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Welcome to Dear Soul Rising, a sanctuary for remembering, rising, and reconnecting with the deeper wisdom within you.
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This is the space for the deeper conversations, the ones many of us didn't grow up having.
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I'm your host, Naomi Kart.
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If you could reach across time and hold the younger version of you, the child you once were, the person you used to be, what would you say to them?
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Would you pull them into your arms and tell them how proud you are of them?
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Or would you point out everything they still hadn't figured out?
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Because for most of us, that younger self is someone we've been quietly hard on for years.
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And for myself, for the longest time, I couldn't offer mine any softness either.
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I was too busy trying to fix myself, to shed the past, to become some perfect version of me.
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But something softens as we do the healing work, and as we get older, we start to look back with kinder eyes.
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And that's what I want to talk about today.
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The kind of self-acceptance that doesn't make you wait until you've got it all figured out.
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The kind that lets you love every version of you at every age, exactly as you are.
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When I say I'd reach across time and hold her, this is a season I keep going back to, my late twenties into my thirties, because that was a season of so much noise.
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There were so many voices back then telling me who I was, who I wasn't, and who I had to be if I wanted to belong.
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But here's the truth of it.
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I never shaped myself into someone different to please them.
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On the outside I stayed true to who I was.
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It was on the inside that I struggled.
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That's where I questioned myself.
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All those voices created this chaos within me, this pressure and a kind of self-abandonment.
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Because I kept showing up when I had nothing left to give, all because I wanted peace and to be accepted.
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And I wouldn't let myself stay in that place as long as I did.
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I'd have spared myself some of that pain.
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But I understand something now that I couldn't back then.
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In the end, it was never about bending myself to fit.
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It was that I had to accept something.
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That who I was could never fit into circles that were never meant for me.
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And that was okay.
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And this is why the soul's journey matters so much in understanding our journeys.
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Because as much as it hurt, that season is what built my strength.
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It became my foundation.
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It's where I finally learned to sort through all the chatter and the projection and trust the one voice underneath it all that was always mine.
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To stand in who I truly was and to stop questioning myself against who the noise kept insisting I should be.
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So even the years I stayed too long weren't wasted.
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They were quietly making me into the woman who could finally choose herself, a woman who could stand in her own strength.
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And looking back now, I can see it was all part of something bigger.
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That season is where I first began to heal my throat chakra, my voice.
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Because I think my whole existence, this whole lifetime, has been about learning to speak freely, to speak with conviction and with confidence, to say what's true for me out loud, even when the noise is telling me to stay small and quiet, and to never again let other people's wounds still my voice in the essence of who I've always been.
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Here's what I know now that took me far too long to learn.
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So many of us spend the first half of our lives trying to become someone.
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Someone impressive, someone acceptable, someone finally worthy of love.
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We bend ourselves into people we were never meant to be, chasing a version of us we think we're supposed to reach.
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And self-acceptance happens the moment you stop trying to change yourself.
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When you turn around and finally see the real you, when you realize the person you kept trying to mold was never the point.
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The point was always to love the person you are.
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And a lot of my work is personal.
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Most times I'll share a heart to heart with you and then move into the guidance.
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I open my life up to you like a book, the beautiful parts and the messy parts.
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Because I've come to understand that this is how we learn through each other, through our shared stories.
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The psychologist Carl Rogers put it beautifully.
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He said, What is most personal is most general, meaning the very thing we think is ours alone, too private for anyone else to understand, is so often the exact thing that speaks to everyone.
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So my hope is always that somewhere in my journey you see a little of your own.
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It is how we come to realize we were never as alone in it as we thought.
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So that's the work I want to walk you through now.
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To accept yourself exactly where you are today.
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With self-acceptance, so often we're racing against the clock.
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Like if we slow down, we fail.
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If we're not constantly pushing, striving, becoming better, outrunning who we were told we had to be, rejecting the shadow parts of ourselves someone said weren't good enough, then we've fallen behind.
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We're always looking to improve.
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One of the biggest examples in my own life, I can see it so clearly now looking back.
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It was after I lost a significant amount of weight.
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And instead of just resting in that, I replaced it with an obsession over working out and eating clean.
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To the point where I was working out four hours a day, joining every fitness challenge I could find.
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And it was still that bigger version of me trying to outrun herself.
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Because I believed if I didn't work that hard on my body, I'd become lazy.
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I'd fail.
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I'd end up right back at square one.
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And I remember after all that effort, I was on vacation in Jamaica and I looked in the mirror, and my bones were starting to stick out.
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My collarbones, my cheekbones.
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And I stopped and I thought, this has gone too far.
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I don't like this.
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So what did I do?
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I started another fixing project.
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Now I needed to gain some weight.
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Reshape this, soften that.
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And you see what was happening.
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Because don't we all judge ourselves through the mirror?
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It's almost like the mirror becomes another set of eyes.
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The eyes of every bit of criticism we've ever taken in.
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We stand there and we see everything anyone ever said about us reflected back.
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And we think the mirror is telling us the truth.
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But when our mind is already framed by other people's projections, their view of what we are and what we aren't, then that's the truth the mirror hands back to us.
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So the mirror becomes the judge and the jury of who we are until we reframe our own mind and start using the mirror as our friend.
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But here's what I finally understood.
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All that self-rejection ever did was exhaust me and keep me small.
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Because accepting yourself was never the same as giving up on yourself.
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It's the balanced ground that real growth actually grows from.
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And this is where all that noise comes in.
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The voices from our past and the ones still with us in the present.
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And it makes us ask, whose approval are we actually chasing?
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Whose acceptance are we trying to win?
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Because where do we first learn we weren't enough?
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That we had to climb Mount Everest and circle the whole planet on some marathon that never ends just to be acceptable.
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And here's one thing I've learned.
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You are never going to make everyone happy.
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So why spend your whole life trying?
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The goal was always to find happiness within yourself.
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That's where your real power is.
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And more contentment really does come with self-acceptance.
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Is it the whole answer to happiness?
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No.
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But it's a piece of the puzzle.
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A huge piece.
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Because your whole world changes, your whole outlook shifts.
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When you finally learn the unconditional love for yourself first.
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Self-acceptance really begins when we stop trying to reshape ourselves into what others think we should be.
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And we start to see the qualities that make us.
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And there's an even deeper layer that so often gets missed.
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It's accepting the shadow sides of ourselves.
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Now that term, the shadow, actually comes from Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist.
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He used it to describe the parts of ourselves that we push down and hide away.
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And here's the thing: it's not always because those parts are bad.
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It's because somewhere along the way we were taught they were unacceptable.
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So we bury them out of sight, sometimes even from ourselves.
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And so much of that shadow gets formed when we're young.
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Think about it.
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As a child, you feel something big about a situation.
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You're upset, you're hurt, you're angry.
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And instead of someone helping you understand that feeling, you're told, don't be angry, tone it down, calm down.
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So you learn young that this part of you, this natural human emotion, is too much, and it gets pushed into the shadow.
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But those parts never actually go away.
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They just sit there in the dark.
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And real self-acceptance asks us to turn and face them and to stop rejecting the very parts of ourselves we were taught to hide and bring them back into the light.
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Because you can't fully accept yourself while you're still hiding half of who you are.
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As Young put it, one does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.
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And that's what the healing work really does: the deep overhaul.
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It builds self-love, self-confidence, self-forgiveness.
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Everything we were never taught to give ourselves.
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And in all of that, we take a firm stand on who we know ourselves to be.
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We see us now, and we've learned to love that person.
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Let me give you one of mine.
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I remember once being labeled by my dad, he said, Oh Naomi is all about the money.
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And that made me feel some type of way, like my drive and my desire for a certain type of lifestyle was materialistical, something to be ashamed of.
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But here's what this work does: it grounds you in the truth of who you are, and not to sidetrack here.
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I'm a Taurus, and Taurus is ruled by Venus, the planet of beauty and pleasure and the senses.
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So of course I love security and good food, and a little luxury.
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I am so much about texture, about sensory things.
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Like the princess and the pea, I feel the tiniest pebble in my shoe, or a wrinkle in the bed.
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I enjoy the finer things, and I refuse to settle for anything but a comfortable life.
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And at this stage in my life, I'm not going to apologize for it anymore.
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And I can speak to a much deeper one too.
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Because for me, the parts I was conditioned to reject were my body and my sensitivity.
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In those younger years I learned so much, because there were people who tried to manipulate my generosity and my sensitivity.
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That's where they'd tried to tell me who I was and who I wasn't.
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Now I never actually rejected my sensitivity or my generosity or my kindness, because I genuinely loved those things about myself.
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But back in the thick of the pain, there was a period where I did turn on that part of me, where I thought I just need to harden myself.
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And yet, in the very same breath, something in me would say, But if I become that, I lose myself.
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So I was never one to be molded into trends or to change who I was on the outside for anybody.
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But on the inside, it was a different story.
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I was being twisted into a pretzel.
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Because inside I doubted myself.
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It created so much static in me, so much chaos, the anxiety, the constant inner criticism, that endless second guessing of who I was, even while I was holding my ground on the outside.
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And this is why it matters so much that we come to truly know who we are.
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Because when we do, that internal noise gets so much quieter.
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And sometimes that means creating distance between you and the external voices that are so loud they start to dim your own.
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Your own voice, your own guidance, your own intuition.
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That's why it matters so much who you surround yourself with.
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People who truly love you, who truly see you, who actually support you.
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Because when we feed our minds on what social media tells us we should be or shouldn't be, when we put too much weight on a magazine, the perfect image, the perfect life, the perfect body, the perfect face, it makes us look at our own lives and start to reject what we have and who we are.
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It can brainwash us into believing that who we are isn't enough, that what we have isn't enough, that our life should be bigger, fuller, better.
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And it leaves us with this sense of failure in every direction.
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Because here is what all this work leads to.
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You get to stop apologizing for who you are, for what you like and what you don't like.
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You don't have to live up to anyone else's opinion of you or the standards they try to put on you.
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You're allowed to be you.
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And I can say this for myself.
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I've stopped apologizing and over-explaining who I am.
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Because the truth in all of this work, this commitment, this dedication to myself, it's made me fall in love with the woman I've become.
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And this is exactly why the work we walk through on this podcast matters so much.
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Because learning to trust yourself, walking through the shame and the guilt is what takes you from feeling at the mercy of life to finally being in the driver's seat of it.
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And if you want more support with that, that's what I created my Return to Self emotional healing kit for.
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For those times when shame, guilt, and anxiety feel so powerful to help you release that mindset.
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And if you're ready to go even deeper, that's the full transformational journey of my masterclass, the Return to Self Method.
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I'll leave both linked in the show notes.
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And now I want to go somewhere deeper with you into what might be the most freeing part of all of this.
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Because so much of our self-acceptance comes with a condition attached.
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I'll love myself once I finally got it all together.
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Once I've healed the thing, once I've become the version of me I'm working toward.
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But that day doesn't come.
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Healing is a lifelong journey.
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It isn't linear.
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It loops, it circles back.
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It surprises you years later.
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There's no finish line.
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And I've come to see it as a gift.
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Because if we stay open to it, we never really stop.
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We keep evolving, keep growing, keep deepening.
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Right up until the day we leave this earth.
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And this isn't the frantic outrunning kind of growth I talked about earlier.
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It's the natural kind, the kind that unfolds all on its own.
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Once you're no longer at war with who you are, but something does shift with age.
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And I want to tell you about the moment that really hit me.
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I recall about four years ago, something happened that I had to work through.
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Now I'm not someone who really studies herself in the mirror unless I'm going somewhere.
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I get ready and I go.
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One day, about four years ago, I was walking past the mirror and I paused.
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Because the woman looking back at me looked different.
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So I leaned in and I started noticing the fine lines.
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And I was taken aback.
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I didn't quite know how to deal with it.
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And because my personality is zillier, lighter kind of person, I said to myself, girl, you're getting old.
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But honestly, it was a whole process to accept that I was starting to look older.
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And a year or two later, my husband went through the very same thing about himself.
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Because there's an acceptance that comes with aging, the gray hair, the fine lines.
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But here's what shifted for me.
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When I look into my own eyes and I see the wisdom I've gained, when I think about everything my soul has walked through, all of that growth, I would keep every one of those lines in my face, every gray hair.
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Because the woman in her 40s, sitting here now, has learned unconditional love and self-acceptance on a deep, deep level.
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Because when so many people in my life turned their backs on me, I could have abandoned myself too.
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Instead, I turned inward.
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I don't fight with myself on the inside.
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Because somewhere along the way, I learned to take other people's rejection of me and turn toward myself, to love myself on a level where I would never abandon myself the way they did.
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If I went back 15 years, even 10, the old Naomi on the outside, I would describe her as bright and confident.
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But on the inside, she quivered like a leaf.
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That confidence was a mask.
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It was how I learned to walk through the world as a form of protection.
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But underneath it was still that inner child, that little girl who just wanted to belong, to be loved, to be seen, to matter.
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And a lot of the people I had in my life, especially family and extended family, just Never could see the value of who I was.
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But it's my friends who have become my family in this lifetime.
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They're the ones who truly saw me and loved me and supported me in the ways my family never could.
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And it took me a lifetime to be okay with that.
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And that brings me right back to my last episode on being divinely guided.
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Because I can't say it enough.
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We are guided.
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When we listen to our intuition, when we listen to the guidance around us, and when we turn inward and learn to stop rejecting ourselves, we learn that love, that compassion, because we deserve it so much.
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As much as we pour out to everyone we've ever loved, we deserve that same kindness too.
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And I think that's one of the greatest aches in the world, this acceptance of self.
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Because at every turn we're taught to reject ourselves.
00:23:06.559 --> 00:23:10.559
I look at these celebrities and I would never want that life.
00:23:10.799 --> 00:23:14.000
Because they're brutalized, torn apart online.
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And this even goes to anyone that has an online presence, the sheer brutality that gets sent their way, just because they decided to show up.
00:23:26.480 --> 00:23:39.119
It's no wonder so many people struggle with self-image and self-acceptance, because you end up putting too much power in other people's hands about who you are and who you aren't.
00:23:39.359 --> 00:23:43.440
But when you turn inward, you build a stability within.
00:23:43.839 --> 00:23:48.160
You're not so easily shaken by an outside point of view.
00:23:48.400 --> 00:23:55.839
And when you really start to understand people and the projection they put onto you, you take your power back.
00:23:56.480 --> 00:24:02.160
You're not so easily swayed into, am I that or am I not that?
00:24:02.640 --> 00:24:06.480
Instead, you just know, no, I'm not that.
00:24:06.880 --> 00:24:11.279
And there's a foundation underneath you that cannot be moved.
00:24:11.599 --> 00:24:19.519
Kind of like that old gospel song, just like a tree that's planted by the water, I shall not be moved.
00:24:19.839 --> 00:24:28.319
There's a real power in learning to accept yourself for every season, for every stage, for every journey you've been through.
00:24:28.559 --> 00:24:33.039
Not just the version of you standing here now, but all of them.
00:24:33.359 --> 00:24:40.400
The ones who struggled, the ones who didn't know yet, the ones still finding their way.
00:24:40.799 --> 00:24:48.640
Because that's an unconditional love that comes out of all that understanding and all that healing.
00:24:48.960 --> 00:24:55.279
A love that doesn't need you to be fixed enough or good enough or finished.
00:24:55.599 --> 00:24:59.920
A love that holds you through the storms and every up and down.
00:25:00.559 --> 00:25:05.680
From that love grows respect, grace, and compassion.
00:25:06.319 --> 00:25:08.880
That's what I would give my younger self.
00:25:09.039 --> 00:25:12.720
And it's what I want you to start giving yourself now.
00:25:14.559 --> 00:25:26.720
Because I truly believe that when we begin healing ourselves, we create more compassion, more understanding, and ultimately a better world for everyone.
00:25:26.960 --> 00:25:31.920
With so much love, I'll see you in the next episode, dear soul.
00:00:04.719 --> 00:00:12.800
Welcome to Dear Soul Rising, a sanctuary for remembering, rising, and reconnecting with the deeper wisdom within you.
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This is the space for the deeper conversations, the ones many of us didn't grow up having.
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I'm your host, Naomi Kart.
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If you could reach across time and hold the younger version of you, the child you once were, the person you used to be, what would you say to them?
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Would you pull them into your arms and tell them how proud you are of them?
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Or would you point out everything they still hadn't figured out?
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Because for most of us, that younger self is someone we've been quietly hard on for years.
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And for myself, for the longest time, I couldn't offer mine any softness either.
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I was too busy trying to fix myself, to shed the past, to become some perfect version of me.
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But something softens as we do the healing work, and as we get older, we start to look back with kinder eyes.
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And that's what I want to talk about today.
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The kind of self-acceptance that doesn't make you wait until you've got it all figured out.
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The kind that lets you love every version of you at every age, exactly as you are.
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When I say I'd reach across time and hold her, this is a season I keep going back to, my late twenties into my thirties, because that was a season of so much noise.
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There were so many voices back then telling me who I was, who I wasn't, and who I had to be if I wanted to belong.
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But here's the truth of it.
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I never shaped myself into someone different to please them.
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On the outside I stayed true to who I was.
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It was on the inside that I struggled.
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That's where I questioned myself.
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All those voices created this chaos within me, this pressure and a kind of self-abandonment.
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Because I kept showing up when I had nothing left to give, all because I wanted peace and to be accepted.
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And I wouldn't let myself stay in that place as long as I did.
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I'd have spared myself some of that pain.
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But I understand something now that I couldn't back then.
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In the end, it was never about bending myself to fit.
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It was that I had to accept something.
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That who I was could never fit into circles that were never meant for me.
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And that was okay.
00:03:04.479 --> 00:03:10.479
And this is why the soul's journey matters so much in understanding our journeys.
00:03:10.800 --> 00:03:15.919
Because as much as it hurt, that season is what built my strength.
00:03:16.240 --> 00:03:18.479
It became my foundation.
00:03:18.719 --> 00:03:28.479
It's where I finally learned to sort through all the chatter and the projection and trust the one voice underneath it all that was always mine.
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To stand in who I truly was and to stop questioning myself against who the noise kept insisting I should be.
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So even the years I stayed too long weren't wasted.
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They were quietly making me into the woman who could finally choose herself, a woman who could stand in her own strength.
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And looking back now, I can see it was all part of something bigger.
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That season is where I first began to heal my throat chakra, my voice.
00:04:02.560 --> 00:04:28.480
Because I think my whole existence, this whole lifetime, has been about learning to speak freely, to speak with conviction and with confidence, to say what's true for me out loud, even when the noise is telling me to stay small and quiet, and to never again let other people's wounds still my voice in the essence of who I've always been.
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Here's what I know now that took me far too long to learn.
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So many of us spend the first half of our lives trying to become someone.
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Someone impressive, someone acceptable, someone finally worthy of love.
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We bend ourselves into people we were never meant to be, chasing a version of us we think we're supposed to reach.
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And self-acceptance happens the moment you stop trying to change yourself.
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When you turn around and finally see the real you, when you realize the person you kept trying to mold was never the point.
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The point was always to love the person you are.
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And a lot of my work is personal.
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Most times I'll share a heart to heart with you and then move into the guidance.
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I open my life up to you like a book, the beautiful parts and the messy parts.
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Because I've come to understand that this is how we learn through each other, through our shared stories.
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The psychologist Carl Rogers put it beautifully.
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He said, What is most personal is most general, meaning the very thing we think is ours alone, too private for anyone else to understand, is so often the exact thing that speaks to everyone.
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So my hope is always that somewhere in my journey you see a little of your own.
00:06:06.160 --> 00:06:11.759
It is how we come to realize we were never as alone in it as we thought.
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So that's the work I want to walk you through now.
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To accept yourself exactly where you are today.
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With self-acceptance, so often we're racing against the clock.
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Like if we slow down, we fail.
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If we're not constantly pushing, striving, becoming better, outrunning who we were told we had to be, rejecting the shadow parts of ourselves someone said weren't good enough, then we've fallen behind.
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We're always looking to improve.
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One of the biggest examples in my own life, I can see it so clearly now looking back.
00:06:53.360 --> 00:06:57.279
It was after I lost a significant amount of weight.
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And instead of just resting in that, I replaced it with an obsession over working out and eating clean.
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To the point where I was working out four hours a day, joining every fitness challenge I could find.
00:07:12.160 --> 00:07:17.040
And it was still that bigger version of me trying to outrun herself.
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Because I believed if I didn't work that hard on my body, I'd become lazy.
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I'd fail.
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I'd end up right back at square one.
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And I remember after all that effort, I was on vacation in Jamaica and I looked in the mirror, and my bones were starting to stick out.
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My collarbones, my cheekbones.
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And I stopped and I thought, this has gone too far.
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I don't like this.
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So what did I do?
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I started another fixing project.
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Now I needed to gain some weight.
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Reshape this, soften that.
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And you see what was happening.
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Because don't we all judge ourselves through the mirror?
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It's almost like the mirror becomes another set of eyes.
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The eyes of every bit of criticism we've ever taken in.
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We stand there and we see everything anyone ever said about us reflected back.
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And we think the mirror is telling us the truth.
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But when our mind is already framed by other people's projections, their view of what we are and what we aren't, then that's the truth the mirror hands back to us.
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So the mirror becomes the judge and the jury of who we are until we reframe our own mind and start using the mirror as our friend.
00:08:45.679 --> 00:08:48.320
But here's what I finally understood.
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All that self-rejection ever did was exhaust me and keep me small.
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Because accepting yourself was never the same as giving up on yourself.
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It's the balanced ground that real growth actually grows from.
00:09:05.360 --> 00:09:08.080
And this is where all that noise comes in.
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The voices from our past and the ones still with us in the present.
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And it makes us ask, whose approval are we actually chasing?
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Whose acceptance are we trying to win?
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Because where do we first learn we weren't enough?
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That we had to climb Mount Everest and circle the whole planet on some marathon that never ends just to be acceptable.
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And here's one thing I've learned.
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You are never going to make everyone happy.
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So why spend your whole life trying?
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The goal was always to find happiness within yourself.
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That's where your real power is.
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And more contentment really does come with self-acceptance.
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Is it the whole answer to happiness?
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No.
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But it's a piece of the puzzle.
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A huge piece.
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Because your whole world changes, your whole outlook shifts.
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When you finally learn the unconditional love for yourself first.
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Self-acceptance really begins when we stop trying to reshape ourselves into what others think we should be.
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And we start to see the qualities that make us.
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And there's an even deeper layer that so often gets missed.
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It's accepting the shadow sides of ourselves.
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Now that term, the shadow, actually comes from Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist.
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He used it to describe the parts of ourselves that we push down and hide away.
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And here's the thing: it's not always because those parts are bad.
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It's because somewhere along the way we were taught they were unacceptable.
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So we bury them out of sight, sometimes even from ourselves.
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And so much of that shadow gets formed when we're young.
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Think about it.
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As a child, you feel something big about a situation.
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You're upset, you're hurt, you're angry.
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And instead of someone helping you understand that feeling, you're told, don't be angry, tone it down, calm down.
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So you learn young that this part of you, this natural human emotion, is too much, and it gets pushed into the shadow.
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But those parts never actually go away.
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They just sit there in the dark.
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And real self-acceptance asks us to turn and face them and to stop rejecting the very parts of ourselves we were taught to hide and bring them back into the light.
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Because you can't fully accept yourself while you're still hiding half of who you are.
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As Young put it, one does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.
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And that's what the healing work really does: the deep overhaul.
00:12:28.240 --> 00:12:32.879
It builds self-love, self-confidence, self-forgiveness.
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Everything we were never taught to give ourselves.
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And in all of that, we take a firm stand on who we know ourselves to be.
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We see us now, and we've learned to love that person.
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Let me give you one of mine.
00:12:50.399 --> 00:12:56.480
I remember once being labeled by my dad, he said, Oh Naomi is all about the money.
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And that made me feel some type of way, like my drive and my desire for a certain type of lifestyle was materialistical, something to be ashamed of.
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But here's what this work does: it grounds you in the truth of who you are, and not to sidetrack here.
00:13:16.399 --> 00:13:24.159
I'm a Taurus, and Taurus is ruled by Venus, the planet of beauty and pleasure and the senses.
00:13:24.559 --> 00:13:29.759
So of course I love security and good food, and a little luxury.
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I am so much about texture, about sensory things.
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Like the princess and the pea, I feel the tiniest pebble in my shoe, or a wrinkle in the bed.
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I enjoy the finer things, and I refuse to settle for anything but a comfortable life.
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And at this stage in my life, I'm not going to apologize for it anymore.
00:13:56.000 --> 00:13:58.879
And I can speak to a much deeper one too.
00:13:59.120 --> 00:14:05.039
Because for me, the parts I was conditioned to reject were my body and my sensitivity.
00:14:05.440 --> 00:14:14.080
In those younger years I learned so much, because there were people who tried to manipulate my generosity and my sensitivity.
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That's where they'd tried to tell me who I was and who I wasn't.
00:14:18.879 --> 00:14:30.080
Now I never actually rejected my sensitivity or my generosity or my kindness, because I genuinely loved those things about myself.
00:14:30.399 --> 00:14:39.919
But back in the thick of the pain, there was a period where I did turn on that part of me, where I thought I just need to harden myself.
00:14:40.559 --> 00:14:49.360
And yet, in the very same breath, something in me would say, But if I become that, I lose myself.
00:14:50.080 --> 00:14:57.200
So I was never one to be molded into trends or to change who I was on the outside for anybody.
00:14:57.600 --> 00:15:00.559
But on the inside, it was a different story.
00:15:00.799 --> 00:15:03.279
I was being twisted into a pretzel.
00:15:03.759 --> 00:15:06.159
Because inside I doubted myself.
00:15:06.399 --> 00:15:23.679
It created so much static in me, so much chaos, the anxiety, the constant inner criticism, that endless second guessing of who I was, even while I was holding my ground on the outside.
00:15:24.000 --> 00:15:29.120
And this is why it matters so much that we come to truly know who we are.
00:15:29.519 --> 00:15:34.879
Because when we do, that internal noise gets so much quieter.
00:15:35.200 --> 00:15:44.639
And sometimes that means creating distance between you and the external voices that are so loud they start to dim your own.
00:15:44.879 --> 00:15:49.679
Your own voice, your own guidance, your own intuition.
00:15:50.240 --> 00:15:54.879
That's why it matters so much who you surround yourself with.
00:15:55.440 --> 00:16:03.279
People who truly love you, who truly see you, who actually support you.
00:16:03.679 --> 00:16:24.799
Because when we feed our minds on what social media tells us we should be or shouldn't be, when we put too much weight on a magazine, the perfect image, the perfect life, the perfect body, the perfect face, it makes us look at our own lives and start to reject what we have and who we are.
00:16:25.360 --> 00:16:37.840
It can brainwash us into believing that who we are isn't enough, that what we have isn't enough, that our life should be bigger, fuller, better.
00:16:38.240 --> 00:16:43.440
And it leaves us with this sense of failure in every direction.
00:16:44.159 --> 00:16:47.679
Because here is what all this work leads to.
00:16:47.919 --> 00:16:53.759
You get to stop apologizing for who you are, for what you like and what you don't like.
00:16:54.000 --> 00:17:00.799
You don't have to live up to anyone else's opinion of you or the standards they try to put on you.
00:17:01.279 --> 00:17:03.759
You're allowed to be you.
00:17:04.079 --> 00:17:06.160
And I can say this for myself.
00:17:06.319 --> 00:17:10.000
I've stopped apologizing and over-explaining who I am.
00:17:10.319 --> 00:17:20.240
Because the truth in all of this work, this commitment, this dedication to myself, it's made me fall in love with the woman I've become.
00:17:20.480 --> 00:17:26.000
And this is exactly why the work we walk through on this podcast matters so much.
00:17:26.400 --> 00:17:38.400
Because learning to trust yourself, walking through the shame and the guilt is what takes you from feeling at the mercy of life to finally being in the driver's seat of it.
00:17:38.640 --> 00:17:46.880
And if you want more support with that, that's what I created my Return to Self emotional healing kit for.
00:17:47.279 --> 00:17:56.000
For those times when shame, guilt, and anxiety feel so powerful to help you release that mindset.
00:17:56.400 --> 00:18:04.720
And if you're ready to go even deeper, that's the full transformational journey of my masterclass, the Return to Self Method.
00:18:04.880 --> 00:18:07.759
I'll leave both linked in the show notes.
00:18:08.319 --> 00:18:15.519
And now I want to go somewhere deeper with you into what might be the most freeing part of all of this.
00:18:15.839 --> 00:18:21.039
Because so much of our self-acceptance comes with a condition attached.
00:18:21.359 --> 00:18:25.839
I'll love myself once I finally got it all together.
00:18:26.240 --> 00:18:32.400
Once I've healed the thing, once I've become the version of me I'm working toward.
00:18:33.119 --> 00:18:35.599
But that day doesn't come.
00:18:36.079 --> 00:18:38.640
Healing is a lifelong journey.
00:18:38.960 --> 00:18:40.640
It isn't linear.
00:18:40.799 --> 00:18:43.440
It loops, it circles back.
00:18:43.680 --> 00:18:46.400
It surprises you years later.
00:18:47.039 --> 00:18:48.880
There's no finish line.
00:18:49.039 --> 00:18:51.359
And I've come to see it as a gift.
00:18:51.599 --> 00:18:55.759
Because if we stay open to it, we never really stop.
00:18:56.319 --> 00:19:00.160
We keep evolving, keep growing, keep deepening.
00:19:00.480 --> 00:19:03.359
Right up until the day we leave this earth.
00:19:03.680 --> 00:19:08.480
And this isn't the frantic outrunning kind of growth I talked about earlier.
00:19:08.640 --> 00:19:14.079
It's the natural kind, the kind that unfolds all on its own.
00:19:14.319 --> 00:19:20.559
Once you're no longer at war with who you are, but something does shift with age.
00:19:20.799 --> 00:19:24.559
And I want to tell you about the moment that really hit me.
00:19:25.200 --> 00:19:30.640
I recall about four years ago, something happened that I had to work through.
00:19:30.880 --> 00:19:35.920
Now I'm not someone who really studies herself in the mirror unless I'm going somewhere.
00:19:36.160 --> 00:19:38.079
I get ready and I go.
00:19:38.400 --> 00:19:43.759
One day, about four years ago, I was walking past the mirror and I paused.
00:19:44.079 --> 00:19:46.720
Because the woman looking back at me looked different.
00:19:46.960 --> 00:19:50.559
So I leaned in and I started noticing the fine lines.
00:19:50.799 --> 00:19:52.720
And I was taken aback.
00:19:53.119 --> 00:19:55.519
I didn't quite know how to deal with it.
00:19:55.759 --> 00:20:03.920
And because my personality is zillier, lighter kind of person, I said to myself, girl, you're getting old.
00:20:04.400 --> 00:20:10.640
But honestly, it was a whole process to accept that I was starting to look older.
00:20:10.880 --> 00:20:15.839
And a year or two later, my husband went through the very same thing about himself.
00:20:16.160 --> 00:20:21.599
Because there's an acceptance that comes with aging, the gray hair, the fine lines.
00:20:21.839 --> 00:20:24.079
But here's what shifted for me.
00:20:24.400 --> 00:20:41.599
When I look into my own eyes and I see the wisdom I've gained, when I think about everything my soul has walked through, all of that growth, I would keep every one of those lines in my face, every gray hair.
00:20:41.839 --> 00:20:51.839
Because the woman in her 40s, sitting here now, has learned unconditional love and self-acceptance on a deep, deep level.
00:20:52.160 --> 00:20:59.039
Because when so many people in my life turned their backs on me, I could have abandoned myself too.
00:20:59.359 --> 00:21:01.680
Instead, I turned inward.
00:21:01.920 --> 00:21:04.960
I don't fight with myself on the inside.
00:21:05.440 --> 00:21:19.920
Because somewhere along the way, I learned to take other people's rejection of me and turn toward myself, to love myself on a level where I would never abandon myself the way they did.
00:21:20.480 --> 00:21:30.160
If I went back 15 years, even 10, the old Naomi on the outside, I would describe her as bright and confident.
00:21:30.720 --> 00:21:34.720
But on the inside, she quivered like a leaf.
00:21:35.039 --> 00:21:37.279
That confidence was a mask.
00:21:37.519 --> 00:21:42.319
It was how I learned to walk through the world as a form of protection.
00:21:42.799 --> 00:21:53.359
But underneath it was still that inner child, that little girl who just wanted to belong, to be loved, to be seen, to matter.
00:21:53.759 --> 00:22:03.279
And a lot of the people I had in my life, especially family and extended family, just Never could see the value of who I was.
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But it's my friends who have become my family in this lifetime.
00:22:08.480 --> 00:22:15.759
They're the ones who truly saw me and loved me and supported me in the ways my family never could.
00:22:16.160 --> 00:22:19.599
And it took me a lifetime to be okay with that.
00:22:19.839 --> 00:22:25.680
And that brings me right back to my last episode on being divinely guided.
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Because I can't say it enough.
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We are guided.
00:22:31.440 --> 00:22:47.680
When we listen to our intuition, when we listen to the guidance around us, and when we turn inward and learn to stop rejecting ourselves, we learn that love, that compassion, because we deserve it so much.
00:22:48.480 --> 00:22:55.359
As much as we pour out to everyone we've ever loved, we deserve that same kindness too.
00:22:55.759 --> 00:23:02.079
And I think that's one of the greatest aches in the world, this acceptance of self.
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Because at every turn we're taught to reject ourselves.
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I look at these celebrities and I would never want that life.
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Because they're brutalized, torn apart online.
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And this even goes to anyone that has an online presence, the sheer brutality that gets sent their way, just because they decided to show up.
00:23:26.480 --> 00:23:39.119
It's no wonder so many people struggle with self-image and self-acceptance, because you end up putting too much power in other people's hands about who you are and who you aren't.
00:23:39.359 --> 00:23:43.440
But when you turn inward, you build a stability within.
00:23:43.839 --> 00:23:48.160
You're not so easily shaken by an outside point of view.
00:23:48.400 --> 00:23:55.839
And when you really start to understand people and the projection they put onto you, you take your power back.
00:23:56.480 --> 00:24:02.160
You're not so easily swayed into, am I that or am I not that?
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Instead, you just know, no, I'm not that.
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And there's a foundation underneath you that cannot be moved.
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Kind of like that old gospel song, just like a tree that's planted by the water, I shall not be moved.
00:24:19.839 --> 00:24:28.319
There's a real power in learning to accept yourself for every season, for every stage, for every journey you've been through.
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Not just the version of you standing here now, but all of them.
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The ones who struggled, the ones who didn't know yet, the ones still finding their way.
00:24:40.799 --> 00:24:48.640
Because that's an unconditional love that comes out of all that understanding and all that healing.
00:24:48.960 --> 00:24:55.279
A love that doesn't need you to be fixed enough or good enough or finished.
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A love that holds you through the storms and every up and down.
00:25:00.559 --> 00:25:05.680
From that love grows respect, grace, and compassion.
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That's what I would give my younger self.
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And it's what I want you to start giving yourself now.
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Because I truly believe that when we begin healing ourselves, we create more compassion, more understanding, and ultimately a better world for everyone.
00:25:26.960 --> 00:25:31.920
With so much love, I'll see you in the next episode, dear soul.
