#58 – Power of Self-Love: How Prioritizing YOU and Loving Yourself More Will Upgrade Your Life | Empowerment & Career Advice

[00:00:00] Loree Philip: Hi, and welcome to Daring to Leap.

[00:00:02] Loree Philip: I'm your host, Loree Philip. On this special Valentine's Day edition, we're celebrating love, starting with the most important kind, self love. With the radiant Kelsey Aida Join us to discover simple, transformative self love practices that you can start today. Because your journey to a more confident, vibrant life.

[00:00:27] Loree Philip: begins with making yourself the priority. And stick around to hear Kelsey's take on affirmations and the shifts we can make that will make them more powerful and exciting. Let's dive in.​

[00:00:42] Loree Philip: Kelsey Ada is this best selling author and alignment coach who helps women manifest their dream lives and love themselves deeply through the process. She's the author of more than five personal development books, including [00:01:00] Hashtag Actually I Can, Affirmations for Happiness, Letters to the Universe, My Pocket Guide to Manifestation, and Self Love.

[00:01:09] Loree Philip: For the modern woman alongside her book, she helps people via one on one coaching, online courses, and the popular spiritual podcast. Hi, vibing it. Welcome to the show,

[00:01:21] Kelsey Aida: Kelsey. Thank you, Loree. I'm super excited to be here and serve your audience. Can't wait. Yeah,

[00:01:29] Loree Philip: I'm so excited to have you here really. And I think where we're going to get started today is I'm so curious.

[00:01:37] Loree Philip: about your career journey. What were you doing before you wrote all those books and have been talking about self love and all the things?

[00:01:46] Kelsey Aida: Yeah. So my career journey is kind of interesting. My whole life, I was planning and preparing to be a professional dancer. So that was like my timeline and my project, my [00:02:00] projection.

[00:02:00] Kelsey Aida: But then as life would have it. I was, I got like really injured. Like my hip got messed up. My back got messed up. Like major parts of my body to the point where, and this was like, right before I was meant to really go pro and go to college and maybe study dance or join a company or something.

[00:02:18] Kelsey Aida: And. That just wasn't going to work for my body anymore. So that kind of spiraled me into like my first dark night of the soul, which eventually led to depression, which eventually led to healing, which led to me wanting to be a teacher of energetics and emotions and manifesting and self love and healing.

[00:02:35] Kelsey Aida: And what happened was I ended up becoming a cosmetologist. Instead of going to college, because growing up as a dancer, I was always just really like girly, girly, really crafty, really artistic. People were always asking me like cut their bangs to cut their hair, to do their makeup. And growing up when I was little, I would go to ballet class and the other moms would ask my mom, like, [00:03:00] how do you get her buns so perfect?

[00:03:01] Kelsey Aida: And my mom would just be like, I don't know, ask her. Like she does it herself. Ever since I was little, I was just really into. beauty and just finessing the body. And so my parents luckily were super encouraging and they were like, well since the dance thing, isn't really going to be a thing.

[00:03:18] Kelsey Aida: And you can't really think of something you want to study in college. Like, why don't you just become a beautician?

[00:03:23] Kelsey Aida: So I started like my own little business, beautifying my friends and stuff. And eventually went to cosmetology school, got my license, became a cosmetologist.

[00:03:33] Kelsey Aida: And when I was graduating cosmetology school and becoming a professional, it was kind of around the same time where I was healing from depression and wanted to start. Teaching people about emotions and vibration and frequency and life. And so I have kind of this parallel trajectory where I've always been a cosmetologist part time and still am to this day.

[00:03:52] Kelsey Aida: I only work two days a week at the salon. And then the rest of the time is what I use to write. books and have a podcast and host [00:04:00] retreats.

[00:04:00] Kelsey Aida: And so it's kind of been like a parallel, like two careers for me. And for anyone who's familiar with human design, I'm a manifesting generator. So we're very like notorious for being multi passionate, having many different streams of income, doing a lot of different things. Like we're not really meant to just choose a path and stick to it forever.

[00:04:19] Kelsey Aida: So I've always been dabbling in a lot of things and. That's kind of been my career. Part time beautician, part time healer and manifestation and self love coach.

[00:04:31] Loree Philip: Wow. What a journey. I just love hearing everybody's stories. And there's so much power in hearing. The stories of where people start off way over here and end up way over here doing something completely different because where we start is certainly not where we need to finish.

[00:04:51] Loree Philip: And just so that if anybody's listening, that's not familiar with human design, we are having [00:05:00] on it. I think it'll probably come out after Kelsey's episode because we're going to be talking about self love today in concert with Valentine's day. So Kelsey, let's talk a bit about self love because as I was mentioning earlier in the conversation, I really wanted to have this conversation around Valentine's Day, because we, we talk about love on Valentine's Day, you give Valentine's, you give gifts, you get candy, you get flowers, you tell people in your life that you love them, but in my opinion, we forget the most important person on the list when we're thinking about Valentine's Day, and that's ourselves.

[00:05:48] Loree Philip: Why is self love so, so, so important?

[00:05:52] Kelsey Aida: Yeah, so it's interesting first. I want to establish something about self love and this is gonna help a lot of people with it So [00:06:00] I think a lot of us like feel in our hearts that it's important. We've been hearing that it's important We're like, okay, I need to have better self care.

[00:06:07] Kelsey Aida: I need to love myself more but like how you know That's where the disconnect is. Like I don't really know what that looks like. That hasn't really been modeled to me Society's told me that it's narcissistic to love myself or that I should put everyone else before myself, or that's how I find value in the world or whatever it is.

[00:06:24] Kelsey Aida: We all have our blockages to self love, right? But self love, I think a lot of us interpret it as I need to like everything about myself in order to love myself. And because I don't, I'm not going to love myself. We think of love in the way that we use it with like pizza. Like I love pizza. I love, sexy cars. I love whatever it is that you love. I love my house, but it's it's different than just a next level. Like, yes, it's good to like, and appreciate things about yourself, but. You don't necessarily have to like everything about yourself in order to love yourself and show yourself [00:07:00] love to love yourself is to express love Towards you which could be in the form of having compassion Which could be in the form of getting to know yourself better understanding yourself more deeply which could be in Honoring your desires because you love yourself and you want you to go for what you want, you know so self love Can be expressed in so many ways and I think we just tie it too much to like Liking ourselves and liking things about ourselves when that's not Necessary in order to love yourself deeply and fully because for example, I don't like that I have a part of me that's like always anxious.

[00:07:40] Kelsey Aida: I tend to be a nervous Nelly I've always had some relationship with anxiety growing up, which I'm sure a lot of people can relate to and Once I realized that that part of me was just trying to protect me from bad things happening or trying to protect me from getting blindsided or trying to prepare me, I [00:08:00] came to understand this part of myself and realized, oh, she's on my side.

[00:08:04] Kelsey Aida: She's trying to help me, even if I don't like how, right? I don't like her, but I love her and appreciate her for trying to help me for the pure, Positive intention behind the anxiety. So it's like when you go deeper into every part of yourself, you realize that it's for you, it's impossible for you to be against yourself.

[00:08:23] Kelsey Aida: And then you can come around to loving it. Even if you don't necessarily always like it in the same way, like maybe you're super annoyed at your sibling and you don't like them right now. You don't want to hang out with them, but like you love them because they're your sibling. Right,

[00:08:35] Loree Philip: right. Yeah.

[00:08:37] Loree Philip: I love that clarification because we do get caught up in what is it and how do I even show it? And one of the things that came to mind when you were talking is that. Sometimes we might actually be like I, I do love myself. I don't, I don't have a problem with self love, but then our [00:09:00] actions say otherwise.

[00:09:02] Loree Philip: Right. And, and so and then what you do is, you put everybody's needs above yours, and you're the one that falls off the list every single time. And so, I think we need to figure out, back to if we can agree that it's important. It's we also have to realize that it's not just an idea, it's a practice.

[00:09:32] Loree Philip: Right. What are your thoughts on that,

[00:09:34] Kelsey Aida: Kelsey? Yeah, well, you bring up such a good point because I bet a lot of people listening to this are into personal development and if you ask them, do you love yourself? They'd be like, yeah, I love myself. I'm cool. I'm great. I help people. I do these amazing things in the world.

[00:09:47] Kelsey Aida: Like I used to think that all the time. But then, like you're saying, the actions are not reflecting accurately. Like you're not treating yourself the way you would like maybe your child who you love or your pet who you love or your spouse who you [00:10:00] love. And there's some sort of disconnect where it's like, Everyone else somehow became more important than you, and that, I think, comes from society, it comes from programming, it comes from our parents, it comes from our school just growing up, you're taught, be selfless serve others, and people find so much value in that, that sometimes they get lost in it, and it's not to say that you shouldn't serve others and be selfless and add value to the world, but it's don't make other people more important than you.

[00:10:32] Kelsey Aida: If you're placing everybody else up here and you're down here, that's one person less in the world that you could be helping, right? You could be helping yourself. So maybe if we make everyone of equal importance, then you're important. Everyone else is also important. And the more you love yourself, if you really are a selfless person, you can better serve everyone in your life and in your community when your cup is full.

[00:10:56] Kelsey Aida: It's like that famous analogy of pouring from an empty cup, right? What [00:11:00] do you have to give if you're running on empty and another. Perspective I like to offer with this is I was just talking to a lady who coaches nurses and she was like, Oh, nurses are so bad at self love and self care. You have no idea.

[00:11:12] Kelsey Aida: We don't eat. We take these long shifts. We overwork, we're stressed out, all this stuff. And I was like, man, that is so ironic because these people like love people when they're trying to help people. Right. And it's you're not, if you're a martyr. You have to think of this math. If you are trying to help someone else, but you have to do it at your own expense, then mathematically you didn't really help a person.

[00:11:37] Kelsey Aida: You just kind of swapped the pain, but there's not one more person in the world that was helped. It was just now you help that person, but you hurt yourself. So it was just like an exchange, but not really added value to the world, if that makes sense. So you have to think of it like. Yes, I want to help others, but how can I help myself first and then help them?

[00:11:57] Kelsey Aida: How can I love myself more [00:12:00] deeply and that makes love your heart more expanded? It makes your ability to love others easier, bigger, more impactful, so The people who are so about others and not themselves, it's just kind of questioning that and getting curious Hmm, what is the blockage there? Why am I putting myself last?

[00:12:20] Kelsey Aida: Why do I not deserve my own love the way that I so freely give it to everybody else? Hmm.

[00:12:28] Loree Philip: Yeah, that that is an excellent question because there there is a reason and sometimes we might get caught up in the idea of we get lost in the busyness my podcast. Listeners are women and we have a lot on our plates.

[00:12:45] Loree Philip: We have kids. We have careers. We have friends. We have husbands. We have a lot to do. And so sometimes I don't think it's a person thinking it's not that you don't love yourself. It's that [00:13:00] sometimes we just get lost

[00:13:01] Kelsey Aida: in the shuffle. Yeah, you just forget to prioritize.

[00:13:05] Loree Philip: Forget to prioritize. And then we, we actually don't know what we need because we're, we're so busy.

[00:13:13] Loree Philip: We're not even asking ourselves, what do we need? And so when I was having a conversation with somebody else, this idea came up because it was so useful to me. But one, in my opinion, one of the first acts of self love you can do is just listen to yourself. Take a couple minutes a day and just be with yourself and hear what you need, because we it's not like you're actively blocking it.

[00:13:41] Loree Philip: It's just that you're so busy and you haven't intentionally created a space to hear

[00:13:45] Kelsey Aida: it. Yeah, that's a really, really good tip and I'm gonna give a practice around this tip. So what everyone can do, especially if you're someone that's listening and you're like, oh, yeah, that's me. I always forget. Yeah, I do love myself.

[00:13:58] Kelsey Aida: I want to love myself. But how do [00:14:00] I practice this in daily life and actually execute it? And you can start with just sitting with yourself a few moments throughout the day. Maybe once in the afternoon when everything's crazy, just take a moment to check in. Even set a reminder on your phone, if that's helpful in the morning before you go to bed, just a couple of check ins throughout the day takes two minutes and you can ask yourself, just take a few deep breaths and ask, what do I need?

[00:14:23] Kelsey Aida: Like how you asked. And then also pose the question, like in this moment, in this instance today, No matter what decision you're trying to make, what would someone who loves themselves do? And whenever you ask that question, don't overthink it. Just go with what your intuition says. So if you're looking for a lunch in the fridge and you're like, okay, I don't know what I'm going to eat today, but I'm on this self love train.

[00:14:48] Kelsey Aida: What would someone who loves themselves do? Maybe it is the Mac and cheese. Maybe it is the salad. Like just go with your first intuition, follow that. And. That question, if you live your [00:15:00] life according to that question, you'll easily become a self loving person, but it's just not forgetting to ask.

[00:15:05] Kelsey Aida: So making a habit out of asking yourself that question and asking yourself, yeah, what do I need? What do I prefer? And this is a lot of the reason why I teach people to be in touch with their emotions because your emotions are always trying to tell you what you need. But sometimes they're so uncomfortable.

[00:15:21] Kelsey Aida: We don't want to be in it. So then we don't get the message from the emotion and we don't know what we need. So that's, that's a little bit more of a deeper piece, but just on the daily checking in with your needs fulfilling them for yourself as an act of self love, asking for your needs to be fulfilled by your partner or your kids or your babysitter, your support, that's an act of self love. I mean, there are a million ways to do the art of self love, right? To practice it, to do it for yourself. And that's a really good place to start.

[00:15:53] Loree Philip: Yeah. What a beautiful practice. If we could go back to some of the benefits a little bit. You [00:16:00] mentioned the, the analogy or the story that's often told around filling up your own cup and before you go in and pour into somebody else's.

[00:16:12] Loree Philip: And it's so true. It's there are so many reasons why you should love yourself. And it's okay, you will be better at everything that you do if you just take that. Space for yourself. If you just practice that self love for yourself first. And so maybe you're not even starting it out thinking, okay, this is for me.

[00:16:35] Loree Philip: This is for other people. And how could I best serve them is by serving myself. But then also. There is so much there if you can learn to deeply love yourself. What are some of the things that you've seen with people shift when they start to really love themselves and do the actions that show it?

[00:16:59] Kelsey Aida: Yeah, [00:17:00] so I'm glad you brought it back to the basics here because for anyone who needs that like reminder or maybe that extra push, I think this is going to be really good.

[00:17:08] Kelsey Aida: So I've written, like you said, the book called, it's actually called the mini book of self love for the modern woman. Cause it's only 40 pages and people who have read it and go through the processes that I write about in there, they usually write back to me and tell me that they have more inner peace.

[00:17:25] Kelsey Aida: because a lot of loving yourself is just having compassion, being patient, having understanding, allowing yourself to be where you are, allowing yourself to feel how you feel, just loving yourself through it all, like the act of just unconditionally hugging yourself. energetically speaking. So people find a lot of inner peace when they practice more self love.

[00:17:47] Kelsey Aida: They also find a lot more confidence because they're focusing on their value and the value that they bring to the world. Their relationships get better because your relationship with yourself [00:18:00] kind of sets the tone for all other relationships in your life. And if we really think about it, life is literally just a series of relationships.

[00:18:09] Kelsey Aida: We have a relationship. To the people in our lives, we have a relationship to work, we have a relationship to social media, to our homes, to our cars, to food, like everything is a relationship. So when you can master the one with yourself, or at least even just improve it, all the relationships around you elevate and become improved too.

[00:18:29] Kelsey Aida: And on that topic, a lot of what happens when you start to love yourself more. Energetically speaking, you raise your vibration and you become a vibrational match to better feeling circumstances, relationships, people, opportunities. So it's kind of like the ultimate manifestation hack, which is why it goes.

[00:18:47] Kelsey Aida: Hand in hand with what I teach about manifesting, like self love is the way if you want to manifest what you want and think of it this way, one of the biggest manifestation blockages that people have [00:19:00] is that they don't feel worthy or they don't feel that their dream is possible for them. So they don't even try.

[00:19:06] Kelsey Aida: But when you love yourself, you work through those worthiness issues. You reclaim your worthiness that was always there. It didn't go anywhere, but you just perceived that you weren't right. And when you reclaim that. Then you feel deserving again. And then when you feel deserving, you go for what you want.

[00:19:22] Kelsey Aida: You ask for what you need, like everything in your life can literally get better when you love yourself. And I've seen this over and over with people who have read that book. People have gone through my course. I have a course. On radical self love that gives like all the practices that I think are the best self love practices.

[00:19:39] Kelsey Aida: And that literally just changes every aspect of your life. I don't really know how else to hype it up more except for saying that self love, that's the energetic cheat code to everything you want on the other side, because a lot of If you want to define like a self loving person, [00:20:00] there are a lot of ways, but I would overarch it as like somebody who loves themselves, really cares about how they feel.

[00:20:08] Kelsey Aida: So if you care about how you feel, you're gonna go for better feeling things. experiences, thoughts, emotions, a life that feels good to you, that feels in alignment to you. And another big trait of people who love themselves is that they take positive ownership of themselves. In the same way, That you would take positive ownership of your kid or your pet or your spouse, like not, I own you, but I'm your caretaker, I'm your guardian, your well being is my well being if you're sad, I'm sad that type of energy, it's doing that for you, which a lot of people have lost sight of.

[00:20:47] Kelsey Aida: So, just thinking of the way that you treat the people that you love, how do you express love to them and then just do that for yourself? That's one of the easiest ways to get started.

[00:20:56] Loree Philip: Yeah, thank you for sharing that. It's, it's so [00:21:00] important. And the question I have is you mentioned worthiness and I'm curious if you have any tips around what a person can do if they're like, okay, Kelsey, I'm interested in, loving myself more, but I do have worthiness.

[00:21:22] Loree Philip: issues that have come up like what, what can that person do?

[00:21:26] Kelsey Aida: Yeah. Well, if this person was like my client, for example, I would probably ask them to get curious about the worthiness blockage and let's see like when it started, because Babies don't feel unworthy, right? They're like, give me food, change my diaper.

[00:21:43] Kelsey Aida: They feel very worthy and entitled to what they need, but then somewhere along the way that gets lost. So what happened and can you remember what happened or at least like. When you started developing this thought track of I'm not worthy. Cause maybe your parents went through a divorce [00:22:00] and then when you're a kid, you're so like narcissistic in the most genuine way, everything revolves around you.

[00:22:05] Kelsey Aida: So you make it about you. And then you're like, Oh, if I was better, my parents would have stayed together. And so I'm not worthy of whatever. Right. So. Usually these beliefs that we're not worthy, they come when we're younger and we can't like make sense of things or if our inner child is kind of running the show in our mind and we just subconsciously come to that conclusion when something bad happens, right?

[00:22:27] Kelsey Aida: Oh, it didn't happen. That must mean that I'm not worthy or that guy was mean to me, which must mean that I'm a piece of whatever, but it doesn't actually mean that we just subconsciously come to these conclusions. So I would. Challenge people to ask themselves the question and just reflect back on when did I start to feel unworthy or when was the biggest time I felt the most unworthy?

[00:22:53] Kelsey Aida: Or when did I start like just feeling in general that I wasn't enough or that I wasn't [00:23:00] worthy or that I wasn't lovable because there's different variations of the unworthiness wound. And then. Once you can start to kind of feel into that with compassion and openness, we're just being curious.

[00:23:11] Kelsey Aida: We're not judging our experience. We're not going back into it and getting upset again. We're just like Let's get curious. Let's see. And from there, you can start to gain some clarity like, Oh, yeah, I made that experience mean that I wasn't worthy, or I interpreted that as I'm not enough, or this pattern kept happening to me.

[00:23:32] Kelsey Aida: And so I made it mean that People don't love me or whatever. And so when you can get curious and kind of start to connect the dots, it makes it a lot easier to unconnect the dots and be like, okay, this happened to me, but really it doesn't mean that I'm not worthy. It just means that that happened to me.

[00:23:52] Kelsey Aida: Bad things happen to good people. It doesn't mean you're a bad person. Right? So you kind of have to redefine the story. that you [00:24:00] subconsciously defined so long ago. Or maybe it was recently. Maybe it was just a breakup or something that happened where you're like, oh, I'm not worthy of love or I'm not worthy of money or whatever it is.

[00:24:09] Kelsey Aida: So going back in time and trying to find kind of that start point is really helpful. But if you can't, just kind of getting to the root of well, if you think other people are worthy, which most people do, they would say, oh, that person's worthy, but not me. That person's worthy, but not me. Like, why not you?

[00:24:27] Kelsey Aida: What makes you so special in a negative way that you're somehow the one that's not worthy, but everybody else is worthy? Like, did you murder someone? Probably not. And even if you did some would argue that you're still worthy. So, I mean, it's just really asking those philosophical questions of like, why not me?

[00:24:46] Kelsey Aida: Why do I think everybody's worthy except me? And then just getting curious about that. Hmm.

[00:24:52] Loree Philip: Yeah, that would be a great, a great start. I love the idea of curiosity. And I think We're sometimes we get caught up in, [00:25:00] in kind of going through in, in doing some of this work about our prior experiences is, is we miss the compassion piece and we get there and we're reliving it and we're like, but, but yeah, just we're just curious.

[00:25:16] Loree Philip: We're just observing, we're just trying to understand. What happened and and just kind of look at it from a little bit of a distance how you would look at if it was somebody else's experience, right? Mhm. So I want to shift gears a bit, Kelsey. I am curious about your take on affirmations. It's something that I think is important, and I do my own affirmations, and I think they can be quite powerful, and I know some people aren't into it, but what is your viewpoint on affirmations?

[00:25:53] Loree Philip: Do they work? How could we do them right? Like, all that kind of stuff.

[00:25:57] Kelsey Aida: Yeah, so I do think that affirmations [00:26:00] work when they either make you feel a sense of relief or expansion. And I say relief or expansion because Not all affirmations are meant to make you feel like zing. Some are just meant to help you get out of the hole that you're mentally or emotionally in.

[00:26:20] Kelsey Aida: So my first book was actually all about this called hashtag. Actually I can. And the subtitle is the art of affirming yourself to greatness because I believe affirmations are an art and a skill where. The old fake it till you make it approach, I don't like it. Like, the 80s vibe of I'm a millionaire, just say it a million times until you are a millionaire.

[00:26:41] Kelsey Aida: That does feel good for some people, but for most people, if they're not actually a millionaire, they're gonna feel like a liar, they're gonna feel like a fraud they're gonna have imposter syndrome. They're going to just have an internal disconnect and it's not going to feel good and it's not going to help them to become a millionaire.

[00:26:56] Kelsey Aida: Right. In this example, so what you [00:27:00] have to do with affirmations is find the verbiage and the wording that makes you feel open and expansive, or at least relieved that brings you up a little bit in mood or vibration that is still like authentic to where you are now, but. Opens you and like fast forwards you into where you want to go.

[00:27:21] Kelsey Aida: So let's say if you're single on Valentine's Day and you're like, man, I would love to have a relationship. Instead of saying I'm in a loving committed relationship. And then you feel dumb. Cause you're like, I wish I was in a loving committed relationship. You would say an affirmation. That's I'm open to meeting my person. I'm really excited to meet my soulmate soon. I am preparing myself to be in the best relationship I've ever been in. I am loving the the you know what out of myself and I can't wait for my partner to do the same. So it's Yes, you're keeping it in the present tense, but it's more real, and it's more fun, and it's more accessible, [00:28:00] and it's more open.

[00:28:01] Kelsey Aida: It's just opening you to the possibilities that you want, versus saying that this is so right now, and that doesn't work for most people.

[00:28:10] Loree Philip: Yeah, yeah, I, I completely agree with there is a bridge that needs to be created, and depending on how negative your beliefs are, the, the actual bridge belief might just be, I'm open to the idea that I could possibly Be in a relationship that, it's just it's the kind of turning yourself around slowly, but surely into the direction that you want.

[00:28:40] Loree Philip: And because our mind and is so powerful, as you start to make that shift, you will start to feel the difference and see the difference. What what is your recommendation in terms of. How often should we affirm ourselves and is this like a daily thing, a three times a day thing?

[00:28:59] Loree Philip: [00:29:00] What are we doing here?

[00:29:01] Kelsey Aida: Yeah. So the practice of affirmation. So if you think about it, we're kind of like always affirming ourselves, but is it for better or worse? Right? So whatever you're saying about yourself in your head or whatever you're saying about your life in your head is an affirmation. You're saying this is true.

[00:29:18] Kelsey Aida: This is reality. This is it. So it's really noticing that you're already doing that. And then making sure that you're being selective and choosy about the thoughts you want to program yourself with and the affirmations you want to affirm. Right. If you're like, Oh, I suck at this thing. You could be like, Oh, I'm noticing that I'm making an affirmation about this.

[00:29:38] Kelsey Aida: I don't want that to be like, I don't need to reinforce that. I suck at this thing. Right. Maybe I do, but I don't need to say it in my head. So I could shift, I could notice. And then I could shift I really want to get better at this thing. I'm open to being better at this. I'm ready to practice this more, whatever it is.

[00:29:54] Kelsey Aida: So it's like catching yourself in the moment, which is all day, every day, or what I think [00:30:00] more of your question was too, but I just wanted to get that out of the way. It's like intentionally practicing the affirmations and there's so many fun ways to do it. So if you're a meditator, you can pick an affirmation for the day.

[00:30:11] Kelsey Aida: You can meditate on it. If you're a journaler, I like first thing in the morning to just open your journal. Write down a list of affirmations that feel good in that moment. Today's gonna be a great day. I woke up on the right side of the bed, I am feeling really good whatever it is. I'm going into some affirmations there.

[00:30:30] Kelsey Aida: I also sometimes have my students and my coaching clients like set little affirmations on their phone and they'll go off throughout the day. So whether it's I love you or I'm great at this, or life is good, or whatever the affirmation is that you just wanna keep repeating, it'll just go off like.

[00:30:46] Kelsey Aida: When you're doing stuff and Oh yeah, you just have that little reminder. So it's really as much or as little as you want to play with them. Like it's your affirmation practice.

[00:30:56] Kelsey Aida: So there's like a million ways to work with affirmation. So I would say just play [00:31:00] around and you don't have to be rigid with it.

[00:31:02] Kelsey Aida: Oh, I have to do morning, afternoon, night, just find the time that works for you and throughout the day, just watch your thoughts.

[00:31:09] Loree Philip: Yeah, I want to double down on what you brought up earlier, which is that we are already affirming ourselves. And what's cool about it is that when you're intentionally deciding these are the things I want to affirm, You get to change your narrative in your head and, and in a lot of cases that will change your life if you're consistent with it, if you believe it, if you, if you dedicate yourself to, to making it happen.

[00:31:40] Loree Philip: And so it's like, if you're already doing this in your brain, might as well decide what it's going to. What you're going to tell yourself in the future, and our, our brain doesn't know truth from not truth. It doesn't, like if you, if you visualize something, your brain [00:32:00] thinks it's real, the neuropathways in your brain are created, and I think it, it thinks it really happened, and so that's how powerful it is to decide, hey, yeah, this is how I think now, but actually I can think this way in, in the future, and I can start now.

[00:32:15] Kelsey Aida: and to your point, a belief is just a thought you keep thinking. So, any belief that you have, you can change it by thinking a new thought over and over and over and finding supporting evidence of the new and kind of deconstructing the old. And, I wanted to say, My co host of my podcast, HiViabinit, she's a hypnotherapist.

[00:32:33] Kelsey Aida: Her name's Lindsay Robinson. She's awesome. And she taught me, she always says, that your most programmable voice your most susceptible, hypnosis wise, to your own thoughts, and your own voice, and your own words. So yes, other people can program you and put stuff in your head, but ultimately, you're the most powerful for you.

[00:32:54] Kelsey Aida: So whether you're recording affirmations in your voice, whatever you're saying in your head, And I wanted to add what you're [00:33:00] speaking out loud to other people, like the way you talk about yourself, the way you talk about your life is muy importante. So just take note. And if you want it to be better, make it better.

[00:33:11] Kelsey Aida: But you have to notice first, like what it is that you're saying, what it is that you're speaking, what it is that you're thinking, and then be like, okay, does that make me feel the best I could feel about this? Maybe not. Okay. Let's shift it. How can we shift it? So I feel at least more relaxed or more relief or more expansion or more excitement, whatever it is that you're going for with the affirmation.

[00:33:31] Loree Philip: Yeah, it's, I'm glad you brought that up. It is so true and we can shift it and I don't want people to get bogged down when you hear a negative thought and beat yourself up again about it. No, you get to decide and you can think, yeah, I used to think that, but now I think this. Now

[00:33:51] Kelsey Aida: I kind of shift.

[00:33:52] Kelsey Aida: Cause 2 2 could be five minutes ago too. I used to think about myself a few seconds ago, but now I don't That was the [00:34:00] old me from two seconds ago, I don't say that about myself anymore starting now.

[00:34:04] Loree Philip: That's great.

[00:34:05] Loree Philip: Let's co create a affirmation for our listeners today that they can use to start to Think about expanding their self love and focusing on their well being. So when I was just thinking about it a minute ago, I was thinking something around I'm open to expanding the love for myself and spending more time on my well being, or something like that.

[00:34:32] Loree Philip: Yeah! What comes to mind for

[00:34:34] Kelsey Aida: you? Yeah, we can just rattle them off. What comes to mind for me would be something along the lines of I'm excited to receive my own love. I'm excited to receive my own gifts. I'm excited to receive my own warmth and appreciation. Like things that you give to other people think about giving to yourself like, Oh, that would feel nice.

[00:34:53] Kelsey Aida: That would feel juicy. Like I'm excited to start doing that more. That's a good one.

[00:34:58] Loree Philip: Oh, I love that one. I love it [00:35:00] because it is exciting. Right? I mean, we We, if you can imagine the love we all pour on out on everybody else and the power that would feel if you actually turned it around and focused it in on yourself.

[00:35:16] Loree Philip: Wow. That, that would feel amazing.

[00:35:20] Kelsey Aida: Well, I want to start to wrap this up, Kelsey, we're running out of time, and I feel like I could talk to you for hours, but do you have any last closing thoughts or pep talk you want to give to our listeners around self love, affirmations, anything in your field of expertise?

[00:35:41] Kelsey Aida: Yeah, let me see, let me tune in and see exactly. The message that your audience needs.

[00:35:47] Kelsey Aida: Okay. The first thing that's coming through is that it's natural to love yourself. So don't feel like so bombarded by the process of Oh my God, such a chore. I don't know how, like that's your natural instinct. So we're [00:36:00] just undoing some bad habits and coming back into your natural flow of self love.

[00:36:03] Kelsey Aida: So that's the first thing it's natural. Don't get discouraged. Don't get overwhelmed. Like to love yourself is natural. And also to. Do actually what you were saying earlier, which is to just spend more time with yourself, listening to what you need, what you like, what you want, what would feel good for you.

[00:36:25] Kelsey Aida: Just allow yourself that permission. I think the strongest energy that's coming through right now is give yourself permission to love yourself. Give yourself permission to spend more time with yourself. Give yourself permission to. Ask for what you need, give yourself permission to go for what you want.

[00:36:45] Kelsey Aida: Like only you can give yourself that permission. And that is one of the most self loving things you can do.

[00:36:53] Loree Philip: Thank you so much for that, Kelsey. It's so powerful. What came through to me was give yourself permission to have [00:37:00] more space for yourself. And so that you have time to do all of what Kelsey just said.

[00:37:07] Loree Philip: So thank you so much, Kelsey. Where can Listeners find you online, learn more about you, your work, your books.

[00:37:16] Kelsey Aida: Yeah, so people can find me at KelseyAida. com. That's my website. That's where, where you'll find the mini book of self love, which is like a great place to start. You'll also find my radical self love book.

[00:37:29] Kelsey Aida: course there, which is also an awesome life changing thing. I host self love retreats for women. I don't have one on the books yet, but I am starting a wait list. So that's where you'll find that. So lots of self love resources and opportunities there. And then my podcast high vibe in it. Always talking about self love.

[00:37:46] Kelsey Aida: We have hundreds of episodes. A bunch of them are dedicated to self love, self care. So that's a great free resource. And I'm just Kelsey Aida on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, everywhere. You can find me posting [00:38:00] about manifesting self love. So yeah, just search Kelsey Aida.

[00:38:04] Loree Philip: Well, thank you so much for your time, your energy, your vibe, and I appreciate you so much.

[00:38:10] Loree Philip: Thank you, Kelsey.

[00:38:12] Kelsey Aida: Yeah. Thank you. This has been fun.

[00:38:14] Loree Philip: Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you've enjoyed it, I would love for you to subscribe. If you're already a subscriber, don't forget to share the podcast with a friend.

[00:38:26] Loree Philip: Make sure to tune in next week. We will be speaking with Jennifer McCollum about the leadership lessons that she has learned on her path to becoming a sought after CEO. I hope you have an amazing week. It's your time to shine. Bye.