Hi, I'm Teresa Trower, and I'm a licensed therapist and a life coach. And I know how difficult it can be to love yourself sometimes. But the good news is, you can improve your level of self love. And it can happen in a short time if you practice what you learn in this course. So if you're not feeling as loving towards yourself, as you know, you could take the 30 Day Challenge. And here's how.

First download the pretest. Part one asks you to rate yourself love in the following areas. Your overall level of self love, how much you love yourself when you're with your family and friends, when you're at school or on the job. In part two, you will rate how much your lack of self love is affecting you now, don't worry as you go through the course. You're going to Improve your level of self love, especially if you practice the assignments. So to get the most out of this course, go through the course one time without doing the assignment.

Then go back and listen to the videos again. But this time, download the assignments. The assignments will go along with the lessons, and they're designed to help you change how you feel about yourself. With a little practice, you'll begin to love yourself as the unique individual, you are not a carbon copy of someone else. Sound good. But how do you get there from where you are now?

And why do you not love yourself? Well, I'll be your guide to help you learn to appreciate the real you not who other people say you are. But to do that you have to be you. Well, you might be thinking, I'm not really sure who I am. I know what other people say. Let's face it, self love is learned.

In fact, by the time you're seven years old, you've heard so many messages about who you are from your parents, your siblings, your teachers, and classmates, that your self image is pretty much formed. And these people are such powerful figures in your life, that it wouldn't even occur to you to question their assessments. You blindly accept what others think. Because the truth is, you don't really know who you are. You're just a little kid, what do you know? But no matter where you are today, whether you're 1550 or 90 years old, it's never too late to take charge, and begin to truly love the wonderful complicated human being that you are.

Let's start with why you might not love yourself as much as you could. You probably feel inadequate in one or more areas. Your life, you may be critical of the way you look, or your intellectual ability, or your talents and skills. You may criticize yourself for being too shy, introverted, too fat, too thin, different from others in some way, or anything really that differentiates you from others in a way that makes you feel different. You might even have a funny last name that other kids laughed at when the teacher called roll. Trust me, no one gets out of this life without dealing at some point with mean people who hurt your feelings and your self esteem.

And this is where you need a critical weapon. That weapon is called self awareness. Eleanor Roosevelt once said, no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. But this is easier said than done. You first have to know who you are. Or you allow other people define you.

So here's your assignment for week one. Download and fill out the worksheet called Who am I? Look at the list of questions and think about how you would answer each one of them. You can even add your own questions, your answers to the questions or clues to who you are. And if you ask yourself these same questions 10 years from now, your answers are probably going to be a little different. So your answers show who you are at this moment in time.

And feel free to add any other facts about yourself that aren't included on the worksheet for a more complete description of yourself. Now that you have a better idea of who you are, let's zero in on your strength. I doubt you included these in your self description either because you don't believe you have any strength. you're unaware of what they are or you're too modest or shy. I mentioned them. Do you even know what they are.

I can almost hear some of you saying, I don't have any strength or I don't know what they are. If this sounds like you don't worry, it's a common response. If you don't know what your strengths are, someone does. Unfortunately, sometimes parents may feel that if they tell you your strength, it'll make you conceited or give you a big head. But this is so far from the truth because the truth is telling kids what their strengths are. Give them self awareness and self love, not conceit.

How about your friends? Are they hanging around you out of mercy? No, they're hanging around you because they like you. Do you even know what it is they like about you? Probably not. unless they've already told you.

One reason you probably don't believe compliments is because you've told them yourself the exact opposite for so many years. Remember, the more often you think or say something, the more likely you are to believe it. And just because someone else believes it doesn't make it true, kind of like fake news, you can't believe everything you hear. Do you know what makes you most likely to believe something negative about yourself. If you even believe a little bit of it is true, then you're likely to fall for the whole negative belief. For example, if you hate one of your facial features, let's say your ears and someone makes fun of your most recent picture, you're most likely to think something like I knew it.

I am really ugly. Now that's a stretch because not everyone takes a good picture every time. You already have a negative belief about your ears. You buy into the whole thing and make a negative interpretation. In fact, you may be the only person who even noticed this your ears. This is because we tend to take something we don't like about ourselves.

We hyper focus on it, and then blow it all out of proportion. And this is just one example. This can pertain to your personality, your intelligence, where you live, your clothes, your athletic ability, and on and on. This not only isn't self love, it's closer to self hate. Louise Hay, who is a brilliant healer had her clients look into their own eyes in the mirror every day and say something positive. Usually beginning with I love myself.

A lot of people couldn't even look into their own eyes without thinking something negative. When they said I love myself. Their very next thought was something negative like, but you're fat or you're stupid. But again, this is what they were used to thinking and feeling about themselves. And in order to change that, they had to do those mirror exercises over and over, until gradually, their brain started to take in this new information. Now you might be thinking that I am fat, and everyone knows it.

The fat The fact is, you may be overweight, and I'm not saying just to accept it. But if there's something you can do about it, do it. But you know how many people are overweight? Have you seen how many weight loss products there are out there? Look at it this way. There are many overweight people with a lot of self love and self esteem because they're focusing less on their weight and more on their strength.

When you've done the strength homework you took can begin to focus on your strengths. You see, the human brain is programmed to notice the negative because it's a survival skill. If you don't notice the mold on your food, you could get food poisoning. But you can still be aware of the negative or the things you don't like about yourself, while focusing mainly on your strengths. your strengths are your shield of armor, your laser to see through the dark. So focus that laser on your strength, like exercise, use it or lose it.

So this week's assignment is going to teach you what your strengths are. So get ready. Okay, here's your assignment. Download the my strengths worksheet, and then run off as many copies as you need. Then give a copy to people who know you will like a close relative, a parent or close friends And then ask them to write down what they like about you or what they see is your strengths. And this can be things you're good at, as well as characteristics like kindness, friendliness, honesty, loyalty, things like that.

And this is probably the most difficult assignment in this course. Because you may feel embarrassed or unworthy of anyone saying anything nice about you. So this assignment takes courage. But it's a necessary step in this process. And if you're afraid to ask people to fill this out, just gather your courage and choose people who you know like you. And then gather all the information that they say and make one sheet that contains all your strengths.

And even if you don't believe what they say, which you may not, write it down anyway. Then read these over every morning when you get up every evening before you go to And this is because you're building new beliefs. And saying these aloud is even more powerful. Because you know that the more often that someone tells you a lie, the more likely you are to believe it. So the more often you repeat these strings to yourself, the more likely you are to believe them. Now let's talk about the real problem, your lack of self love.

And here are some possible causes. If any of these sound like you take notes because you're going to need this for your next assignment. The first one is comparing yourself to others. When you compare yourself to others, I'm guessing you're coming out on the losing end. We don't usually compare ourselves to those that we don't feel inferior to because we're more obsessed with those people that we do feel inferior to. So the tactic to take here is this If you're going to compare yourself to someone, compare yourself in more than one way.

For example, if you don't feel as intelligent as your best friend or another colleague, compare yourself in in different arenas, and I think you'll find that there are some areas where you excel in comparison. And even if one isn't apparent, trust me, everyone has areas where they feel deficient. So again, if you concentrate on your own gifts and your strength and compare yourself to others, less often, your self love will increase, and your self hate will decrease. Here's the second cause of self hate hanging around critical people. And here's the secret. Critical people are self critical.

They could criticize themselves even more than they criticize you. One way to protect yourself is to picture and imaginary shield around you, causing their critical remarks to bounce off the shield. Remember the childhood saying, I'm rubber and you're glue and whatever you say to me, bounces off me and sticks to you. There's a lot of wisdom in that thought. The important thing is not to believe the criticism. Yes, a little of it may be true, and this is why you tend to believe it.

But you know yourself better than anyone else does. And your best bet with critical people is to avoid them. Remember the old game hot and cold? When you're around a critical person, you're cold. As you find more accepting people, you're hotter, and you know how to tell the difference. You feel better about yourself when you're around accepting people.

It's the fact though there are always going to be critical people in your life. Sometimes you can't avoid them, but you don't have to buy And to what they say. Remember, you define who you are not someone else. The third cause of self hate is being too humble. You know, it's one thing to be modest, but quite another to be self effacing people are going to take you at your word and if you downplay your strengths, so will they. Actually, people with low self esteem tend to brag about themselves.

This is a dead giveaway, that their self esteem is low. But if you are so humble that you downplay your God given gifts, pretty soon you start to believe your own dialogue. So make sure you're not putting yourself down. The fourth cause of self hate is guilt. Are you a person who feels responsible for other people's feelings? If so, you're obviously a caring person.

But are you To carry, and if so you probably go around worrying that you hurt someone's feelings or said something wrong or let someone down and then obsessing about it. In the book power versus force, David Hawkins explains that different emotions carry different energetic vibrations, and of all the emotions. Guilt is the lowest vibration of all. So, if you're living with chronic guilt, it's really hard to love yourself. You need to know your guilt triggers. These are people and yes, they may be family members who use guilt to get you to do something you probably don't want to do.

If you're a kid, they might use the word chicken, because that always works. Because it takes a strong person to risk being thought of as a chicken. No one likes that. But the adult version of the word chicken might be the word selfish, because who wants to be thought of as selfish? The truth is actually, both words make you easy to manipulate if you're not careful. Who knows?

You may even use these words to get others to do things. You know the old story about how the boss yells at the man and then the man comes home and yells at his wife and the wife yells at her son and then the Son Son yells at the dog. I'm not condoning this, but it happens if you're not aware of your own motivations. Bottom line, if you know you've hurt someone or done something wrong, make amends. If not, remind yourself that you're not responsible for other people's feelings. You may even want to read the book boundaries by Henry Townsend.

This will help you realize that you're not Atlas and you're not responsible for holding the whole world on your shoulders. Another reason you might not love yourself as much as you could, is the belief that something's wrong with you. And a lot of people feel this way. Sometimes though this can even come from childhood abuse or neglect. If this sounds like you, talking to a counselor can help you change some of these negative beliefs. Everything you tell a counselor is confidential, and it always helps to talk to an impartial person.

Another way that self hate disguises itself is through perfectionism. And if you're a perfectionist, it's hard to feel good about yourself. Because being perfect means always perfect job review, a computer program with no bugs. A hole in one who does that? Yes, occasionally, maybe. But if that's what it takes to make you love yourself, put up the white flag right now.

Aiming for perfection is a good goal. But expecting it and beating yourself up if you don't achieve it is just self sabotage. And speaking of self sabotage, I'll give you an example from my own life. When I was 12 years old, I went to a summer camp. were one of the activities I signed up for was diving. One day the instructor asked me to represent my age category in the diving competition.

I said, No. You know why? It wasn't because I wasn't a good diver. It was because I was a perfectionistic. diver. Because I couldn't imagine myself doing those dives perfectly.

I was sure someone else could do it better. I'll never forget that swim meet though, because when I saw my replacement dive, I knew I could have done at least as well. I let my perfectionism And negative self talk, sabotage my chance to compete, and maybe even win. So, part of self love is allowing yourself to take chances and put yourself in situations where you can excel without expecting perfection. So here's a question. Are you afraid to speak your truth?

Do you filter what you say according to how the other person will receive it? Well, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, because you don't want to purposely insult someone or cause bad feelings. But hedging the truth can also make it more difficult for others to get to know you. And it makes it hard for you to know yourself. It's hard to tell how you truly feel about things. If you're always worrying about what the other person is going to think.

It's natural to want people to lie to you. But not being truthful. can cause a lot of problems and friendships and other relationships. Let's just take the example of choosing a place to go to dinner. You want to go one place, but you're afraid to suggest it because it might be too expensive. So, when you're asked where you want to go, you say, I don't care.

Now your friend gets to pick the place. Unless your friend feels the same way you do and says, I don't care either. You may end up going somewhere neither of you wants to go. You see the problem? nobody's really happy. I remember a scene in the movie Annie Hall, where she's talking to Woody Allen, who plays her boyfriend, and you hear what they're saying to each other.

But you're also hearing what they're thinking. And it's totally different than what they're saying. And this is so common. Bottom line, though, it's a lot easier to love yourself. When you feel like you're excited. bracing your true self.

And you don't have to hurt people's feelings or be rude to do this. When you use eye messages, instead of pointing the finger at other people, you get to say what you think or feel without insulting the other person. For example, I'd like to see a comedy goes over a lot better than you always choose those violent movies. Notice, starting the sentence with the word AI, is usually received better than starting with you. And this is because when you hear the word you come out of your friend's mouth, you may feel like running for cover. When they start the sentence with I, at least you know, it's not about you.

Here's another factor that blocks your ability to love yourself. You don't trust yourself. When you're lacking in self love. You doubt yourself. You put other people's opinion is above your own. It's as if you think they belong to some special club where they're privy to specialized knowledge about what you should be doing.

And you do this without realizing you're giving your power away to people who are probably clueless about what you should do. One of the remedies for this is the gut check. Part of taking care of yourself is by can salting your gut, your gut feelings don't lie. So don't ignore your gut. It has your back. Another way to increase your ability to trust yourself is by knowing who influences your decisions.

In other words, identifying the people you're giving your power away to. I call them your committee. Let's imagine you're in the boardroom. And you're the chairperson. The company is called you Incorporated. Each board member is someone important in your life.

You probably have a good idea who each person is. When you have important decisions to make, and sometimes even small decisions you give each member of say, these are the people whose opinions you most respect or most want to please. For this reason, you may be making decisions to make someone else happy. It happens. And this is okay too. As long as you're not abandoning what you really want.

There may be some people on your committee who don't get to vote. Again, you decide. As chairman of the board, you have the final say, you have the deciding vote. Easy peasy, right? Wrong. If you have a tendency to value their opinions more than your own eye thinking that they're somehow smarter or no better.

Here, suck You'll end up making the decisions that are right for them. On the other hand, if you carefully weigh each person's opinion, and then make the final decision based on what makes the most sense for you, that self love, does this mean that every decision you make will be the right one? Not always. But you'll end up with something more valuable. self trust, by trusting in your own decisions. You're keeping your power, you're not giving it away.

And that leads to self love. Okay, here's your homework. This assignment has two parts. First, download the worksheet called why I'm lacking in self love. Check the reasons that apply to you. Then ask yourself where you came up with those negative beliefs.

Here's where you're going to question your beliefs by talking back to them, you know how to talk back. Think of all the times in your life you've talked back. If you're criticizing yourself for being shy, talk that by saying, I may be shy, but I'm a good listener and people like to talk to me. Use your strengths to challenge your negative beliefs. Channel, your inner sassy kid and talk back to that negative voice. This voice is the enemy.

It's the devil on your shoulder. So don't let it win. for part two of the assignment, download the worksheet called my committee. Identify your committee members. Then think of a decision you have to make. It could be as simple as which movie to go to.

Then by each committee members name write down what they would say you should do. Next write down what you decide Then, when you have a big decision to make, pull out the worksheet and go through the exercise. It will give you insight into why you make the decision you do, as well as build yourself trust. Of course, if you're under 21, and you're living in your parents house, you are not the chairman of the board when it comes to your parents. Your parents can Trump your decisions. But that doesn't mean you can't be clear about what your decisions are.

It reminds me of when I was teaching ninth grade civics and we had a mock legislative session. Some students played the part of the House of Representatives, and some were the Senate. They passed the bill and they sent it to the principal who vetoed the bill. The students were disappointed Of course, and they couldn't actually pass the bill over the principal's veto. For the same reason, a 16 year old can't make all the household decisions. But what my students learned was The process.

Same with you. By doing this assignment, you're learning the process for making your own decisions, which builds self love. Another factor adding to your self love is your relationships with other people. It's not easy to love yourself when you're all alone. Having alone time is great. That's different from being lonely.

Loneliness can lead to depression, and it's hard to love yourself when you're depressed. You need friends. But notice, I didn't say you need a lot of friends. Some people are happy with just one close friend. While some people need a lot of friends around them, and the difference lies in whether you're an introvert or an extrovert. introverts need downtime to re energize.

And extroverts need to socialize to re energize introverts introverted deep friendships with just one or two friends while it extroverts have more casual relationships with more people. introverts keep their thoughts to themselves and share only what they want to share. While extroverts rarely have an unspoken thought, why is this important to know? Our society seems to favor extraversion, leaving introverts to feel like second fiddle. This is so far from the truth. Some of my clients feel badly about themselves because of their introversion.

They don't truly understand the power of introverts. If you're unsure of where you fit on this scale, then you'll find this week's assignment helpful. Go to the website, human metrics comm and take their free test. You'll learn where you fit on the introversion extroversion scale, and you'll better understand your own friendship style. If you look at the CEOs of many large corporations in this country, you'll find introverts in charge. Fact is, the world needs both introverts and extroverts.

One final note, be careful about your choice of friends. Next time you are around someone, take an energy reading. Do you feel energized around this person? Or do you feel drained? Some people are uplifting, and some people deplete your energy. So pay attention.

You'll feel better about yourself when you're around people who energize you. Okay, here's your homework, go to human metrics, calm and take the free personality test. And to get the website address, download the worksheet that you'll find in the resources section. Now let's talk about negative thinking. Many people try to combat negative thoughts by thinking positive and that's a great strategy but you Can't avoid negative thoughts. Negative thoughts are your biological destiny.

They were programmed into us a survival mechanism. So the trick is to be aware of them without giving them centerstage. For example, what if most of your negative thoughts are scary fearful thoughts? You probably go straight to the worst case scenario. And that's not very empowering. So here's a strategy.

Next time you have a worst case scenario fantasy, instead of obsessing over it. Make a plan. If the worst did happen, what would you do? Once you've made the plan, both your mind and your body Calm down, and you can finally feel some peace because you've taken control. This is self love. What is your negative thoughts are about yourself.

D selfing is a term coined by Dr. Marie Bowen, the founder of systems therapy. D selfing is when you hide parts of yourself in order to fit in. Of course everyone wants to fit in, especially during the teenage years, when you're trying to figure out who you are. But when you d self, you're actually acting as if you're someone you're not in order to fit in. You forget that you're a unique individual with your own tastes, likes, dislikes, beliefs, talents, and opinions. But first, you have to claim your uniqueness.

You have to know what makes you you. And it's not always easy, though to be yourself. You may have limiting beliefs about yourself. Okay, where did these beliefs come from? Where did you get these beliefs? If you think you're a loser, Who said so?

Someone did or you wouldn't have that belief? Unless you are the one saying it to yourself. How many times would you guess you've called yourself a loser or another name 100 times thousand a million times. The only way to reverse this is to start focusing on your strengths instead of your weaknesses because what you focus on grows. But what do you do about those ugly little areas where you feel bad about yourself, don't fertilize them. Don't feed them.

Instead fertilize the winner parts of you. Your self confidence isn't one big glob in the pie chart Have you? There are a lot of parts of you. So slice up that pie in the pieces and you'll get a more realistic and accurate picture. For example, you may feel strong about yourself as a student or an employee, or an athlete or friend. Those are your areas of self confidence.

These are the areas you will to fertilize. These are the areas where you want to spend your time because your self confidence will only continue to grow. Whereas, if you choose to spend time worrying or dwelling on your weaknesses, you're wasting precious time you could be spending utilizing your strength. So do you see how important it is to know what your strengths are? Not knowing this is like having a car without tires. It's not going anywhere.

And as I've said, once you know who you are, play to your strengths, do what you can to improve your weaknesses. But don't obsess over them. If you're going to obsess, obsess on your strength, okay, here's your assignment. Look at some of the good things that you have in your life. Think of one thing and take the first thing that pops into your head. Now, imagine you don't have it anymore.

It's gone. How do you feel? If you're like most people, you probably took it for granted. Now that it's gone, you probably really miss it. So wouldn't it be nice to value the things you already have without having to lose them first. So again, look at your strength, your friends, your home, the things you love, the good things in your life and give thanks for these.

This is called gratitude. A lot of people keep gratitude journals. focusing your mind on what you're grateful for is the opposite of negative thinking. And it automatically puts you in an appreciative mood, rather than a depressed state of mind. You start to feel lucky, as opposed to feeling like a victim. So download the gratitude worksheet and keep track of your gratitude for the next week.

See if it helps your mindset. There's a lot of talk these days about life purpose. As a matter of fact, just this morning I read an article about how older people live longer when they have a purpose in life. Same with you. In general, you're happier when you have a reason to get out of bed in the morning, whether it's going to school, going to work, meeting friends at the gym, you have a reason to get going. As humans, we need this.

In his book Man's Search for Meaning. Viktor Frankl who was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp, credits having a sense of purpose as the reason he survived, while many around him were dying. So what is life purpose? one definition would be living your life on purpose, having goals instead of wandering aimlessly through life, as I said earlier, having a reason to get out of bed in the morning. So how do you know what your life purpose is? There are several questions to ask yourself into Determining what your life purpose may be.

And by the way, you can have more than one life purpose, and it can and probably will change and evolve over the years. The important thing is that you know what it is. So there are several questions to ask yourself, what are my strengths? Well, you already know that by this point in the course. What do I love to do? What makes me lose track of time when I'm doing it?

What makes me feel good about myself? What energizes me when I'm doing it? Think about these questions carefully because the answers are a big indicator of your life purpose. For many of my clients, helping others is at the top of their list when it comes to life purpose. From there they decide exactly who they want to help and how they want to help. You don't have to wait until you have a job to start helping people either small acts of kindness This count, your life purpose may have nothing to do with your job.

It has everything to do with your unique gifts and talents, and what you came into this life equipped to do. Most of all remember, it has to be something that makes you feel good no matter how large or small. So here's your assignment. Your final assignment in the course is to download the worksheet called my life purpose and answer the questions. Remember, you can have more than one life purpose. The important thing is to identify what it is.

Knowing this will make you happy and more productive, which will add to your you know what I'm going to say, self love. One final word, no one is perfect. We all have flaws. But loving yourself is a requirement, not a suggestion, a requirement for survival. Make one of your daily affirmations. I will take care of myself today.

Whatever that means to you just do it. That might be as simple as trying out one new behavior. And one new behavior might be all it takes to jumpstart your ability to love yourself. So now it's time to do the post is download the worksheet entitled post test. This way you can measure where you are now against how you felt about yourself at the beginning of the course. Change takes time, though.

So I hope you've given yourself at least 30 days to practice these new behaviors before you judge whether it's helping. If you're still feeling a lack of self love, take 30 minutes and go through the course one more time. But keep practicing these new behaviors because the more you practice, the more you're reinforcing these behaviors. So they become so automatic, you don't even have to think about it. Also, consider talking to a A professional life coach or a counselor. If you feel like you're too hard on yourself, you may just need a listening ear.

Bottom line self love is your birthright. So claim it. If you feel the course has been helpful to you, please tell your friends. I really enjoyed sharing my knowledge with you and I thank you for taking the course.