Living Lucky® Podcast with Jason and Jana Banana

Love Yourself MORE

• Jana and Jason Shelfer • Season 8 • Episode 44

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Silence Your Inner Critic: 3 Powerful Practices to Love Yourself MORE 

Ever catch that nagging inner voice saying, "You should be further along" or "Why haven't you figured this out yet?" You're not alone. In this deeply insightful episode of the Living Lucky® Podcast with Jason & Jana Banana, we uncover how these critical narratives are often "adopted words" we've internalized and now use against ourselves.

Inspired by a raw and relatable moment on reality TV, we dive into the essential practice of self-love – not just as a concept, but as a tangible shift in how you speak to yourself and show up in the world. We share three powerful, practical exercises that can create profound change, starting right now.

Here’s what you’ll discover:

  • The "Adopted Words" Trap: Recognizing Your Inner Critic's Origins: Understand how negative self-talk often stems from internalized messages from others.
  • The Mirror Revolution: Activating Self-Compassion Through Words & Sight: Learn a simple yet powerful exercise that can create physiological changes in your brain by looking in the mirror and offering yourself genuine pride.
  • Journaling for Clarity & Reframing: Catching and Changing Limiting Beliefs: Discover how daily reflection can help you identify and rewrite the negative stories you tell yourself.
  • The Power of Physical Self-Compassion: The Havening Technique: Explore how self-hugging can reinforce self-love at a deeper, more visceral level than words alone.
  • Celebrating Your "Small Wins": Giving Yourself the Recognition You Deserve: Learn why acknowledging your daily accomplishments is crucial for building self-worth.
  • The Ripple Effect: How Loving Yourself Attracts More Love: Understand the profound connection between your internal relationship and the positive experiences you draw into your life.

Ready to cultivate a deeper, more loving relationship with yourself? Tune in to the Living Lucky® Podcast and start practicing these transformative techniques today!

How to stop negative self-talk. How to practice self-compassion. Techniques to build self-love and acceptance. How to identify and overcome limiting beliefs. Why is self-love so important for happiness? Simple exercises to improve self-esteem. How to change your inner dialogue to be more positive. How can I love myself more? How to stop my inner critic? What are some self-compassion

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The 4 pillars of Living Lucky
Believe in yourself
Believe in the people around you
Believe in your circumstances and
Believe that God is working through you, for you, and always conspiring in your favor.

*Previously Recorded

Jana Shelfer:

Are you ready to create a life you crave? Let's spin that doom loop of negativity into an upward success cycle and start Living Lucky®.

Jason Shelfer:

Good morning.

Jana Shelfer:

I'm Jana, I'm Jason and we are Living Lucky®. You are too. We're talking about loving yourself.

Jason Shelfer:

You've got to love yourself.

Jana Shelfer:

I was watching. I'm just obsessed. So I'm going to tell you what it is. It's called Married at First Sight Australia Version, and this is an old show I think it's from 2023, but I'm obsessed with it.

Jason Shelfer:

Well, there's a lot in it about how people are. It's like, how do we show up in the world and how is it the way we think about ourselves that creates the way we show up?

Jana Shelfer:

I love shows about love. I know it's a guilty pleasure of mine. However, there's this character on there and she was asked the question do you love yourself?

Jason Shelfer:

And she immediately got emotional and then she said it hit her right in the heart.

Jana Shelfer:

It hit her so hard and then she said I should love myself more.

Jason Shelfer:

Yes.

Jana Shelfer:

And I actually paused it and I watched it maybe 10 times. I kept rewinding and watching how hard that hit her and her reaction to that and then the way it affected me. And then I asked okay, jason, what do you think about that? Because you and I have actually done a love yourself challenge and we had probably it was like 25, 30 people that showed up regularly.

Jason Shelfer:

Mostly women, but also some men, I think. I think out of the 30 people there were probably two or three guys and we went through. I think, gosh, we had 10 lessons it was no, it had to be close to 14 lessons?

Jana Shelfer:

yeah, because I think we did it every single day for two weeks To love yourself.

Jason Shelfer:

And it was amazing how much it transformed us as we were creating that challenge.

Jana Shelfer:

people recognize where they could love themselves more and then living into that instead of living into the kind of the self-abuse that sometimes we land in, or just in the hypnotic rhythm of life that we live in every day. We had exercises of just looking in the mirror and saying I'm proud of you. I'm proud of you today Out loud.

Jana Shelfer:

I'm proud of you today, and saying it out loud and looking yourself in the eye when you say it, because you trust yourself more than you trust anyone else. Because how many times does that inner voice inside us beat ourselves up?

Jason Shelfer:

Yeah, say you could have done better you should have done. Sometimes that inner voice shoulds all over us. It says you're not good enough.

Jana Shelfer:

Or you know why would they love you? You're not skinny enough, You're not pretty enough, You're not.

Jason Shelfer:

On that I'm proud of you. When you're looking in the mirror and saying I'm proud of you to yourself, like, say your name, say like, for me it's like Jason, I'm proud of you. And then pick something Like I'm proud of you for showing up every day.

Jana Shelfer:

Tana, I am so proud of you for resting yesterday. Right and how often Taking care of your shoulder, which was telling you that it needed rest.

Jason Shelfer:

Take a break. And how often will we decide that, hey, I do need rest, I'll take the rest, but the whole rest period we're beating ourselves up saying I should be doing something, I need to be doing something differently. We're shitting all over ourselves and that stinks.

Jana Shelfer:

I'm so proud of you for waking up and making the bed. Right, I mean, that's such a small little thing, but how many times do we tell ourselves of what we didn't get done during? The day or that we didn't do things well enough, or that we. You know what I'm saying.

Jason Shelfer:

And how often do we just not acknowledge the things that we do?

Jana Shelfer:

However, if it was our six-year-old child, Be so proud of them. We would be not only so proud of them. Oh my gosh you made the bed, we would vocalize it and we would make such a big deal about it.

Jason Shelfer:

Oh, my God, you made the bed today. That just gave me chills. Wow, how can you acknowledge your wins as if you were acknowledging them to your five or six-year-old Six-year-old Jana. Doing the best that she can.

Jana Shelfer:

Holding my meanie doll, literally showing up doing the best that she knows how. And then I hear 50-year-old Jana saying oh my God, look at this gut.

Jason Shelfer:

You could do better.

Jana Shelfer:

Oh my God, you're eating way too much. Why didn't you go exercise? And here you are laying on the couch. You're why.

Jason Shelfer:

Why are you taking a break?

Jana Shelfer:

Right.

Jason Shelfer:

You got things to do.

Jana Shelfer:

Why don't you have more energy? You know, like gosh, and then I think, gosh, that six-year-old Jana is just, and I would say that, waking up, doing the best she can, eating the foods that have been given to her.

Jason Shelfer:

Yeah, in every moment of life. I believe that we are all doing the best that we can with what we have our energy levels, our emotional capacity, our intellectual and physical capacity but our subconscious mind, or that inner voice, has an intellectual knowing that, hey, yes, I'm growing, there's things to get to and I'm not there yet and we've been told that there's a timeline on things. So that inner voice is like, is going to tell us oh, you got to get there, you got to. You're not doing enough, you need to keep going harder, you need to work harder, all these things. And we're either listening to that or we're celebrating ourselves and loving ourselves a little bit more and saying, okay, what is it that I really need right now?

Jana Shelfer:

Well, for some reason, though, that inner voice need to have been there we're falling behind 10 years ago. It feels like that's crazy. It it almost is condescending Like why haven't you figured this out by now?

Jason Shelfer:

Oh, that's so. That's one of those sounds that I very much recognize.

Jana Shelfer:

Right yeah, why haven't?

Jason Shelfer:

you figured it out yet. Because for years when I was so, I remember being told if you haven't figured it out, you haven't tried hard enough. That was the so that's the sound that I hear in my head often If you haven't figured it out, you're not trying hard enough. So what that created in me was the need to kind of bury my head in learning, studying, was the need to kind of bury my head in learning, studying, reading over again.

Jana Shelfer:

And you try so hard, to the point where sometimes your threshold for pain my threshold for pain is off the charts. Is intolerable. It's off the charts For a normal person, I feel.

Jason Shelfer:

But this is also what I found out is when I would put my head down and quote unquote try harder by figuring things out. I look up and the crowd was gone. So if I like, it's a, it's like all my peers everybody else was already moved ahead because they were, they had their heads up, they were discussing it together and kind of working out options where I was like, oh, if I haven't figured it out, I need to try harder and there's more I need to do. So it was like just, and I buried myself in it, which got me kind of stuck.

Jana Shelfer:

Which gets you even more buried sometimes, where? Sometimes, if you just look around and you see other people doing it, you go okay, how are they doing it?

Jason Shelfer:

Let me just copy what they're doing and what if I just experiment with it, like instead of trying to get so intellectual, because I was like I didn't feel like I was smart enough and so I would try to get more intellectual knowledge instead of applicable or practical application, and other people were having getting the practical application while they were discussing and which created that knowledge, which was really weird.

Jana Shelfer:

But that was just me not loving myself. This is the first time you've told me this.

Jason Shelfer:

It was me feeling like I wasn't enough. It was me feeling like I was believing some false truths. So my inner voice was telling me a lot of like you're not enough, you're not smart enough to figure it out, you can't do it. And what I needed to do was just love myself, realize that I'm perfect and wonderful.

Jana Shelfer:

Yeah.

Jason Shelfer:

And allow myself the freedom to show up in that beautiful and wonderful self and, honestly, if I could love myself more when I was younger, there would have been a different energy in me, and that's what I'm recognizing now because I love myself so much. However, I still believe there's always space for loving myself more, like there's no limits to love. I love you as much as I can, but then I also recognize I can love you more Right, which is crazy.

Jana Shelfer:

You know, you actually told me last night. You said, janna, I wish you loved yourself as much as I love you. And I thought to myself I don't know if that's possible. I know all things are possible, but I don't know if I could love myself as much as you love me. What?

Jason Shelfer:

if, what, if we, what, if it was, what, like what the possibilities are are amazing and they're and they're limitless. And I, that's what, that's one of the things I find beauty in as a coach, as a person that works with people, because we can always, we always have space to love ourselves more. We always have space to love others more, and then when we, when we're fully encompassed by love, you show up so differently and the universe loves you more, like the universe loves you all, like with everything it has right now. God, universe, however you want to say it, and there's still more that we don't recognize, your energy is a little bright right now, jason, I'm not turning down. I'm not turning it down. I love it. This lights me up.

Jana Shelfer:

Oh, this is great. Okay, so give us five practical steps of how we can love ourselves more. Let's go with three just to keep it simple.

Jason Shelfer:

Let's do that, you know. And the first thing is I think we talk about journaling a lot, Like you've made some beautiful, wonderful journals.

Jana Shelfer:

I have. I love journaling.

Jason Shelfer:

I love journaling and I really like journaling in your journals because they and it's probably because I know that you created them and you put a lot of heart in them and fun.

Jason Shelfer:

There's a lot of fun and heart and love in them. So and I feel that when I open them up and then when I see the little passages or the pictures that you've drawn or created so a daily reflection journal that just lets you kind of look at where your inner voice comes in with judgment or ridicule Okay so when you're journaling, let's get specific.

Jana Shelfer:

Are you saying journal what that inner voice is saying, or are you saying journal things that you love about yourself, or what are you saying specifically? There's two parts to that.

Jason Shelfer:

So you're going to journal the things that you love about yourself, but you also want to recognize where those pain points are or where that dip is, so that when your inner voice is saying you could have done better, you have it articulated better in your own words instead of the inner voice's words, and then you get to kind of adjust that.

Jana Shelfer:

Well, your inner voice is your own words.

Jason Shelfer:

It is they're your adopted words. I believe there's a lot of adopted words.

Jana Shelfer:

Yes, because they've been poured into you.

Jason Shelfer:

Yes, and then you've decided that's true, and so your inner voice is saying you can do better which you can.

Jana Shelfer:

So maybe what you're really saying is maybe identify. Where did you pick those words up?

Jason Shelfer:

Yes, and so there's a truth in you can do better. So we believe it right. But the flip side of that is you didn't do good enough, you didn't do well enough. So, that's an implication. Yeah, that's the implication. That's the shadow side of sometimes how you hear that you could do better is that you didn't, you weren't enough, you didn't do enough. So then you get to say you know what I, I experimented, I tried, I played, I had fun. And you get to give yourself a little grace and compassion. Space cushion.

Jana Shelfer:

Yeah, and I'm just Well. So here let me just be real. In self-development, there's always room for improvement. Now, if you accept that belief, there's always room for improvement the flip side of that is I'm not. I'm good enough now.

Jason Shelfer:

So you know what I'm saying. Like there's always.

Jana Shelfer:

There's always different perceptions.

Jason Shelfer:

And we can choose that I'm not good enough now, or we can choose that I'm growing and I'm right where I'm supposed to be.

Jana Shelfer:

Yes, there's always a way to reframe it to where it empowers your soul.

Jason Shelfer:

Oh, I love it. I love that you use the word empowers, because I was just missing that word right then, and that's that's what I was trying to get to, and I think it's just because sometimes we work things out here, we hear it from each other, and sometimes we need to hear things differently. So that's what I was feeling Empowered, wasn't the word that it was coming to?

Jana Shelfer:

me, yes, okay. So journaling, and let me just reiterate what you just said so that we're clear Write down things that you love about yourself and also write down those limiting beliefs or the inner voice that is coming up for you, that you hear every now and then, and catch it, learn to catch it, because when you can catch that inner voice and what it's saying, you can also learn to reframe it.

Jason Shelfer:

You can teach that inner voice different language.

Jana Shelfer:

And once you learn to reframe it, then you learn more empowering language. And when you learn the more empowering language, that's when you start to create a different future.

Jason Shelfer:

Yes, it's a more empowered life, a more more empowered results. And I loved earlier in the podcast we were talking about um telling yourself that you're proud of yourself. So there's a Lisa Nichols exercise where it's I'm proud of myself and listing out seven things. So, jason, I'm proud of you for showing up daily. I'm proud of Jason. I'm proud of you for loving your wife.

Jana Shelfer:

I'm proud of you for the work you've put into your clients, like, recognizing what you're proud of and telling yourself I love you for like and coming up with getting specific and I forgive you and looking in the mirror in your eye, saying it out loud, so you want to see yourself, you want to hear yourself and you want to be present with yourself as you're doing this exercise.

Jason Shelfer:

Yeah, and just be honest with yourself, because there are things that we're proud of ourselves. For A lot of times we gloss over that because we're beating ourselves up over something. So that exercise of looking in the mirror, looking yourself in the eye, calling yourself by name, and maybe it's as simple as Jana.

Jana Shelfer:

I am proud of you for attempting to do this exercise today. Oh, that's so big.

Jason Shelfer:

Right, so big. A lot of people will hear this and they will say I get it. I intellectually get it, but you don't get the transformational change by intellectually knowing. You get the transformational change by becoming and doing.

Jana Shelfer:

And as soon as you are proud of yourself. What Jason is saying is there is a little bit of a dopamine hit. There's a physiological change within your brain, within your body. You will release chemicals that will literally start physically and physiologically changing your chemistry.

Jason Shelfer:

Yeah, and some people will cry doing this, like the. Well, I don't think we talked about it on this podcast, but some people will cry when they start saying I'm proud of you, like Jason. I'm proud of you, jason, I love you because, jason, I forgive you for Jason. I commit to you that I will Like, when you are going through these things, there will be some emotional release that says that you see yourself, you recognize yourself and you believe in yourself and that you promise yourself that you're moving towards a direction.

Jason Shelfer:

So those are the first two the journaling, and then the mirror work. The next one is just this practicing compassion and recognizing that we're not alone. So we will come across, in this journey of those first two exercises, we will come across these moments of struggle. And then one thing that typically happens during a struggle is we isolate ourselves and we say this is a me problem and no one else will understand. And then if we can just recognize, okay, this is just a struggle, this is a part of growth and other people have experienced this. I'm not alone.

Jana Shelfer:

Yes, and I will piggyback on that. Third one is when you do have the self-compassion. I feel that adding the havening technique and literally wrapping your arms around yourself and just hugging, hugging yourself gives you compassion, but it attaches a physical component to it.

Jason Shelfer:

That's so big.

Jana Shelfer:

And for your brain it just adds that extra. I mean, we can say all day give yourself compassion, give yourself compassion, but unless you attach a physical component to it, it doesn't take it to that next level, which is why a lot of people are addicted to smoking, or a lot of people are addicted to um and they and that's in a bad way Like they, they, uh, they equate smoking to breathing. Is what they equate it to, If that makes sense Well, blatant transparency.

Jason Shelfer:

I smoked for 20 years.

Jana Shelfer:

Yes.

Jason Shelfer:

And what I would tell myself is when I smoked, it was a breath that I got to take for me.

Jana Shelfer:

Yeah.

Jason Shelfer:

Like. This is my space. This is me appreciating myself. Now, think about that, think about the twisted thought process in there, because I'm sucking poison in, right, that's known like proven to cause cancer, right, and I'm thinking these are the only breaths I get to take, strictly for me.

Jana Shelfer:

Yeah, I know.

Jason Shelfer:

And so I was trying to convince myself this is loving myself, this is bringing my stress down, when I could have gone out and just taken some deep breaths, and I could have done five minutes of just deep breaths that weren't poison, right, that weren't addictive, and I think that some people are, so they have that block up against love or and they might not be aware of it because I was not a hugger before, like there was a time in my life because I was not a hugger before, like there was a time in my life where I was not a hugger. Now I want to hug everybody, like I want to hug guys. I want to hug my wife.

Jana Shelfer:

You're like a little troll. I want to hug my dog Jason's like it's it's hug time.

Jason Shelfer:

And he, he wants to sing and hug. I'm not the hugger.

Jana Shelfer:

I just glitter, farted Right.

Jason Shelfer:

He's like literally that's you, in fact, I want to re-watch that movie just because it reminds me she's referring to the the movie trolls which I think is just beautiful, but it's a so we in that.

Jason Shelfer:

So the havening right now is probably rubbing some people pun intended the wrong way. But when you open yourself up to loving yourself more, you'll realize that you can hug yourself. And then you'll realize you can hug other people, because we're all doing the best we can with what we have and we all have room to get better and we will continually building our mountain, continue building our mountains in front of us. But we need to just love ourselves and recognize where we are on the mountain that we've gone so far.

Jana Shelfer:

I'm going to cut us off right there but loving ourselves. And those are three practical ways of how you can step into your week and love yourself more, because, when it all comes down to it, the more we love ourselves, the more we attract love all around us.

Jason Shelfer:

Amen, yes, keep Living Lucky® it sounds like love.

Jana Shelfer:

Actually, love is all around us, it is Bye-bye, keep Living Lucky®. It's not like love. Actually Love is all around us, it is.

Jason Shelfer:

Bye-bye, keep Living Lucky®.

Jana Shelfer:

If the idea of Living Lucky® appeals to you, visit us at www. LivingLucky. com.