46. Love Yourself Unconditionally

My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve learned that running more and eating less does not work for weight loss, and that there’s a better way. Now I help runners like you to get leaner and get stronger, so you can run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to episode number 46. of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today, we’re going over another one of the guiding principles from the Running Lean manifesto. And this one is: love yourself unconditionally.

So if you’re anything like me, and you’ve struggled with your weight ever, then you probably know what it feels like to kind of hate yourself. You know, you might hate how you look, you hate how you feel. You hate how you’ve let yourself go. You hate who you have become.

Wow, this is a very negative and very sad place to be. I know how it feels I’ve been there. But here’s the thing, you can’t accomplish anything positive from such a negative state of mind. When you feel like super crappy about yourself, you know, it’s almost impossible for you to do anything good to lose weight to feel better about yourself, you just can’t do it.

So in this episode, I’m going to be talking about how to break out of this negative mindset and how to stop hating yourself. Because the answer is to have unconditional love for yourself, to love yourself unconditionally. So I’m gonna explain how to do it.

But first, if you like this podcast, you need to come check out our Facebook group. It’s the Running Lean community on Facebook. And just to get you excited about this, I got a new challenge coming up in November. So starting Thanksgiving Day, we’re going to do a new challenge called running through the holidays. And I haven’t even talked to anybody about this yet.

So I’m not going to tell you what it is. But it’s going to be a fun way for us to all get through the holidays together to maintain our sanity and our health and to feel good about ourselves during the holidays. So I’m not gonna. I’m just teasing this right now, I’m not going to tell you all about it. So come to the Facebook group. And I’ll explain it all in there.

And we will be running this challenge through the Facebook group from starting on Thanksgiving Day here in 2020. Okay, cool. Just go to Facebook and search for Running Lean community. And you will find us there.

All right, so we’ve been talking about the principles from the Running Lean manifesto. So this is a set of guiding principles that I put together, that I want it to be our North Star, I wanted us to rally around some principles, some concepts, some values, some ideas that can kind of keep us grounded, that can kind of keep us moving towards our goals. These are like our North Star.

And I love that analogy of it’s always guiding the way. So the Running Lean manifesto is eight guiding principles and they are this: Number one is to eat real food. Number two is to live vibrantly. Number three is to thrive in your body. Number four is to embrace discomfort. Number five is to run because you love it. Number six is to love yourself unconditionally. Number seven, think, feel and act with purpose. And then eight be an example of what’s possible.

So we’ve already covered a bunch of these. Today we’re talking about how to love yourself unconditionally and why this is important and how to do it. But listen, these principles are some some things that you can kind of rally around and really understand these and really embrace these because when you do, this is like the key to living a healthy, vibrant, fulfilled life.

And it’s not rocket science. This isn’t super complicated, but it does take a little hard work and a little dedication. So just commit yourself to living by these principles. Like I’ve committed myself to living by these principles and just see What kinds of things you can accomplish in your life? I think you might just blow your own mind.

Okay, so today we’ve got principle number six from the Running Lean manifesto, and that is to love yourself unconditionally. Now, before I get into this topic, I just want to say this, this might seem like kind of a woowoo topic for some of you, you might be like, love yourself, unconditionally, Patrick, come on, but I want you to be open minded about this, I want you to just listen, and, and be open to these concepts, because they are important.

And all too often, we don’t like to talk about our feelings, we don’t like to talk about our emotions, we don’t want to talk about how we may not like ourselves, or how we may hate ourselves, or how we maybe should work on loving ourselves more like this is stuff that kind of feels uncomfortable to talk about sometimes. But you know what, I don’t care. I’m talking about it. And I want you guys just to be open to it. Cool. Are we on the same page?

Alright, let’s get into this. So here’s what we do. We beat ourselves up a lot. As human beings, we’re just naturally really good at this. You know, we engage in a lot of negative self talk. So we have something like 60,000 thoughts a day that run through our heads? We have these conversations that are constantly running in our minds, like there is constantly a dialogue, running chatter going on in our heads, right?

Can you relate to this? Does this sound like you? Because I hope so. Because I know, it’s not just me. But I have this going on all the time. I have these thoughts, these conversations, I have conversations with other people, complete conversations in my mind. Or I have a conversation with myself in my mind. That’s kind of bizarre.

I’m like, who’s talking? And who’s listening? And who’s watching all this happen? Like, is this all me? It’s all me. Anyway, so we have these conversations going on, we have all this chatter going on in our brain. And it’s typically kind of crappy, it’s kind of negative, right?

We have a lot of negative self talk, even if you don’t, even if you’re not conscious of it. And you don’t like consciously notice that happening in the moment. It might be running in the background, right? It’s kind of like there’s a, there’s a radio station playing in the background. And it’s like, you’re not good enough, you can’t do that. Who do you think you are? Look at you, you look at how much weight you’ve gained, you’re fat, you’re ugly, you know, we have all this stuff going on in our brains. And it’s like, it just never shuts off. Okay.

And a lot of this negative self talk that we have a lot of this chatter going on this negative Chatter is because we, we regret a lot of things from our past, you know, we have, we’ve done things in the past that we regret, or that we’re ashamed of, or that we’re embarrassed by. And we feel like we failed a bunch of times in the past.

And we keep replaying these scenarios over and over and over again, in our heads. So one of the things that we do, one of the lines of negative thoughts that we keep having negative self talk has to do with the past, okay?

Another stream of negative self talk is about the future, constantly thinking about how we’re going to fail in the future, or how we’re not where we want to be, and how, you know, I’m never going to get to my goal weight. And I’m never going to be able to stop overeating, and I’m never going to be able to give up sugar. And I’m never going to be able to, you know, run a marathon, because I just, I just can never do it.

I can never commit to whatever it is, we fail ahead of time. You know, we constantly tell ourselves how we can’t do X, Y or Z. So when we’re focused on all the negative negativity from our past, we’re looking at our future as being you know, some negative thing.

We cannot live in the present. We cannot have contentment, peace. We can’t love ourselves in the present, right? All we do is we just kind of hate where we are and who we are. And what happens is, we can really set ourselves up for a lot of not only disappointment, but we set ourselves up to fail in so many ways. And we don’t even realize it.

But our negative thinking, this like idea of hating ourselves, over time can really put us into a negative state that creates these terrible results in our life. For example, earlier this year, I found myself 40 pounds overweight, I found myself getting divorced, you know, my wife said she wanted to leave me, leave the marriage, or end the marriage, let’s just put it that way.

And I found myself delivering food at night, just to make ends meet. And I had gotten to this place where I had been beating myself up for so long, and kind of hating on myself for so long, that it manifested into all these circumstances I found myself in my life.

You know, the negative self talk I was doing got me 40 pounds overweight, the negative self talk I kept doing about not being able to lose weight, and it was too hard, and I can’t do it, that just kept me at that, at that weight, or kept me gaining weight. You know, and I would argue that my negative view of myself over the years, contributed to this marriage that just, you know, that came to an end.

You know, I’m not blaming her, I’m not blaming myself, 100% we all have our roles and these kinds of things. But I have to say that, you know, having such a negative view of myself contributed to that, you know, I think I felt like I was a bad person, you know, there was something wrong with me.

And, you know, that kind of contributed to that, playing out the way that it did. And then I found myself delivering food at night and thinking, man, my whole life is a failure, I am a failure. I kind of hated who I had become. And this is a terrible place to operate from. Nothing good is gonna come out of this, okay. But this pattern of hating on myself had been going on for a long time, for years.

You know, hating on myself got me where I was. It got me overweight, it got me to this divorce, it got me to delivering food at night. And it was this big eye opening moment for me. That hating on myself for all my past failures. And all the things I hadn’t accomplished and all the things I didn’t do, all the mistakes that I made, and hating where I was headed or my future, because it looked like it was so bleak and grim for me, you know, look, I’m overweight, I’m getting divorce, I don’t have, you know, a regular job.

I just had no love for myself in the present, I have been so focused on past failures, and so focused on this grim future that I couldn’t love myself in the present. So this is a very powerful form of self sabotage. When you hate yourself, how do you think you’re going to act? How are you going to show up? What are you going to do or not?

You know, how do you show up for yourself? When you don’t have any love for yourself? Do you keep moving toward your big dreams and your goals? Probably not. Do you stick to your food plan? You know, I said I’m gonna eat this. And this is exactly what I’m going to do. I feel so good about the…no, you’re not gonna feel terrible. Do you stick to your training schedule? So you’re training for that marathon?

No. Because it’s just this powerful self sabotage of hating on yourself. It keeps you stuck or sends you backwards. You get lazy, you say screw it, you start gaining weight, you stop running, whatever it is. And all this kind of self hatred comes from this constant stream of negative self talk negative thoughts that you just keep replaying over and over and over in your mind.

You know, thoughts are just sentences we say to ourselves in our minds, but we believe them, and we give them so much power, especially the negative ones. Negative thoughts lead to feeling negatively about ourselves. And negative feelings lead us to take negative actions or to take no action at all, inaction.

So we don’t stick to our food plan. We don’t get back to our workout schedule, we say, eff it a lot more. So you just eat whatever, whenever you feel like it. And all this stuff just leads to crappy results, you gain weight, you don’t hit your goals. You can’t accomplish good things from this state. You can’t hate yourself thin, I say this all the time.

So if you keep thinking, I’m a failure, I always fail, I can’t do it, this isn’t gonna work for me, then you’re gonna get all of those results. Keep thinking that over and over and over again, keep telling yourself that you’re gonna fail and guess what you will fail. Keep telling yourself, you can’t do it.

And guess what, you won’t do it, keep telling yourself, this won’t work for me. And guess what, it will not work for you. You cannot hate yourself thin, you have to love yourself through all of this. You have to have your own back. I talk about this concept a lot with my clients having your own back. And I want to explain what this means to you so that you understand this too, because this is a cool concept.

So what does it mean to have your own back? So imagine you’re out running with a friend. And you could be in a race, maybe you’re helping a friend get through their first half marathon, right? And you’ve done this a million times. And so you feel pretty confident you’re just out there to support them.

You’re helping them get through the tough part of this run. How would you show up for that friend? What would you say to them? I think you’d say things like, hey, I’m here for you, you got this, you can do it, you are a badass, come on, keep going, you’re doing great, you look great.

You can do hard things, you are crushing it out here, you are almost there. Come on, let’s go. Right, you’d be there to support them to encourage them to keep them motivated. You point out all the positive things you can about them, you’d push them, you’d make sure that they finished strong. So this is what it looks like to have someone’s back.

And when you do this, for someone else, it feels really good. Right? It feels good to be the one that’s doing the encouraging, the one that’s doling out all that love, all that positive Mojo, it feels good to be that person, right? Because you’re helping them do something big, you’re helping them get through something that’s uncomfortable. And it feels good to do this.

It’s very invigorating. I love doing this. I love helping people. That’s why I love coaching so much. You know, it’s such a big part of coaching is to give people encouragement and motivation and all that positive Mojo doling out the love, right. So you can dig deep within yourself when you need to help someone else, right?

You can dig deep within yourself and find that love and that encouragement to help push someone further even when it’s very challenging for them even when things are going very tough for them. Right.

So it’s very easy for us to do for others. But it’s very hard for us to do for ourselves. Why is that? You know, it’s it’s interesting, isn’t it? That it’s hard for us to do that for ourselves, even though we can do it so easily for others. But here’s the thing, you can do it, it works just as well, when you do it for yourself. Right? It feels just as good.

The answer here is that it’s not harder to love ourselves. It’s not harder to have our own back. But we just have all this negative self talk that’s always getting in the way. You know, if you can do this for someone else, which you can, I know you can. I know you’ve done this before, then you can do it for yourself. It just takes a little practice.

So some of the things you can practice is instead of practicing negative self talk, practice positive self talk. You know, instead of practicing feeling discouraged all the time, practice encouraging yourself. Instead of practicing thinking about all the ways that you’re going to fail or all the ways that you suck, practice thinking about all the ways you are going to succeed and all the ways that you are awesome.

And you can do this by just writing it down on a piece of paper. This is the easiest little exercise you can do. Write down all the things you love about yourself. Write down words of encouragement for yourself. Write down ways you can motivate yourself, just like you’d be motivating that person you’re running with to help them get across the finish line.

Do that for yourself. And I promise you, I promise you that when you start practicing this, when you write it down, when you read it every morning, and you start practicing, that, you know, showing this unconditional love for yourself, you’re going to start to feel so much more empowered, so much more confident, so much better about yourself.

You’ll stop living out in the past, living out those past failures, you’ll become excited about your future, you’ll begin to feel alive, and happy and confident right here in the present moment. And here’s the most important piece of this. Loving yourself unconditionally means without condition, so the unconditional part is important. Okay?

That means that you love yourself exactly as you are right now. It means that you love yourself at your current weight, no matter what that is. It means that you love your body, every inch of it right now. It means you love how you look in the mirror. It means having a positive self image, a holistic positive self image, you love your whole body, your mind, your feelings, your soul.

Unconditional love does not mean I love myself, but I hate my thighs, or I love myself, but I wish my belly was smaller, or I love myself, but I hate that number on the scale. Unconditional means without any conditions, period.

So I want to make sure we’re on the same page with this. This concept right here, you can love yourself exactly as you are right now and still want to change. You can have unconditional love for yourself and still want to lose weight.

You know, you can love yourself just as you are right now, and still want smaller thighs or to get rid of a belly, that’s totally fine. Right? It doesn’t mean you don’t want to improve yourself, right? You can love yourself and respect yourself right now and be constantly working to improve yourself.

Wanting to improve yourself doesn’t mean you have to hate yourself the way you are now, or that there’s anything wrong with you now, it just means that you’re always growing, you’re always improving, you’re always becoming more. So today, I practiced loving myself unconditionally, and I’m not perfect at it, I’ll be honest with you.

I don’t do a perfect job of this, but I practice it. You know, and, and there’s things about myself that I want to change, like, I’m still working on getting stronger and building some muscle. So I’m going to the gym and I’m lifting weights, you know, I can look at myself in the mirror and go, hey, hey, you, you look pretty good.

But at the same time, I’m like, I’d like to see my arms get a little bigger, get my chest a little bigger, you know, I want to look like just like I got some muscle on me, you know. And I’ve never been able to do that in my life. And so I’m like really working on that.

And I’ve seen some improvements over the last couple of months. Okay. So um, that’s something where I love myself now. And I can want to change, I can want to get better, I can want to improve, you know, my physical strength or my running endurance, okay? I love myself as I am. I don’t hate what I see when I look in the mirror anymore.

Okay, I don’t hate who I have become, I love who I have become. And I’m always becoming more. This is such a beautiful concept. I think that we can love ourselves now and want to become more. I love, love, love this. When you can begin to love yourself unconditionally. Even just practicing this a little bit you can begin to operate from a place of confidence and contentment and peace and power.

You have this abundance of confidence where you can see that you can actually achieve anything that you set your mind to. You’re not afraid to do things, you’re not afraid to feel like a failure or feel like a loser because you know that no matter what happens if you try something and you fail, that you have your own back.

To me, this is like having a superpower. This is why I’ve included it in the Running Lean manifesto. This is why it’s one of the important guiding principles of our life. It’s why it’s such an important piece of all the mindset work that you have to do. Because without unconditional love for yourself, if you want to become anything more than what you are, and who you are, right now, it’s gonna be really hard to do almost impossible. Okay?

So I want you to just start practicing this, start practicing, loving yourself unconditionally. And you do that by practicing positive self talk, write it down. Practice, having your own back, just like you’d have a friend’s back.

And here’s a little exercise you can do practice looking in the mirror, and loving and accepting every bit of who you are right now, every bit of your body, every bit of how you look, and every bit of who you are in this moment. That’s a tough one to do. But it’s powerful. And when you do these things, I promise you, you are going to begin to feel like there’s nothing you can’t accomplish.

There’s nothing you can’t do. Cool. Next week, I’m going to be covering the next principle from the manifesto, which is to think, feel and act with purpose. That’s going to be a good one. You don’t want to miss that. You got this, my friends, lots of unconditional love to each and every one of you. Keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.

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