change ourselves into who we think we need to be for other people to accept us when really we just have to look to accept ourselves. Like we're trying to do or become something so that we can be accepted. So we swap like mom and dad's approval for society, for bosses, for partners, for strangers online. But it's all the same game. Am I enough for you to love me? And here's the secret of all this. This is the most important part of it, is what you're searching for from the external world, love, acceptance, tell me that I'm enough, show me that I'm loved in some sort of way is actually what you're searching for from yourself. Nobody in this entire world, not even your parents anymore, can fill the void that you feel like you have except for

yourself. It's kind of crazy. It's kind of wild when you start to go into it. When you realize, oh, I feel like I need to be loved. Give it to myself. I feel like you need to be accepted. I need to give it to myself. I need to feel like I am enough. I need to tell myself that I'm enough. I need to feel that I am loved. I need to tell myself that I love my love my love. myself. Just kind of a weird thing to do. But once you start doing it, you realize it starts to actually heal you. Because when you give it to yourself, when you give these things to yourself, you don't need it from anybody else. It's nice to have it. You know, it's nice to be accepted by other people. It's nice to be loved by other people. But you don't need it, which means if I don't need it, then I don't

need to change who I am because I don't give a fuck what anybody else thinks about me. I want people that want to accept who I truly am, not me having to change myself and be somebody. else for you to accept me. So the secret is that we can validate ourselves based off of who we are as a person and nothing else. Not any achievement that you have or how much money is in your bank account or what you look like or your weight or where you live or any of those things. The secret is we have to validate ourselves. Your looks don't matter. Your mind doesn't matter. Your car doesn't matter. Your job doesn't matter. Your body doesn't matter. Your social media followings don't matter. we just have to learn to accept ourselves as we are by ourselves. Now, how do we do that?

It's kind of, it takes time. We'll talk with us. It is a skill set that has to be built because we have this skill set that's really in habit that's very strong of self-judgment. We have the self-acceptance muscles are quite weak. We need to work on those. And so we need to learn to accept ourselves as we currently are. Fat, skinny, short, tall, no money, whatever. Your negative thoughts, your short temper. Acceptance first, no judging. Now, acceptance just so you know it doesn't mean resignation.

It means that you're telling the truth about who you are right now without the constant background noise of shame. It doesn't mean, oh, I accept myself, so therefore I don't want to grow a successful business and I don't want to become better and I don't want to evolve myself and all that. No, no, none of that.

Acceptance is the vehicle that you're in in this journey of life. You can still get an amazing shape and have great relationships and become a multi-billionaire if you want to and all of those things. But accept yourself first in the road to get there so much easier. So when you actually start to think of it, how do we do it? Because self-acceptance isn't really that easy because, once again, it's a muscle that is weak

within us. Well, I want you to think of it this way. You don't want to love and accept yourself as you are, 45 years old, all of the stuff that you've been through. Because that tends to be hard for most people. what is the best way to do it is to pretend that you're talking to yourself as a child. Like that little kid still lives inside of you. If you could go back to when that child learned that they needed to change themselves to be loved,

when their parents said, you're too loud, you're too much, you're too emotional, children are supposed to be seen and not heard, and they felt that disconnection, that removal of love from their parent. And you could be there in that moment as the 45-year-old adult that you are now, what would you say to that child? What did they need to hear? You know, how would you be there for them emotionally? This is how you actually start to love and accept yourself.

Not yourself as you are today, but that child that created these behavioral adaptations that we're now dealing with as adults. One of the ways to do it, and I recommend that everybody do it, I had this for probably four years, is you change the background of your phone to a picture of you when you were just a cute little kid. Because you look at your phone, if you're average a couple hundred times a day, so every time you pick up that phone you see that cute little kid a hundred times a day and you remind yourself that is who you're trying to heal because if you heal the child

guess what happens to the adult it's automatically healed you as an adult are automatically healed that's who you're trying to be there for that's seven-year-old kid that told that he wasn't good enough or smart enough unless he ended up getting good grades or whatever it might be for you or the one that had to achieve and get number one and spelling bees or be the best basketball player they possibly could be, what does that child need? And then you allow yourself to be that human being. That one person who needed you back then, you're the only person that can heal yourself. It is one of the crazy parts of life. Nobody can heal you. Only you can heal you. And so you allow yourself to be a flawed individual. Allow yourself to have flaws and to mess things up and to be there for

yourself the same way that you would be there for a friend if your friend ended up screwing something up you wouldn't shame them for screwing up you would be there for them if your child mess something up how would you be there for them you know and like I think about it because it's it's great that I have a child now because you know my son like not even purposely do it but just fart in my face sometimes and it's not on purpose he's just moving my face right there and he's like let's one out and I'll laugh at it my you know Lord and I will laugh at it it's not like, it's not like I'm like getting mad at him for it. It's like, oh, this is one of his, what we would call quote unquote flaws as an adult. Like if an adult rips a fart in the middle

of public, you're like, oh my God, he's so disgusting. Like, I don't look at my son. I'm like, oh my God, he's so disgusting. You know, he was walking yesterday and he tripped and he hit his head and he started crying immediately. And it wasn't that hard, but it was enough to just really scare him. And so I picked him up immediately. Lauren was in the room. She saw it happen as well. and I held him and she, you know, was on the other side. We both gave him a hug. We both kissed him as he cried and we were there for him as he was going through something.

Don't we all need someone like that for us that's there for us when we're going through something? You can be that person. You can be the person that takes care of you. It's the most important relationship that you will ever have. Not to your spouse, not to your children, not to your parents. your relationship to yourself is the most important relationship that you could possibly have. And you don't need to earn that relationship or your self-worth or your love or any of that.

Your self-worth is not a trophy that you can earn. It's the ground that you've always been standing on. And so give yourself permission to be human. It's okay to screw up. It's okay to feel anxious. It's okay if I need some rest sometimes. It's okay if I'm not perfect. And you say it out loud and you start hearing your voice to affirm and to actually make it real. And so how do you actually start to love and accept yourself? How do you love yourself? Well, you need to accept yourself. How do you accept yourself? You need to accept your childhood self. You need to talk to yourself and be there the same way that you would be for that little kid. And you see yourself in the background of your phone over and over and over again every single day and you're like, ah, I'm not healing the adult. I'm healing that child. And when you

heal the child, the adult automatically is healed. So that's what I got for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on Instagram stories. Tag me in it. There's a lot of people who need this message. But if you tag me in it, it's Rob Dow Jr. R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And if you want to learn about coaching with me outside of the podcast, you can actually go to coach with rob.com. Once you can coach with rob.com, I've got 12-week program, 12-month program to help you learn and grow and become the best version of yourself. So with that, I'm going to leave you the same way to leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you, and I hope that you have an amazing day.