🌎 Self-Love in a strange new world 🌎

Most of us need encouragement and guidance to learn how to show up for ourselves.

One of the hardest, yet most rewarding tasks I find as a doctor, is that of selling people on themselves.

Self-Love, doing the things that serve our mind-body-spirit while allowing the self-sabotaging patterns to fall away, is difficult for many people.

Loving yourself is the same as healing yourself, and there are real, practical steps that all of us can take.

Today I’ll share with you tools that can make a difference to break through the subconscious programming of conditional emotions like having to earn our way into feelings of worthiness, love, and grace.

Before I share these tools of honoring your Self, if you missed last week’s blog on“The placebo-effect, can it take off the pounds? 🤩 Start with your mind.”, you can use this link, Here.

Let’s take a look at how to Live the Journey

💝👤💝

Culturally, the West has developed an overwhelming emphasis on productivity, competence, competition and human achievement. We're a little passionate and also a little nutty!

Most of our ancestors had to be a little crazy to jump on a boat to cross the Atlantic (in which survival and success were not guaranteed) and in doing so take a leap of faith and start over from scratch in a “New World“.

Despite having the basic tools for survival and more, we still seem to find all the reasons to become overwhelmed. We stretch ourselves too thin, putting our nervous system into a survival state of being, of surviving in our “advanced” new world.

Despite human advancements, we still actually have to work really hard to survive in a different way. What we put into our body - physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually - has now been shown to play a significant role in our overall health and wellness.

No matter what it is, people seem to find a way to make themselves look and sound busy, even if they aren’t. But as a result, they do something much worse – they say no to their true desires and emotions, reject the power of self-healing and rarely find time for themselves to contemplate and reach a state of peace and health.

Chronic inflammatory diseases and mental instability are at an all-time high these days, and show no signs of going away.

These are the thoughts that go through my head often, while holding a vision for a healthy and whole world where people honor their inner and outer environments. And so, because I refuse to retreat into a simpler life “off the grid”, I choose to continue to sell people on themselves through chiropractic, Functional Medicine, and holistic philosophy.

The trick is to prove to ourselves the truth of our potential, knowing that doing the work to break through the ignorance and subconscious conditioning is the greatest, worthwhile task.

Self-love is a cornerstone of healing the body and spirit. It involves accepting yourself with kindness and compassion, treating yourself with the same care you would offer a loved one. By cultivating self-love, you create a nurturing environment for healing and empower yourself to break free from self-destructive patterns.

It doesn’t have to be a race, because healing is a marathon. Each wellness-advancing decision after the next creates more harmony inside our life and the life we make for ourselves.

Healing is a continuous, lifelong journey. There is no fixed timeline, as everyone’s path is unique. Embrace the process, celebrate your progress, and remember that healing is not about reaching a destination but about evolving and becoming the best version of yourself.

We build on one healthy habit and then another.

We start to question the information we are being fed and do the research to make empowered, conscious decisions.

This is a vision of harmony, in which we can heal ourselves each day, each action, and moment at a time.

In this new world, it’s not enough to merely think positively. We need to create new ways of behaving in our subconscious mind, so that when it comes to decision time, we can flip the script and choose a better life.

We must make empowered and smart decisions.

When we become more conscious in this way, we become more self-aware, to generate more love for ourselves.

Self-Love and healing happens simultaneously, one step at a time.

So, if Self-Love and healing happen simultaneously, one step at a time, let’s take a look at what self-compassion means:

What causes a lack of self-compassion?

People who grew up in challenging backgrounds or experienced emotional abuse are less likely to have self-compassion than those who were raised in healthy environments. They have fear of negative emotions.

What is the first step in self-compassion?

Our first step in being compassionate to ourselves, is to acknowledge – with genuine kindness and caring – our suffering, our difficulties, our challenges; and just how tough and painful things can be.

Self-compassion or Self-kindness is a caring attitude towards the self in painful moments, rather than harsh self-criticism and self-degradation.

Is shame a lack of self-compassion?

Yes! Below are tools in how to transform the shame you may feel towards yourself, or experience you may have had in the past.

  1. Step 1: Understand “The Nature of Shame
    Shame is normal. Shame is the brain’s way of dealing with the threat of disconnection.

  2. Step 2: Label Shame
    Label shame for what it is: an emotion. Giving it a name helps you get some distance between you and the emotion.

  3. Step 3: Replace Judgement With Curiosity
    Try to hold your experience of shame with curiosity rather than judgment. Curiosity about your emotions can hep you shift into a more caring and understanding perspective.

  4. Step 4: Acknowledge your Inner Critic
    It’s helpful to be aware that your inner critic often likes to amplify your shame. Remind your inner critic that you are a work in progress, trying to navigate the best you can.

  5. Step 5: Practice What is Helpful, Not Harmful
    Try to speak to yourself like you would a friend. Ask yourself what actions would be helpful for recovering from this experience, rather than actions that might perpetuate it. If you are working on correcting an action, offer yourself some constructive correction rather than shaming self-attack.

Why do I resist being compassionate with myself?

A common experience is that you find it relatively easy to be compassionate toward others, but impossible to direct compassion toward yourself. This can often be because of a difficult relationship you have with yourself - perhaps you tend to be blaming, judgmental, harsh, or self-critical. Remember, you are doing your best and give yourself credit for the things you do right. Don’t beat yourself up!

What makes someone open-hearted?

Being open-hearted and fully receptive to others requires three things. It is necessary to get vulnerable, get real, and show gratitude. These three things lead to an open heart.

What you hold in your heart can determine how your day goes, and how your life unfolds.

What are some steps to help open your heart and allow your body to start healing?

  1. Clear your clutter. The first rule in emotional health is to clear stuff from your environment that doesn’t serve you any more. What goes on outside of you can reflect what’s going on inside. Get rid of what you don’t need. Cherish what you do. Know the difference between the two. Clearing out your stuff means you create space for new experiences and opportunities to enter.

  2. Stop expecting people to anticipate your every need. This is often a key reason why people get stuck: they expect people around them to pick up on cues and take care of them. Taking responsibility for our own needs is personally empowering.

  3. Make the first step. This links to step 2. Once you revise your expectations, you may feel freer to be free. In your car, let the other car pass. In your work life, be more patient with colleagues. In your personal life, invite friends out rather than waiting for others to approach you. Stop needing people to like you. Shift your focus from needing to giving. Then stand back and observe the opportunities that life offers you as a result.

  4. Count your blessings. Think about all the awesome stuff you have in your life, rather than counting out your woes. A way to do this is by keeping a gratitude journal. Take five minutes at the end of every day to list the five things you feel grateful for. The benefit of doing this, over time, will help you to anticipate blessings over the days.

  5. Let go of past hurts. This can be a tricky one. A way of working this through is to write a letter to the person who’s hurt you, saying everything you need to get off your chest. Just DON’T SEND THE LETTER! Getting your feelings out, without hurting anyone else, can be a way to open your heart.

  6. Be the change you want to see in the world. Often we want the people in our lives to change and wake up to fulfilling our needs. The secret to this is changing the part of you that is resentful and expectant. Flick a switch in you, and a switch will flick in your world.

THE BOTTOM LINE

“In other words, the mind can HEAL you, or KILL you. With toxic thoughts, we make ourselves ill. With positive thoughts, we can heal ourselves!”

“By cultivating self-love, you create a nurturing environment for healing, and empower yourself to break free from self-destructive patterns.”

“Self-Love and healing happen simultaneously, one step at a time.”

No matter what it is, people seem to find a way to make themselves look and sound busy, even if they aren’t. But as a result, they do something much worse – they say no to their true desires and emotions, reject the power of self-healing and rarely find time for themselves to contemplate and reach a state of peace and health.

Self-love is a cornerstone of healing the body and spirit. It involves accepting yourself with kindness and compassion, treating yourself with the same care you would offer a loved one. By cultivating self-love, you create a nurturing environment for healing and empower yourself to break free from self-destructive patterns.

Healing is a continuous, lifelong journey. There is no fixed timeline, as everyone’s path is unique. Embrace the process, celebrate your progress, and remember that healing is not about reaching a destination but about evolving and becoming the best version of yourself.

As always, if you’d like to talk more about what we covered in my newsletter today, make an appointment with me using the link:HERE.

Or, you can give me a call at (973) 210-3838

I want to hear from you! What questions or insights do you have about Selling people on themselves and Self-love? Did you find this newsletter helpful?

Share your thoughts in the comments on our

Facebook and Instagram!

We bring tools such as these to you, our patients, by using proven cutting-edge therapies to extend the health-span, life-span and years of health for everyone (no matter their age)!

* * * * * *

Dr Derek Ferguson