Ep 74. The Secret Romance of Self-Love

I am Kym Showers, and this is Reinvented After 40, episode number 74: The Secret Romance of Self-Love.

Hey, friends. Welcome to Reinvented After 40, a podcast for all you women in the second half of life who are ready to take responsibility for your own well-being and create a life you love living.

I’m your host, Kym Showers, and after spending the first 40 years of my life people-pleasing and following all the rules, I was exhausted and ready for a change. I reinvented myself. I stopped outsourcing my happiness. And I’ve been brave enough to live a different kind of life.

I’ll be here each week to help you do the same thing. It’s going to be fun. Let’s go.

Hey everyone, welcome back to the podcast and happy February. Happy Valentine’s Day. I love February. I love, love, I love romance but I think about it all so differently now at almost 62 years old, having lived 62 years as a woman on planet Earth. I think about love and romance and Valentine’s Day and relationships all so differently. It feels so different to me. I feel differently and think differently about love because everything I have ever wanted has been created by self-love.

It’s always been on the other side of me learning how to love myself and stop looking for it outside of me. My life feels so filled with romance, filled with so much attention and endearment and self-care. It feels so romantic to me. I know how to romance my life and romance myself. So you know how obsessed I am with romantic comedy movies. It’s basically all I watch because I just live in a little dream world and it’s never been at my detriment. I just haven’t seen a downside to it, I love it so much.

So I have a little soundtrack playing in my mind all the time you guys, I romance myself. I create this romantic comedy. I think of my life as a movie. So who doesn’t love Meg Ryan in You’ve Got Mail? I mean just the top of my list. And how about Julia Roberts in Notting Hill? How about Meg Ryan in Sleepless in Seattle? How about Kate Hudson in How to Lose a Guy in 30 Days? I love her in that movie, it’s so beautiful. I love her wardrobe in that movie. I’m always inspired by Kate Hudson in How to Lose a Guy in 30 Days.

And then how about Rachel McAdams in About time? Have you ever seen About Time? Listen, if you haven’t seen About Time, put that on immediately and lose yourself in this movie. It is so romantic, and she is so beautiful. Her character is so inspiring and so beautiful in this movie. How about Reese Witherspoon in Sweet Home Alabama? I mean come on. Just who she is in this movie I love her in this movie. I can kind of relate to her in this movie. And then Minnie Driver and Return To Me, remember her in Return to Me, how beautiful she is, how romantic that movie is?

How about Jennifer Garner? Okay, I love Jennifer Garner. I follow her on Instagram. She is a romantic comedy movie just in her real life. In her kitchen when she’s cooking her fake cooking show I love her so much. It’s almost like her characters and her character in 13 Going on 30, I love her in that movie, is really her in real life. And how about Amy Adams in Leap Year? I mean I love her in Leap Year and it’s such a good movie. It’s so beautiful. It’s in Ireland and I can relate so much to her character in Leap Year.

And then really basically anything Diane Keaton is in, I’m so obsessed with Diane Keaton. I just love her. She’s one of those women that are older than me and living a very romantic life all on her own. I’m so inspired by her. So I’m talking about women in movies that have inspired me to live a very kind of dreamy, almost movie-like life. I feel like my life is a movie every day. And I love that, and I want you to start thinking about yourself that way, thinking about your life like that, your life as a romantic comedy because all women love romantic comedies.

I promise you if you’re listening to me and you follow me on Instagram, there is no possible way that you don’t love romantic comedies like I do. So there hasn’t been one lately that I’ve been completely obsessed with, but all these old ones, I could go on and on. I have so many favorites. But I’ll watch them over and over and over again. I love their soundtracks. Amy Adams and Julie in Julia, I listen to that soundtrack all the time like when I’m cooking Saturday morning breakfast. Or I’ll just listen to it on my AirPods. And I feel like my life is a movie and I love that.

So what’s the soundtrack of your life? And how can you romance yourself in such a way that you just love being in your life, and you just love who you are and how you’re showing up in your life? This is what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the romance, the secret to self-love, romancing ourselves. It’s a thing, it’s a reality, it’s something that we can do so that we stop looking for it from our spouse, from our husband, from our partner, from our friends, from our parents, from our grown kids. It is not their job to romance us, it’s our job to romance ourselves.

It’s a thing to give ourselves everything that we need. And so my clients this month, this is the homework I gave them. I said, and this is going to sound extreme to you, but it needs to be extreme. Because women in the second half of life have spent their entire first half of life loving everybody else ahead of themselves, thinking about everybody else instead of themselves. So to retrain our brain we have to be kind of extreme about it. We have to be very deliberate about it.

So I told my clients their only job this month, their only homework this month is to think about themselves all of the time, to be attentive to their own needs all of the time for the entire month. To love themselves all of the time the entire month. To not think about literally, I told them, “Do not think about anyone but yourself. Do not love anyone but yourself.” Because here’s why, when we really learn to love ourselves then we can truly love others and it doesn’t take very much effort.

That’s the secret, that’s the trick. We’re no longer, you know what I say, swimming out of our lane, trying to manipulate other people. We’re only manipulating the other people so that we can feel loved by them, so we can feel validated by them. But that isn’t their job. It’s our job. It’s our job to be attentive to our own needs, it’s not my husband’s job to make me feel loved on Valentine’s Day, it is my job and I have gotten really good at it. So he is literally off the hook. I don’t know. I mean he’ll probably give me a card because that’s what he’s been doing lately, is he gives me a card and it’s so sweet and I so appreciate it.

But honestly, he doesn’t have to do anything, and I will have the most love-filled validated Valentine’s Day because I know how I practice self-love every single day. I literally think about what my needs are first and I make sure that I meet my own needs. I love myself so well. I talk to myself with kind words. I’m very generous, very kind to myself with the way that I speak to myself.

I look at myself in the mirror, you guys, every day and just go, “Good job. Good job, Kym Showers. I love you so much. I’m so proud of you. You’re so beautiful. I love the way that you live your life.” These are the words I speak to myself, so I do not need, I’m not looking for it outside myself. And then I go about my day filled with love. I am just always filled with love. And I just go around loving everybody. I’m not expecting, I’m not taking things personally hardly ever anymore and it’s because of this practice of self-love. So this is what your work is.

I am telling you this morning, I’m giving you permission to meet your own needs, to be your own Valentine, to be the one that you think about all the time. Think about yourself. Think about what you’re doing, congratulate yourself, appreciate yourself, value yourself, pay attention to yourself so that you’re not thinking, well, I wonder if he’s thinking about me. I wonder if they’re thinking about me. No, they don’t need to be thinking about you because you’ve got you. You’re thinking about. You’re loving yourself. You’re meeting your own needs.

You’re taking yourself to a hot date. You’re taking yourself to the beach. You’re pouring yourself a glass of wine. You are making yourself a cappuccino and maybe a good podcast. You’re going to the beach and going for a walk. So I want to tell you, this is how I treat myself every single day, I literally do, I give myself so much comfort, so much beauty, so much grace. And I really do think about myself in the highest esteem with the utmost respect.

So I have so much discipline in myself, and I call my discipline self-love. My self-discipline, the things that I’m very disciplined about are all because I love myself so much. The things that I spend my time on, my boundaries that I have, the things that I’m available for and that I’m not available for when it comes to other people. The way that I spend my time, I’m very generous with my time for myself and not so much with others. I’m very specific about who I give my energy to. And I know my reasons and I like my reasons.

So I want you to know this about yourself. I want you to pay attention to how much energy you give to other people, why you think about other people so much. Notice how often you think about your husband and how much time you spend thinking about him, or grown kids and how much energy and time you spend thinking about them and why you do that.

And are you neglecting thinking about yourself because you’re thinking about them because that’s what you’ve always thought that you should do as a mom and a wife? Or the times you think about your friends and that you think this is being a good friend by thinking about them but at your own expense. You’re neglecting yourself, that isn’t a good friend when we neglect ourselves. We should never neglect ourselves, honestly, stop neglecting yourself. Give yourself what you need and expect everybody in your life to give themselves what they need.

That’s a healthy relationship, that’s a healthy habit to be in. That’s living on a different level. You’re not leaking your energy worrying about other people. Other people can take care of themselves. You just be concerned about you. And I want you this entire month to retrain your brain by specifically every day getting up and thinking about what your business is for the day. What specific thoughts you want to think about for the day. And write them all down and think only those thoughts.

And notice how often your brain wants to go to what everyone else is doing and what everyone else might be thinking, what they might be thinking about you, how you’re not included. None of that, I don’t think any of that anymore. I’m so busy thinking about what I’m here to do every day. I’m here to take care of myself. I’m here to become the next best version of me. I’m thinking about those things. And then I go around with this amazing optimistic positive love that I’m offering to the rest of the world.

My habits are very positive optimistic habits that are creating a life I love getting up every day to live. This is self-love. This is a very romantic life that I’m creating for myself. I want you to see how possible that is for you. You just need to intentionally almost be selfish. Be selfish, it feels selfish because you’ve always given everything away to everybody else without taking care of yourself. I want you to start doing that because I promise you, you are going to love being you. You’re going to feel so good in your own skin.

You’re going to love your life. You’re going to offer so much more love and value to the world when you really start 100% loving yourself and being generous with yourself, and being compassionate and caring and forgiving with yourself. And then it’s so obvious that you’re that way with everybody else. It’s so easy to be that way with everyone else. When you stop being so critical and judgmental of yourself and instead speak kind words and loving words and words of affirmation to yourself in the mirror.

You can look at your beautiful eyes every day often and speak beautiful words to yourself, generous words to yourself, affirmative words to yourself. That’s what it looks like. It looks like a romantic comedy. And then so many beautiful people are drawn to you. That’s how it works. That’s how it is. Your life is a movie, you romance yourself. You’re not disappointed when someone else isn’t giving you what you’re needing because you’ve already given it to yourself. It’s so fun you guys.

So this is your job, this is your work, and it becomes such a beautiful easy habit. And then you’re up-leveled to the next level automatically. And you’re treating yourself so well. You’re not overdrinking, you’re not overeating because you have so many positive loving emotions about yourself so you don’t have any need to avoid yourself anymore or numb yourself anymore. So you treat yourself with the utmost respect, with the utmost value in the highest regard.

And this is how you grow not only your self-confidence so that you’re able to do the things that feel really scary to you, that feel even a little embarrassing to you. You’re just like, “Well, it’s going to feel a little embarrassing but I’m going to put myself out there. I’m going to grow my business. I’m going to put aside the negative feelings and just be like yeah, I’m going to do it anyway. I trust myself.”

Self-love feels so safe. I just feel so safe in my own body, in my own mind, with my emotions. I can feel any feeling and still keep moving the needle forward, keep growing and keep expanding. So this is how I’ve grown my self-confidence and my self-concept. This is how my clients are growing their self-confidence and their self-concept by intentionally loving themselves. The secret, it’s a secret romantic life like I’m in my own movie. But instead of Nora Ephron, who of course I would pick to be the director, I’m choosing myself. I know how to direct my own movie, my own life. I know how to produce it.

I know how to be the lead actor in my own life. This is me, I know how to pick whatever the soundtrack is, the music that I’m in the mood for. The feelings that I want to feel every day. I live a very beautifully aesthetic life and I want you to create that for yourself. I wear beautiful clothes. I eat beautiful food. I drink a beautiful green juice and put nutritious, nourishing food and drink in my mouth every day and my body every day. I just fill myself up with every goodness that the universe has to offer me. I’m open to it.

And then this is another thing, I can receive compliments because I give myself compliments so I’m open to all of it. So when someone compliments me I just say, “Thank you.” I’m agreeing with them. I want you to notice that about yourself. When someone gives you a compliment, can you just say thank you and receive it and agree with it? Yes, I agree with you, this is who I am. I am beautiful. I am taking care of myself. I am kind.

When someone says, “Gosh, thank you so much for being so kind and generous, everywhere you go you bring positive energy.” You just go, “Thank you, yes. That’s my intention. That’s how I show up every day on purpose.” I can just agree with that. Or if someone says, “Oh my gosh, you look so beautiful tonight.” You can receive that with appreciation for yourself and for them. You say, “Thank you, I do receive that, and I do feel beautiful tonight, thank you so much.”

It’s such a different way of showing up. That is self-love, that’s a romantic life, that’s a way to show up to your life in a way that you’re so loving and that you’re so proud of so from being you. And then your life just keeps growing. Your capacity to receive all the romance, all the love, all the beauty that this world has to offer you, that your creator, that God, I just believe in all of it. I believe we’re here to receive all of it and that we’re all good enough and that we deserve it all, all of us, we all do, I do, and you do.

I just open myself up to receive it and it all keeps coming to me. So that’s what it is, it’s this beautiful secret life of romance, of romancing ourselves, of self-love. Every beautiful thing that we’ve ever wanted is on the other side of that, I promise you. Every day is just filled with so much passion and honesty and grace and fun and laughter and smiles and rest and care. And that’s what self-love feels like. It’s just safe. It’s safe to be me. It’s safe to be with me. I don’t even need to be with anyone else to feel comforted and safe because I give it to myself.

And so I’m always trusting myself. I believe in myself. And I love myself to wholeness, truly, truly, truly that’s how it works. So this is what I want to encourage you with today, I want to inspire you with today and I want to motivate you with today. Spend all the rest of this month loving yourself. Don’t think about loving anyone else, just love yourself because I promise you that you will never be not loving everybody else. Don’t even believe the thought, that is selfish if I do that. It’s okay to be selfish right now. I want you to be 100% completely selfish.

I want you to give yourself all the love that you’re needing and in return, I promise you 100% you will love everybody else in such a healthier way. Alright, that’s what I have for you today, happy Valentine’s Day. My lovely, gorgeous, beautiful friends I see you, I hear you, I pay attention to you, and it all comes from this self-love that I have grown from myself. That’s where it comes from and I want you to generate that self-love for you. And just know that all your dreams are on the other side of that. Alright, I love you, happy Valentine’s Day and I will see you next Thursday.

Thanks for listening to Reinvented After 40. If you want more information or resources from the podcast, please visit KymShowersLifeCoach.com.