032: Is Self-Love Selfish?

Do you ever struggle with self-love practices because you feel like it’s selfish? Or maybe you feel like it’s “cheesy” to practice self-love...
In this episode, we’re debunking the myth that self-love is selfish. I am talking about why you need to work on self-love not just for yourself but for the sake of your loved ones too.
You’ll hear my 6 tips for learning to love yourself better and to help you get started on your own journey to self-love.
What you’ll find in this episode:
A segment on what I’m currently creating
Why you should embrace the cheese
A powerful mantra I encourage you to adopt
6 tips for loving yourself better
Read the transcript of the episode below:
I'm hoping that by this point, we can sort of agree that hating ourselves isn't exactly helpful, but loving ourselves might still be kind of a challenge for some of us. This is episode 32: is self-love selfish?
Welcome to the committed to create podcast. I'm Lisa Funk, and I am so excited to hang out with you here. As we talk about the power of creating with our hands and our minds, I like to keep it real, remind you that you are not alone and share specific ways that creativity and mindfulness can help us live even more meaningful and joyful lives. I am so glad that you're here.
Hello, and welcome back to the podcast. This is committed to create. You guys, I dreamt about this podcast for so long before starting it. And while I could be sad that it took me so long, I also am just so thrilled that I ended up doing it. So all those dreams that you have in the back of your mind, those things that you think about, you might think that you've waited too long or that it's too late.
And, just want to tell ya it's not too late. And that you're going to be glad, you're going to be glad one day that you're going to do it. And what's the worst that can happen. What if you don't like it? That's fine. What if you end up not sticking with it? It's fine. You know what I mean? Like with this podcast, it's like, I totally enjoy it and I will keep doing it as long as I want to.
And then if I come to a point where I don't want to do it anymore, I can stop. I don't know. I think that sometimes we just believe that we're signing up for something and we're not going to be able to stop and we might be stuck. And I don't know, we come up with a lot of funny ideas. I tell ya. But the truth is that we can just start, we can just follow those little dreams that we have, and this podcast is one of them.
So thank you for being here. I love you guys. I love hearing from you. It makes my day. So thank you for that. You know who you are, Nancy. Some of you are so sweet to leave reviews and messages and let me know that you're listening and what you're thinking. It helps me so much. 
So we are at the beginning of February, happy February. I think this is going to be a good month. I'm just saying. We're going to be talking about love. I know some people are not super into Valentine's Day, but. That's okay. I decided to make Valentine's Day whatever I wanted it to be. So I don't think it needs to be a day of like huge expectations that don't get met and, you know, feeling sad about that.
I think that it can be whenever we want it to be. And then we create that. That is the message of this podcast is that we can create what we want. It's just so easy to think that things should happen a certain way or that people should do things for us. And it doesn't always happen that way. And so it's nice to take that power back the power to create.
And today we're going to be talking about creating self-love and whether or not that's selfish and some of the challenges that come with that. But before we get started with today's topic, I wanted to do a segment currently creating.
I know I've been doing this segment a lot lately because I've been creating a lot and it feels so good. I can't tell you how nice it feels to prioritize my creativity just even more lately. And I realize that it really doesn't take that much time. Most of us are taking a moment during the day to sit down, hopefully and relax for a minute.
And a lot of us normally grab our phones during that time and maybe scroll or check in or whatever. And I'm never going to throw shade on that because I do it too. And I don't think that there's anything wrong with it, but I do know that a lot of us want to spend more time creating and sometimes our brains tell us the lie that we don't have time.
But we actually do have time. And I actually have a whole podcast episode about this. It is episode 11, it's called making time to create. So if you are feeling like you don't have time to create, go listen to episode 11, it goes way deeper into this topic. But lately for me, I. I have been creating lots of different ways.
I know I've talked about many of them here. One of them is embroidery, which is now combining my love of lettering and this new found love of embroidery because I lettered, guess what word? The word "love" onto a beautiful floral wreath design. I put the word love in the middle. The pattern that I got is a free pattern from the DMC website.
It's like the thread, the embroidery floss that I'm been buying. They have a bunch of free patterns and they don't give like a ton, ton, ton of instruction. So you kind of have to figure it out. But I really liked this pattern and it had "love" in the middle, but it was just a font, which is totally fine.
And I decided to do my own lettering. So for those of you letters out there and you try something else, there are so many ways to use lettering in so many different hobbies, cake decorators, cookie decorators. They use lettering all the time. People that are into planners and planning, planner stuff, and scrap brokers, they use lettering all the time.
People that make signs. When I say people that do these things, I don't mean just as a business. I'm talking about people that like making, you know, posters. I have been seeing lettering so many places lately. I am thinking about starting to share a little bit more on Instagram when I see lettering in the wild, because it's so fun.
I was just getting some groceries at Trader Joe's the other day. And if you have a Trader Joe's near you or you've been before, you probably know that they hand letter all of their signs, all of their little place cards, name cards for all of their products. And they have like full time, at least one person, maybe more, I don't know, letterers that do all of their signs and it's so fun. They're beautiful. They're seriously, super talented. If you are a letterer for Trader Joe's good job. That's a lot of work and it's so fun. 
So anyway, I love seeing it and it's been fun for me to use it in my new found love of embroidery. And so lettering is fine. That's not the challenging part for me at this point. I used my heat erasable pen. Have you guys, I hope you're following me on Instagram because I've been sharing so much of my little embroidery journey and they have these things, these pens called Brechtian they're pilot pens, and people use them because they're erasable. So you can use the friction of the eraser to erase the pen for like taking notes or something.
But it also works if you just get it hot, so you can use pen on the fabric and then just use a hot blow dryer entity races, the pen. So I've been using these pens to draw the embroidery patterns on the fabric. And then I can just use the blow dryer when I'm done to erase the lines, because without a doubt, even though I embroider on top of the design, the pen marks are always showing at the end, but I can just get my handy-dandy blow dryer and erase them all. It is like magic. 
I will link to that pen in the show notes because I think everyone should have one, even just for a magic trick where you can write something on a piece of paper and then use the blow dryer and show your kids. If you want it to come back, you can put it in the freezer.
But for the most part, most of us aren't going to be putting our papers or our embroidery in the freezer. If you live in a very cold place, maybe if you put it out in like the freezing cold car or something like that, the ink would come back. Just FYI. Okay. My point is. I'm getting to it. I've been creating this embroidery and I was going to do the lettering part.
It's my last part of my little wreath that says love. So it's perfectly aligned with the podcast topics for this month. And I tried doing a satin stitch and it was not working. I did a whole bunch of it and I was just like, oh my gosh, this just isn't looking right at all. And I just didn't like it at all, but that's okay.
So I decided. I'm going to take it out. And I actually messaged someone on Instagram, her name's Ashley. She does embroidery. Instagram is Nell and Joe crafts. I know I've sent a bunch of you over there to learn from her too. And she recommended that I try out the brick stitch instead of the  satin stitch and oh my gosh, it worked so much better.
So. I am sharing my progress every time that I work on my, this embroidery design. So if you're interested in seeing it head over to hand lettered design on Instagram and check it out. 
But the thing is I didn't freak out when it didn't work. I didn't say, oh my gosh, I am so bad at this. I shouldn't do this. Why did I even try this? I knew I wouldn't be good at it. No. I just said, oh, that didn't work. Alright. Let's take that out. I didn't freak out and get mad and frustrated and rip the whole thing up and tell myself that I was a terrible person. I just decided to try something else. And I thought I might not love the next one that I try and that's okay. I can try something else. And I'm all about doing things imperfectly and enjoying the imperfect look of hand lettering or hand embroidery. I mean, that is the beauty of hand embroidery to me is that it's so handmade. And you can tell that it was done by a person and not a machine. 
That's the same thing with lettering for me. I love that it's not a font. It's not something that you printed off. You can tell that there are maybe some, a little bit of shakiness in the stroke, but it was done by hand and with love. And I just love that. So I'm all about embracing those imperfections, but the first stitch just really was not working at all.
And so I wanted something else and that's fine. And I just decided I'm just going to try until I figure, figure out something that works because I'm in no rush. I'm in no rush to figure this out or to have this finished. This is for fun. You guys, we're creating for fun. This is supposed to be enjoyable! So just watch your brain, watch what's happening. And when your brain says, oh my gosh, you're so bad at this. You shouldn't have tried this and we should quit. You can just say, I know you're trying to keep me safe, but everything's going to be just fine. I can do things and enjoy things, even if I don't think I'm good at them. 
Isn't that amazing? We can do things, even if we don't think we're the best at it. Or even if we don't feel like it's comes naturally to us, we can still do things and enjoy things that we're not good at. So. Awesome. 
Anyway, those are just some thoughts from what I have been currently creating. 
Alright, let's get into the topic for today, which is, is self-love selfish? 
So self hate has been a motivator for a lot of us for a long time. I know that because you and I we're kindred spirits here and we just, for some reason have been really good at beating ourselves up and kind of being a little bit mean to ourselves. Because we thought maybe that was the right thing to do, or maybe that was going to whip us into shape or get us to do things better or become better, and just has not really worked.
Do you guys, have you noticed? Hating yourself isn't working. So then it seems that the obvious choice would be to love yourself. Right. Right. Except that there's a little bit of challenge with that too. And let's talk about, people kind of make fun of it. Maybe you make fun of it. Maybe I have made fun of it.
Sometimes people make fun of others who are being confident. They call them out as being arrogant or conceded or full of themselves when they're trying to show love for themselves. They think it's cheesy. They think it's too much. You guys, I am here to talk about all of the cheesy things and how they really are amazing. They really are life-changing they really are very helpful. 
So when you think to yourself, um, that seems kind of cheesy, maybe what? That be a little bit of like a ding, ding, ding, sometimes those cheesy things really do work. It's okay. It's okay to embrace the cheese because something like self-love is one of those things you may have heard people talk about it. You think, oh geez, here we go. This sounds like a little much, and it might sound like that, but. Let's get real, the self hate and the shame is not helping. 
Okay. So I'm going to talk about some real practical steps to self-love that I believe are not selfish. Because hating ourselves, isn't working that doubt the insecurity, the underestimating, it isn't helping us to reach our potential. It isn't helping us to live with joy. And also when I'm not loving myself, I end up focusing way more on myself. I'm telling you the truth for years when I beat myself up, I was thinking about myself so much about how flawed I was about how imperfect I was about how people probably didn't like me or that I was doing things wrong on and on and on.
I was not able to show up for others because I was so focused on what was wrong with me. 
So even though self-love might sound cheesy to you, I'm telling you the self hate isn't working. When we learn how to truly love ourselves, we can experience joy on a whole new level. 
We can't control other people. We can't make them love us or appreciate us, or validate us the way that we might feel that we need in order to feel whole that has to come from within. And the cool thing is that we have the power, we have the control and the power to create that love for ourselves, which is the best news ever, because then we don't have to try to tell other people that they need to do that.
Now I'm not saying it's okay for other people to be hurtful or harmful to us. No way. But I'm just saying that self-love doesn't need to be embarrassing. It doesn't need to be embarrassing to put ourselves in a position where we say I love and appreciate myself. And it's important to me. So this month, as I'm talking about love in different ways, Uh, obviously today's self-love.
I want to reference the Daily Mindful Lettering Book that I recently have come out with. It's all about living with love, and it has 30 days of lettering affirmations that are all based in love, and some of them are based in self love and compassion, love for others and accepting love. It's really powerful.
And I wanted to focus each podcast episode this month on one of the affirmations from that book. And the one that I wanted to focus today's podcast episode on is the affirmation "I love and accept myself." This is one of the most powerful mantras that I use in my life. And I  want to encourage you to adopt it, whether you're lettering it like I do, and that I think is super powerful, or you're just saying it to yourself, which I also recommend try it. Just, I know it's cheesy, but it really does make a difference because for so long, so many of us have believed that we shouldn't accept ourselves, that we should be better, that we should wait and that we should perfect ourselves and that we should meet some crazy perfect criteria. And that we should check all the check boxes on the checklist first, before we get anywhere close to accepting who we are, and I've just found that it doesn't work that way. And that the more that I love and accept myself, the more motivated I am to grow. And progress. All right. So here we go.
I've got some tips for loving yourself better and just stick with me because the hating isn't working. Just remind yourself the self hate isn't working. So maybe I'll give this a try. All right. 
The first is to get to know yourself and, for so many of us, we think that we should be different, that we should be like someone else.
Maybe we grew up with some ideal of a bunch of qualities that we were supposed to have or something that we're supposed to work toward. And of course, it's great to learn and grow, but what if we just allowed ourselves to get to know ourselves right now? How we are or how we've maybe always been. I think that we are born with certain personalities and some of those are shaped through time.
That's okay. We can still get to know who we are, what we like, what we don't like. We can get to know our emotions and how they feel, what our natural reactions are to things. It might sound silly, but for so many of us, we don't even pay attention to how we feel in certain situations, because we're so focused on how we're supposed to react, how we're supposed to feel, instead of saying, wait, how does it feel when that happens? Do I allow that emotion? And I get to know that emotion and how that feels. 
This is similar to how it is when we get to know anyone else, imagine someone new moves into your neighborhood and you want to get to know them or imagine little kids when they get to know each other. 
My cute daughter has been writing letters to her friend who lives in New York City. And I love the questions that they ask each other. You know, what do you like doing for fun? What's your favorite thing to eat? What's your favorite color? And, can you answer those things? Do you know when someone asks you, what do you like to do for fun? What's your favorite color? What's your favorite song?
What's your favorite movie? And I'm going to saying you have to have one favorite thing that for so many of us, we really value taking care of other people. Maybe we don't see that choice. We feel like it's the only option is to pour everything we've got into everybody else. We forget that we're even a person.
And we don't even know what we like because we've kind of lost ourselves a little bit. And I think that it can be really powerful to get to know ourselves just like we would a new friend and find out what it is that lights us up, what it is that we enjoy and how we feel. 
And this may include good things and challenging things. For me this last year, I've gotten a little bit more into the Enneagram, which is a personality typing system. And I just have to tell ya, it has really helped me to get to know myself better, and it shows you the best and the worst in yourself, which can be challenging at first, because some of us don't want to see the things that we do that are maybe not the things we're most proud of, but.
When we can take away the judgment and the shame, it's just really a way to understand ourselves better and find ways to meet our needs so that we don't necessarily have to turn to some of the tactics we've maybe used in the past that we may not be necessarily super proud of. I am not saying that everyone needs to go do the Enneagram, but if you feel kind of disconnected from yourself and you want to change that, I do think that trying a personality test, whether it's the Enneagram or, you know, I've also done StrengthsFinder, things like that.
I think sometimes that can be helpful to just do a little bit more self exploration. I resisted personality tests for a long time, because I didn't like the idea of putting myself in a box. And I still don't think that it's necessarily helpful to, you know, limit ourselves or use it as an excuse, like, oh, well, that's just because you know, I'm this or that.
It's just a way for us to really get to know ourselves better and know what our needs are and what are we seeking out when we're doing certain things? What is that kind of core desire and how can we take better care of ourselves? 
For me, I realized that I really have been a people pleaser through so much of my life and that I was saying yes to a lot of things and really just trying to be super helpful all the time, because I saw that as a way of finding love and acceptance.
And for me, for a long time, I needed to really learn how to say no. And it was hard at first. And then I got really good at it. So I'm not saying I'm perfect at it, but it kind of had to become my default first for a while because. I didn't know how to say no. And I had to learn and I had to realize that every time I was saying yes to something else, I was saying no to myself and my family.
I was saying no to something every time I was saying yes to other people in order for them to be happy. And it wasn't necessarily super healthy for me. So. I learned that about myself and I was able to work on learning to say no. And I will say that I think the pendulum kind of swung to the other direction for a little while where I kind of had to just take that time for self preservation and learning to say no.
And taking care of myself until I got back to where the pendulum could swing more to the middle. And I could say, I really do love helping and serving. And now I'm at a place where I can evaluate and say, you know what, that's something I really want to do, but it's because I really want to do it. And I feel happy about it.
And I'm not going to say yes, and then be resentful later, which I'm here to admit I'm here on this podcast to admit all the things that. Some of us might be embarrassed to admit, but I would sometimes say yes to things and then, you know, maybe feel a little bit resentful or annoyed about it or whatever.
But I felt like I had to say yes or I had to do it. And it's like, no, we don't have to say yes and we can just choose to do the things that we really want to do. And so it helped me to get to know myself and see what those kinds of reactions and patterns were and how I wanted to do a better job of being honest with myself and with others and how to take care of myself so that I could then also serve and help and do things from a place of love. That felt really good. And not like in the past sometimes maybe felt like a martyr when I would say yes to everything, and then, oh man, I'm just so busy and so overwhelmed. And it's like, no, I don't have to say yes to anything. And so it's a really powerful thing to learn how to do.
I'm just saying, if you haven't already learned how to say no, I could probably do a whole podcasts on that. I could probably do a whole course on that. Learning how to say no, we do that anyway. It can take a year, you know, of your life to like, not the full year to do it, but it can take a long time to kind of practice learning how to say no, and you can do it with love and you can really be gracious.
And the way that you say no, because you're really saying yes to something else. All right, this is, that was little bit longer than I had planned on, but you know, that's what we're doing here. We're having a conversation and I'm sharing my heart with you. 
So number two is to accept ourselves. So perfection is not part of this conversation. Society tells us that we should always be working towards some version of perfection and, the truth is that nobody is, and no one is positive all the time. No one is doing things right all the time. And yet we somehow think that we should be, and we beat ourselves up for not being, and it's just silly.
There's just good things and hard things in everyone, and it's just part of life. And so accepting ourselves and loving ourselves right now, as we are, is one of the most powerful things that you can do. I am 100% serious. This is so powerful to accept yourself right now. Not later, once you figured everything out. News Alert: I don't know that that ever happens, right now with all of your imperfections, with all the things that you struggle with and with all the amazing things about you and all of your gifts and talents to loving and accepting yourself right now is so powerful. 
Number three is to take care of yourself.
We have this stigma of being afraid of looking selfish and that's like the worst thing someone could say about me is, oh my gosh, she's so selfish. First of all, if you really struggle with what other people think that is so normal. I mean, it's probably one of the most normal things, but it's really challenging to kind of move past that, to take care of ourselves sometimes. I have a whole episode on that, episode 16, what other people think, and it can be challenging to do what you really feel you need to do, because you're worried about what other people are going to say. And I just got to tell you, they're not living your life. They're not struggling with your problems.
And so you've got to take care of yourself no matter what they think. They might think that you're selfish. If they see you going from people pleasing and doing everything for everyone else all the time, and all of a sudden, you take time to eat a meal, sitting down without running around, getting everyone else's stuff taken care of or, I'm not saying that they would think that, but if you happen to be someone who's always serving and always helping, if you then go to where you're trying to take really good care of yourself, it might look selfish to someone else. I don't think it should, but, it doesn't matter. Someone might say you're selfish, even if you're not doing any of those things, people can say whatever they want.
And if we let that affect us so much, we're never going to be happy because we're always going to be trying to chase some moving goalpost of what other people think is acceptable. So take care of yourself. 
And again, this doesn't mean going for spot A's every week, although there's nothing wrong with that either. But this might mean making sure you get enough sleep, making sure you get fueled and getting food that feels good and that you move your body. If that feels good to you. And that you'd have some time to, you know, breathe. Yeah. And whatever it is that really feels like it's nourishing for you. 
And I'm not saying that you can only do the basic things. You don't deserve to have fun either. No, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying YOU get to decide what taking care of you looks like. 
Number four is evaluate your self talk. We need to normalize being kind and celebratory about ourselves. Again, people might think that this sounds selfish, but I am a words of affirmation person, if you've done the love languages? I love words of affirmation. And I can sit there and be upset that other people aren't validating me and affirming me, or I can just give those words of affirmation to myself. 
This is what might sound weird. But when I say, oh my gosh, I am so amazing. I can't believe I just did that. Look what I did. Let me tell you what I did today. I did this and that and whatever that might be strange at first, or it might sound funny to somebody else. Who cares! Okay. 
Because let me tell you, what's not helping the self-talk that's like, oh my gosh, I can't do anything. Right. What's wrong with me? That's what is normally taking up a lot of our brain space. And it's so harmful that yeah, you might feel like it's swinging a little bit the other way to celebrate your self or your wins, but it's not, and we need to normalize it. We need to be okay with encouraging ourselves and being happy for ourselves and celebrating. 
And I know my kids kind of tease sometimes, cause I'll be like, oh my gosh, look at me. Look at what I did is this so great. And I want them to be able to do that for themselves too, because when we just expect that only to come from other people are going to be disappointed and it's going to be hard. I speak from experience because I definitely have wanted words of affirmation from other people. And believe me, I still ask for it. I still love it. I'm not saying that now I never care what anyone else says. No, I still do, but why can't I be nice to myself? Why can't I celebrate when I do something great? Why can't I comfort myself self when things are hard? Why can't I say? Yeah, it's okay. This is really hard. Yes. This is really sad. So you need to feel sad instead of saying, gosh, why am I sad? I have so much to be grateful for. I shouldn't feel sad. No, we're not doing that. We are going to be kind to ourselves and we're going to watch that self-talk that is part of self-love, a huge part of self-love. 
Number five does kind of relate to what I was just talking about. But number five is just surround yourself with people who love and accept you. And nobody's perfect. I'm not saying that they're going to perfectly love and accept you all the time, but this is huge. This is not something that you may be able to completely control because sometimes we have family members that might be kind of judgemental of us.
Maybe they kind of tear us down a little bit, but some times we have a choice. Sometimes it might be somebody on social media might be somebody online. It might be, you know, that person that we just, for some reason have felt like we should spend more time with. But when we're with them, we feel rotten. We feel awful. 
We are so affected by the people that we spend time with, in-person online in our minds. Take stock of what voices you are allowing into your heart. It affects how you feel so deeply. 
And this might mean maybe drawing some boundaries with somebody in your life, but it also might mean just spending more time with the people that really bring you up and that love you and accept you. Or it might be adding people into your life that are going to be a positive influence, like possibly a therapist or a life coach. 
If you have found that you really are struggling with the negative self-talk or treating yourself well, if this is really a struggle for you, or if you have any other things going on, like maybe some other issues that you've been trying to deal with some tough relationship problems or trauma or anything, depression, anxiety. I am such a huge believer in getting help therapy, life, coaching, medication, whatever you need, you do it. This is part of loving yourself and taking care of yourself.
It really helps me to imagine my relationship with myself like a relationship that I would have with someone else. Would I ever talk to someone else like that? Would I ever tell someone else that their needs didn't matter and that they should wait or that they weren't acceptable until they had checked everything off on some impossible checklist? No. 
So, I just want you to really pay attention to the people that you are surrounding yourself and what voices you're allowing to really come into your heart and make sure that they are loving and accepting the best you can. Again, I know that some of us, you know, you might have somebody that you're like, I can't exactly cut ties with them, but you can pay attention to how much of what they're saying you're allowing in, and try to counteract that with adding in more love and acceptance. And it might be with another person or it might just be with another type of input, like podcast or book or something like that as well. 
 My last tip for you is to identify your passions and interests and follow them.
This is a great way to get to know yourself and to love yourself. It's part of honoring yourself. I think that we have sometimes glorified the people who sacrifice everything about themselves and everything that they might want or like in order to take care of everyone else. And. I am not dogging on people who are loving and serving. I am too. I think it's great. I've also been on the other end of that, where I've done that to the extreme, where I forget myself, I've lost myself. And I've gotten really depressed from that. If you don't, if that's where you're the happiest, then keep doing it. You do what's working; stick with what's working.
I am not here to prescribe any new type of checklist for you. That is for sure. But I just am saying, have you noticed that in trying to completely forget yourself and sacrifice everything, that maybe it hasn't quite worked? Maybe you aren't quite feeling like you can continue to do that? For me, I completely burnt out and dried it out and felt like, I can't even give an ounce of anything.
I was not in a good place. And I had to take care of myself and fill my own cup in order to then serve and fill others. So instead of trying to just sacrifice everything self-sacrifice, it's okay for us to see what we're interested in and passionate about and to follow that it does not take anything away from my kids or my marriage for me to follow my interests.
It has only been better. They see me doing what I love, they join me in doing what I love. I have started this embroidery, every single one of my kids, except for my toddler, have all been doing it with me. How fun is that? 
And if I would have said no, no, no, that's selfish for me to get the supplies to try embroidery. I'm just gonna not do that. None of my kids would have seen it and said, oh, I want to try that too. It has been so fun for us to do it together. I've made a design for my kids. I want to do one for all of them. Actually, my long-term goal, I know I've mentioned it before, but my long-term goal with embroidery is to make stockings for each of my kids for Christmas stockings.
And for me and my husband, I just think that would be so fun. I grew up with the most beautiful needlepoint stockings, and I thought I really want to make those for my kids, which is why I wanted to learn embroidery. And here we are now, I just love embroidery. In and of itself, but it hasn't taken anything away from them. It's only added to them and I want them to feel permission to follow their interests. 
And not only while they're kids, but as adults too, I've mentioned this before, but it seems like we really encourage kids to be creative and to explore their interests. While they're kids, we signed them up for everything.
We buy them a bunch of supplies. We want them to be creative. And then what happens at what point do we decide? Well, now you're an adult. So your interests don't matter. Now you need to self-sacrifice for your kids and everybody around you. I don't think it needs to be that way, but a lot of us somehow have done that.
And I really think that we can show them that even as adults, we can continue to have hobbies. We can continue to fall things that we love. Now, am I saying, forget your family, you know, leave all the time, neglect them for your own interests? No, of course. I'm not saying that. I don't think any of us are even close to neglecting our kids and what they need, but you know what, they're also resilient and they can be independent. 
I've just been realizing, oh my gosh, I've been doing a lot of things for my kids that they could really do for themselves. And that it would be good for them. And they are pretty independent already. I'm like, man, they're even more things that they could learn how to do. And it makes them feel confident and independent to learn how to do those things.
And so following your interests and your passion is only going to bless those around you. I can't imagine telling someone that I love that they shouldn't follow something that they want to do. I can't imagine saying, nah, don't do that. You know what I mean? You might have something in your mind that you've been thinking, I think that would be fun. I kind of want to try that. Can you imagine someone being like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Don't do that. That's selfish. Like, no, you should try it. You should do it. Your creativity helps you to connect with yourself and to express yourself. It is a beautiful form of self-love. 
Now I want you to be patient through this because the negativity still does surface. We are human. Our brains have a lot of practice in doing the things that's been doing and thinking the thoughts that it's been thinking. And that's okay, it's going to come up, but we are committed to loving and caring for ourselves. So that we can love and care for others as well. And it will help you love others more easily.
You won't feel resentful or bitter or jealous. And I, again, speak from experience. I know what it feels like to feel like I am not allowed to, and this isn't something someone else ever told me. I just felt that in myself, like, oh, is it wrong for me to have a hobby or to follow my own interest as well?
And. I would sometimes end up feeling a little bit resentful because I just spent all my time and energy cleaning and cooking and doing things around the house and not allowing for my own creativity and interests as well. And there are just so many ways for us to take better care of ourselves. And so I hope that you will feel more like a whole person with more love to give, as you love yourself.
Do not forget to have fun doing this. If you are interested in kind of internalizing more of this and using some of these affirmations and mantras to help with your self talk and to lead you down a road where you can feel more whole, and also have that moment for creativity in your day, I highly recommend checking out our Daily Mindful Lettering guide called living With Love. It's a pink book and it's perfect for this month. Maybe you want to get a little gift for yourself for Valentine's day. You know me, I'm all about getting that gift for yourself. Not waiting for someone else or expecting someone else to know what you want, but getting that gift it's like therapy.
It's like a little bit of therapy. Okay. Therapy is really expensive. And this is not, it's something that you can learn and enjoy, and just have a little bit of me time. The beauty is you don't even have to be by yourself to have this me-time you can do it right along your kids that are coloring or doing their homework or drawing, you can get out your own stuff. And have a moment. So I'll link to that in the show notes as well. 
I'm so grateful for you all. I love chatting with you. I hope that you will take some of this to heart, even if it seems kind of cheesy, or even if you have some preconceived notions about self-love being selfish.
I hope that you can see that it really is the path to feeling whole and being able to then also take better care of everyone else around you. So. Thanks for being here. Thanks for your reviews and everything. And I look forward to talking to you again next week. .
Links:
011: Making Time to Create
PILOT FriXion Pens
Nell and Jo Crafts Instagram
Daily Mindful Lettering Book
The Enneagram
024: Living with Love
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032: Is Self-Love Selfish?

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046: Removing the Pressure

045: Creative Constraint
