Kay:
Hey, Questers welcome back. It’s Wednesday, April 21st and this is episode 338. We have a quote for you today from one of the OGs of motivation Mr. Les Brown.
Shi:
Les tells us, “Love yourself unconditionally, just as you love those closest to you, despite their faults.”
Kay:
I love you despite your faults.
Shi:
Thank you.
Kay:
Not that you have many because, you guys, Shila is kind of perfect.
Shi:
No way, far from perfect, but thank you for the unconditional love and thank you to Les for this quote about unconditional love, because he’s telling us to apply it to ourselves and this concept is likely not new to you, but it is worth reminding you because we are often our worst critic.
Kay:
Now, unconditional love is such a fluffy, big concept that oftentimes I feel like the true meaning of it can get lost. So, I just want to bring in here that really unconditional love means love without condition aka no rules. Love without rules. When you are allowing yourself the gift of love to yourself or to others without contingencies. Do you love yourself, even though you didn’t check the box on the list today? Do you love yourself even though you may be messed up in that meeting last week? Do you love yourself, even though you did everything right, and you still maybe feel a little funky on the inside? That sometimes happens. So, loving yourself without rules is really what comes down to unconditional love.
Shi:
And he tells us just as you love those closest to you, despite their faults. When we think about this, think about when somebody has missed a deadline or didn’t do their chores or let you down in some way or let themselves down and they come to you and say, oh my gosh, I’m so sorry. I messed that up. I can’t believe it. Most of us go to a place of compassion, pretty dang quickly and we say, it’s okay. It happens to everyone. It’s completely understandable and you are a very reliable person. This is a one-off and it’s no worries. Hey, we get better together, and let’s progress over perfection. We have all these things that we say to others. But man, when it’s yourself that messes up, sometimes violating those conditions means we cut off the left from ourselves and that’s one of the worst things we could do.
Kay:
Well, let’s take this concept back a few thousand years and talk about what the Bible says about love. We all know that old saying from the Bible, “Love is patient, love is kind…” But that verse goes on to say a lot about what love is not. It’s not jealous. It’s not blah, it’s not this it’s not bad. But at the very end, there is such a powerful sentence in this particular verse where the Bible says that love keeps no record of wrongs. There’s no ledger that, that love is sitting against saying, well, you did this bad, or you did this good or whatever that is. When you have unconditional love for yourself, it means you’re taking whatever ledger you might’ve been keeping and saying one point for Kay minus one point for Shila and throwing that stuff out the window.
Shi:
Burn it to the ground, the ledger. I love that. It keeps no record of wrongs. Boy, that is so much easier said than done, but we go to the Bible for great wisdom, just like this, and to remind ourselves how important these simple concepts are to our internal experience and fulfillment and joy, which is really what we’re all after. But we can shoot ourselves in the proverbial foot by not unconditionally loving ourselves or putting so many conditions on our love that we’re unable to feel it and when we don’t feel it, we lose confidence. We lose shakiness. The voice in our head continues to point out the things that we did wrong which leads us down this path of not feeling great, or maybe even self-sabotage or feeling imposter syndrome, all kinds of different things. So, as a fellow scorekeeper, I can tell you…
Kay:
That’s a pretty thick ledger.
Shi:
My ledger is very thick and then I know internally I’ve for a long time kept scoring. Kay knows as my partner in life that my journey with this, it’s been a focus of mine to try and get rid of that scorebook and not rely so much on the ledger. So, if this is you and you’re feeling that I’m with you and we’ll work on it together.
Kay:
Well, let’s just take it and we all have to work on this self-love because unconditionality is really difficult and I think probably Buddha and Jesus are the only peeps who have achieved it, maybe Mohammed, you know.
Shi:
Yeah.
Kay:
Alright. So, Les Brown tells us, “Love yourself unconditionally, just as you love those closest to you despite their faults.”
Shi:
Alright. It’s Wednesday. So, you know that means we’re going to make you work out just a little bit.
Kay:
Just a little bit.
Shi:
Just a little for a Workout Winning Wednesday. Your quest today is we want you to love on your body, through joining us and doing an exercise. You’re going to go in the mirror and find three things about your physical appearance that you love, and then give yourself a compliment. Do you love your eyes? Do you love your waistline? Do you love how soft your skin is? We know you’ve got at least three things that you love about your physical body. Are you ready?
Kay & Shi:
Let’s quest!
