Self Improvement and Self Love.
From episode 4 of The Eric Chow Empowers Podcast: why growth starts with accepting yourself, and three ways to begin.
From The Eric Chow Empowers Podcast Episode 4, Discussing Travel, Self-Love, and Time-Management with Annie Lai. Published August 22nd, 2019.
“In order to find yourself, you have to like yourself.”, Annie Lai.
Traveling alone is a great journey of self-discovery. But if you aren’t self-confident, or have self-love, if you’re concerned with what people think of you you won’t be able to enjoy the trip. If you’re thinking “this person is judging me” then you’ll never be able to create conversation or enjoy what is going on around you. However, if you’re comfortable in your own skin, that won’t be a problem. You will be comfortable talking to people, enjoying the environment around you, enjoying the trip.
This quote doesn’t just apply to traveling alone, any journey of self-discovery depends on one’s ability to love and accept themselves. To have an attitude of growth, you have to accept yourself as who you are, and then find steps from which to grow from. If you don’t accept yourself, the energy of putting yourself down and feeling horrible about yourself will only hurt you and prevent you from moving forward.
When one accepts themselves, you can start to also step out of your comfort zone and try new things, opening levels for exploration and experimentation that creates growth. If one is not confident, one will not feel comfortable enough to step out of their comfort zone for fear of being judged and ridiculed.
For example, meeting strangers is often uncomfortable. Having an open-mind, a positive attitude will allow the interactions to go better. If they don’t go well, you’ll be able to say “it’s okay that they don’t want to interact” because you are comfortable and confident in yourself. A great way to start is by complimenting the stranger, or by making a light teasing joke to spark conversation.
People want to improve themselves, its natural. Again, to do so, one must start by accepting themselves. A good place to start is from getting self-awareness of what triggers and angers you. Once you know your behavior tendencies, you are able to identify potential problems that you want to solve.
Another great place to start is how we deal with problems in our lives. We often spend excessive time & energy complaining about little things. Spilling something, our parents insisting that we do our chores, some “stupid” assignment we have to do. Take a step back and realize that the little things don’t matter to the big picture. Plus, as we worry about the little things, the big things pass us by. Focusing on these little things do not benefit us, in fact, it makes things worse. One small thing leads to us being negative for the rest of the day. Ask yourself this, as Jay Shetty says, did you have a bad day or did you have a bad 5 minutes that you dwelled on for the rest of the day?
Tell yourself “this doesn’t matter. I should not be spending time freaking out about this. I have more important things that I want to focus on.” What we often don’t realize is that we waste our time & energy complaining, when instead we could be moving forward with our lives or coming up with solutions. Plus, while we complain about things that suck, they often really aren’t that difficult. For me, I complain plenty, but I always do the task at hand regardless. I might do it begrudgingly, but at least I’m not wasting time and energy.
Life is about priorities. It’s about what you do while you’re awake. Let’s use our imaginations. Imagine you had $86,400 deposited in your bank account at the start of the day, and at the end of the day whatever was left would disappear. The next day you would get an additional $86,400. I’m guessing you wouldn’t waste that money. No, you’d spend all of it, or invest it. We don’t get that money, unfortunately, but what we do get is 86,400 seconds.
We all have the same 24 hours in a day, the same 1440 minutes a day, the same 86,400 seconds in a day. The difference in this analogy is that one may seem more valuable than the other. It’s one second or one dollar. But realize that one second, or one dollar can’t get very much. But 600 seconds, or 100 minutes is a lot of time, just like how $600 is a lot of money. Another difference is that we can always go earn more money. We can never get more time.
Sure, we have to spend time on errands, chores, and other things we don’t want to do. But why not spend the rest of our days doing what we value, what brings us joy.
The third suggestion we have is a “5 Second Rule for Action.” We often think about doing something, but fear & doubt hold us back from it. Talking to that stranger, going out, getting on the swings even though we’re adults. The rule says, whenever you think of something that might scare you, make a move towards doing it within 5 seconds. Fears & doubt take a moment to activate, to make you question yourself. So start moving towards that stranger, open that tab on Google to search something, start getting dressed. Make the ask, make the move to accomplish something, don’t let yourself be held back. In facing your fears and doubts, you will gain respect for yourself and grow from it. You’ll learn you are capable of more than you think you are.
I hope you guys enjoyed this summary / look into episode 4 of my podcast episode with Annie. If you haven’t listened to it and want to hear more about these topics, check out the link below. There is definitely more to the episode that what I’ve covered in this article, so check it out.
Listen to episode 4 of The Eric Chow Empowers Podcast (opens in a new tab)
First published on Medium (opens in a new tab) on August 29, 2019. Lightly edited for this site.
