Hard Times No More Relationship Podcast

5 Ways to Release Perfectionism and Cultivate Self-Love -Ep. 29

• Allesanda Tolomei-Hard • Season 1 • Episode 29

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It’s easy to get caught up in showing love to others. 


But what about you?


I’m not a mind reader, but there’s a good chance you're a natural giver, spreading love and support throughout the year. 


But amidst all that giving, are you taking time to show yourself some love too?


In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, this podcast episode is all about self-love—made just for you to help you cultivate a deeper connection with yourself so you can feel as amazing as you are!


And… You wanna know the biggest robber of self-love that I see clients struggle with? 


Perfectionism.


Perfectionism might be getting in the way of your self-love journey and the incredible impact that strengthening your relationship with yourself can have on your life.


By practicing more self-love, you will naturally surround yourself with supportive, loving people because, remember—others are a reflection, a mirror, and you attract what you put out into the universe. 


So, if you're ready to level up your self-love and break down the barriers keeping you from fully loving yourself, this episode is for you.


In this episode, you’ll hear:


- 5 simple, actionable ways to practice self-love.

- How seeking external validation can lead to unhealthy patterns like people-pleasing.

- The transformative power of changing your relationship with yourself.

- Journaling prompts to guide you on your self-love journey.

- The damaging effects of perfectionism on your relationships.

- How a loving connection with yourself can bring more peace and joy into your daily life.


So go ahead, give yourself the gift of self-love. 


You deserve it!


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Or Facebook: Mrs.Hard
Website:  Mrs-Hard.com


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Speaker 1:

Hi, I'm Alessandra Tolome hard, aka Mrs Hard, and this is Hard Times no More, a podcast for people who are tired of struggling with boundaries, people pleasing and relationship problems. I have overcome some hard times. Within three years, I stopped drinking, my mom died of cancer and my house burnt down in a California wildfire, and those are just the highlights. I have a lot of reasons to be miserable, but I'm not. The truth is, life was more challenging before these events happened. If you are tired of waiting for your circumstances to change to find happiness and peace of mind, you are in the right place. Join me as I share the tools I use and love to transform challenges into assets and interview others about their relationship journeys. Together, let's learn how to have a happy life full of healthy, meaningful relationships and say goodbye to hard times for good. Hey everyone, welcome to the Hard Times no More relationship podcast. I'm Alessandra Tolome hard, aka Mrs Hard, your host.

Speaker 1:

Today seemed like the perfect day to talk about self-love, because Valentine's Day has just passed and I'm sure you could agree that a little bit more self-love in your life would be great. So today I'm going to share five ways to release perfectionism and create more self-love, and when you create more self-love, self-acceptance, self-compassion, you then, in turn, have more patience, compassion and acceptance of others, which creates happier, healthier relationships in your life, which creates more stability and security. So then you decrease stress, decrease anxiety and you feel good within your own skin, and then you feel good interacting with others and it's a good thing all around. So first let's get on the same page. What does self-love really mean? Well, if you look up on Google, it'll say that self-love means having a high regard for your own well-being and happiness. Self-love means taking care of your needs and not sacrificing your well-being to please others. So, as we've talked about in other episodes, not making others needs a priority over your own. That is true self-love.

Speaker 1:

But I was talking to one of my clients last week and we were talking about her needs and how sometimes it's hard for us to identify what our needs are. And if you don't even know what your needs are yet, it's hard to see if you're making them a priority or not. So first let's cover what your needs may be. Well, we have very basic needs. We have food, shelter, financial security and that's our baseline. So first rule of thumb don't go help somebody else until your basic needs are met, and a very silly example of this is if you've tried to be around a family member, that triggers you. When you're angry, you know. If your blood sugar is low, you have less patience and they just irritate you with every little thing they do. They irritate you. Just being themselves and choosing to help them instead of feed yourself first, take care of your basic needs, is making their needs, or what they need, a priority over you. So that's a silly but simple example of how that can play out, and I'm assuming you don't just want to survive, you want to thrive, right? So what are the needs that you need to discover to help you thrive?

Speaker 1:

A simple way I have used to figure this out is to think about a time in your life when you felt your best but you weren't on vacation. What did your life look like? What did you enjoy doing? What did you look forward to? Maybe you lived more in the moment. Maybe you were very active and you did yoga every day, and that movement and that connection with that routine made you feel really good, because it got you motivated for the day and it was a practice that you came back to. It was a time of self-reflection. Or maybe it was a time where you could let everything go and maybe that practice helped you feel good in your body. Or maybe you used to be more of a free spirit and you would work to travel. You were always saving for your next trip and you were traveling to Thailand, europe, and you had all these ideas of all the places you wanted to go, and that would really excite your soul and it would help you get through the mundane.

Speaker 1:

And so how can you bring some of the energy from your past phase, when you felt your best, into this present time? And it doesn't mean that you need to do yoga every day, but maybe you want to bring a little bit more yoga into your life. Or maybe you want to explore a new form of exercise and it doesn't mean that you need to quit your job and travel all over the world or make that your number one priority, but maybe it's been a long time since you've gone somewhere new or gone exploring or adventuring, and that that really feeds your soul. So recognizing those needs are very important, because when you start to make those needs a priority in your life, you build your self-esteem, you build your self-love and you build your relationship, your connection with yourself, and these are the things that you need to thrive. And making these kinds of needs, along with your baseline needs, a priority will mean having a high regard for your own well-being and your own happiness. And once you check the box of like, okay, I got my basics and now I got my things that light me up, bring me joy, give me energy, make me excited about life, now I can take care of others, and sometimes it's just planning that trip or showing up to that yoga practice that day, especially if you know you're going to have a challenging interaction with someone else later.

Speaker 1:

And then, by neglecting your connection with yourself over and over again, it can propel you to look outside of yourself for validation and approval from others, and this can steer your internal compass in the wrong direction and it can create unhealthy relationships. Because when we're looking for external validation, sometimes we'll do things we don't really want to do just to please others, to be the good daughter, the good partner, the good friend. And this people-pleasing can cause us to, and this people-pleasing can cause you to not say what's on your heart and your mind, because you don't want to rock the boat, you don't want to upset others and so you continue to shove it down. And that is subliminally saying to yourself that you know what you have to say isn't important, which makes it hard for you to have healthy connections and healthy communication with others. Also, if you have a poor relationship with yourself, you can tend to be more critical of others because you're so critical of yourself. And this leads me to talk about perfectionism, which I think steals so much self-love.

Speaker 1:

Perfectionism is usually a coping mechanism. The deep, deep root of perfectionism is a fear of not being enough, fear of not being accepted, fear of being seen negatively by others, of not belonging. And when you struggle with perfectionism it's a never-ending battle. You can never do things well enough to satisfy that inner perfectionist, and that perfectionism robs your ability to accept yourself as who you are in the moment. It can rob your ability to rest, because sometimes it keeps you on the go all the time, always striving for more, instead of feeling satisfied with the life that you have now. Perfectionism can drive you to set unattainable goals and then wonder why you didn't meet your mark.

Speaker 1:

And then, when we have this internal perfectionism, it trickles out to others, like I talked about, it becomes critical and then it's hard for us to have peace in our relationships because we may be harboring some silent expectations of others, wanting them to be different than who they are. And when we want ourselves to be different than who we are, or someone else to be different than who they are, it's really hard to have a peaceful relationship. And so a solution though it is a journey to perfectionism and cultivating more self-love is acceptance. And, like I said, acceptance is a journey, but that is actually where we want to get, instead of like overwhelming joy and happiness. Those things are wonderful, but really acceptance of who we are and how our life is right now is what creates peace in our life and what opens the door for more self-love. So I'm going to share with you five ways to call in more self-love, to practice self-love, to find that acceptance with yourself.

Speaker 1:

So first, prioritize your connection with yourself. Understand your basic needs, understand what lights you up, and if you don't know what that is, think of it as an adventure, a journey to see what you like at this time in your life, right now. Maybe you find that you really enjoy cooking and you take a couple cooking classes just to spice it up, to learn something new. Maybe you do it by yourself or you ask one of your good friends to join you. Maybe you start walking in the morning and you set aside 30 minutes to walk when the sun's rising. I go for sunrise walks and, oh my gosh, it is an amazing start to the day. Everything is so quiet, every morning is so different and there's so much peace out there. So a great way to prioritize connection with yourself is through meditation and writing.

Speaker 1:

When I was brainstorming ideas for this episode today, I did a little writing and I asked myself some journaling questions. I asked myself do I love myself? I asked myself if I have compassion for myself. I asked myself what would having more self-love look like for me? And when writing, I imagined that myself was a different person, like a good friend of mine, and tried to view myself as a secondary entity, as another person, so that I could have compassion for that person in the journey they've been through and really connect with that feeling of compassion. And for me, creating that space, making that shift in perspective, calms down any blocks or barriers.

Speaker 1:

I have to the topic of self-love, because sometimes self-love can feel a little icky to talk about. It can make your mind go to ego and being full of yourself and being somebody who needs a lot of attention or is really prideful or very overly confident, and that's not the self-love we're talking about. It's more of a soft, gentle love, a place of unconditional love, because that's what we really want from others, right, and so creating that connection with ourselves first creates an opening in which we can attract that conditional love into our life, because we'll recognize it, because we have it for ourselves, and then we're so much easier on ourself if we shift into this more positive perspective. We have less anxiety, less stress, because we can see that we're just humans doing the best we can living this life, and it takes the pressure off of our backs to always perform and always push and always do better.

Speaker 1:

So if you decide to do these writing prompts, which I highly suggest, ask yourself these questions Do you love yourself? Do you have compassion for yourself? What would having more self-love in your life look like for you? Pretend you're writing to a good friend and when you write, instead of just thinking about it, it does something different to your brain. Your brain goes into more of a learning and processing mode and you're able to retain what you've written about more than if you're just thinking about it, because if you're like me, you may have 100 thoughts an hour, it seems like, or maybe a thousand thoughts an hour, and so it goes in one ear and out the other. But when you put pen to paper, that's when the magic truly happens and it sticks with you longer after you're writing. So, number one prioritize your connection with yourself in whatever way feels good for you. And then, number two, self-forgiveness is so important in cultivating self-love. And again, you can do this as a writing exercise.

Speaker 1:

If there is anything you resent yourself for or are frustrated with yourself about, take some time to write it out. Write about your frustration, write about why you're frustrated and write about what you wish you would have done, and see if you can call in some compassion into this space and look at it as if you were once again a good friend, not yourself, because we're easier on ourselves when we view us as a good friend, as a separate entity instead of ourselves, because that perfectionist will come in and tell you you could have done this better. If only you did X, y, z, then the certain outcome in the situation would have gone better. But these are inquiries. And then, once you write about anything, you resent any hard feelings you have why See if you need to forgive yourself and then write an apology to yourself and decide on an action you can take to kind of make it up to yourself again. Maybe it's taking that time to spend time with yourself and reconnect with yourself daily. Maybe it's making your needs a priority and really following through with it this time. What is it that you can do? What is one thing you can change that would bring that forgiveness, that self-love, that compassion into your life today?

Speaker 1:

And then, number three don't compare yourself to others. It is easy to compare our insides to other people's outsides. You may see them on Instagram living their best life. They may seem like they have lots of money and free time at the same time and that they don't experience the same struggles you do. That's really easy for our mind to project onto other people and it's false because we don't know what they're actually going through inside. And this is something that people commonly talk about, and so I'm sure you've heard about it before. But take this as a friendly reminder Don't compare yourself to others. Don't compare your insides to other people's outsides. Sometimes somebody's going through a really positive, abundant season in life and you're going through the crap and ultimately, that crappy season is going to make you stronger, wiser, more capable and take you to where you want to go. But you got to work through it first and you don't know what's really going on with that other person. And so if you're in a rough patch or rough season, it's not always a bad thing. It is an opportunity. But comparison will rob your happiness from you.

Speaker 1:

Number four set boundaries. Last week we talked about detachment. If you need help setting boundaries, go back to that episode about detachment, because if you are everything to everyone, you will have no energy left to take care of yourself. And setting boundaries is not unkind, it's not cold and it doesn't mean that you don't care about the other person. Setting boundaries is saying that you're going to prioritize your needs in your care and then you're going to be available to help others, and when you do that, you're able to show up as a more supportive, caring, open person. You're able to really be there for them. Instead of being there for them for the wrong reasons, like people pleasing, needing them to need you, needing them to validate you, needing them to like you.

Speaker 1:

There's this kind of weird feeling that hangs out in relationships when Our needs aren't met and we're depleted and we keep on being the people pleaser. It builds unhealthy relationships instead of having kind, loving, gentle detachment in which you can trust that the other person is on their own journey and that if you're not available to help them, they will figure out another way to receive help. This life has so many resources and so much abundance, and you got to have faith that not only can you access those resources and that abundance and that you're on the path that's right for you, but it's so helpful to remember that other people are on their path and following what's right for them, even if they're going through a hard time. So it's really important to set boundaries to protect your own energy and then five, surround yourself with loving people and by working on self-love, this will become easier and easier because you'll attract more joyful, loving people, because that is what you're working on inside and, like we talked about, others are a mirror, a reflection of us, and so the more goodness you cultivate within, the more you're going to attract that into your life and the more you take care of yourself first and show yourself love first and take care of your needs first, the more you can truly be there for others in a very healthy way, and this will create healthy relationships for you. And those healthy relationships will support you through good times and bad, and they will help you feel less anxiety, because anxiety tells us we're alone.

Speaker 1:

We're the only ones that feel this way, because sometimes when we feel anxious, we feel like we're the only one who's experiencing the kind of struggle we're experiencing. We worry about the future. We can worry that if we don't have more control, if we don't do things right, if we don't keep pushing, then things aren't going to be okay. But when we have a loving connection with ourself and with others, there's trust, there's stability and that quiets anxiety naturally. And we cannot truly love another until we love ourself first.

Speaker 1:

So I want you to take a deep breath and take that in. We cannot truly love another until we love ourselves first. That inner perfectionist is just interfering with the good that you can do today. Just think about one thing you can do today to cultivate that self-love within you. All right, I hope that you found some insights into how you can bring more self-love into your life and, again, those five ways to practice self-love, are prioritizing your connection with yourself. That's number one. Number two self-forgiveness. Number three don't compare yourself to others. Number four set boundaries. And number five surround yourself with loving people. All right, thanks for hanging out with me today. I look forward to talking to you soon. Until next time, take care.