Kajal Pandey, Transformational life coach and truth teacher
I hope you enjoy this video above and the important questions Kajal asks us to ask ourselves in order to improve the relationship we have with ourselves.
I had also asked Kajal share the Dear Beloved: Love Letters to Yourself project she’s created below.
Here she is:
Three years ago in meditation an idea struck me, which was to write a love letter to myself.
Intrigued and willing, I decide to take it on as a 30 day challenge of writing daily love letters to myself.
Writing love letters to myself daily served as a practice of loving myself, but also greatly changed my perception of myself as it allowed me to know what was really going on in my inner world and how I felt about myself.
Inspired by that initial idea this workbook was born!
The workbook includes:
31 love letter prompts to help you understand your relationship with yourself, and actually improve it at the same time.
The tools of self-love that make loving yourself tangible and easy-to-do with complimentary exercises.
What self-love habits are and how to create your own self-love habits.
Affirmations as a tool to train your mind to focus on positive, life-giving thoughts about yourself.
A mini relationship with yourself quiz to help you get clear on where you are with yourself right now.
Plus bonus videos (10) on self-love topics and access to the a private facebook group to ask questions and support!
Kajal Pandey is a transformational life coach and truth teacher. She is passionate about guiding people into their inner world so they can create a life they love. She does this by teaching people how to embrace their darkness, unlearn who they think they are to remember who they really are in truth. You can learn more about here work here: http://www.kajalpandey.com
Regardless of who loves you and validates you, you can’t invite romance into your life until this happens first.
Don’t believe the Hollywood hype and pop song lyrics You are not complete and whole simply because someone else loves you. Click on the above video to watch.
For more on this topic, check out my books at the Amazon store here:
“What if pain – like love – is just a place brave people visit?” Glennon Doyle, Love Warrior
Love Warrior is a book about how to turn pain and suffering into love.
This past October 27th, in Visalia, California, I watched Glennon Doyle deliver a sermon about becoming a love warrior. Her commentary about Jesus left me awestruck.
Just to be clear, Glennon isn’t a minister and doesn’t possess religious credentials of any kind.
I found myself sitting in the auditorium of love, listening to Glennon preach the doctrine of love.
So, back to Jesus for a minute.
Jesus never avoided the crucifixion, Glennon reminded us. He knew that pain and suffering awaited Him, but He didn’t shy away from His path. It was the pain, struggle and crucifixion that led to the resurrection.
It was the crucifixion that led to the rising.
Have you noticed that most of us usually try to run from our pain?
You and I would do just about anything to avoid feeling bad for a few hours.
Glennon made me question why we run from our pain when, in fact, pain will lead to our own personal resurrection. It’s the pain that will transform us and help us rise again.
In her popular memoir, Love Warrior, Glennon takes the reader on her life journey through bulimia and alcoholism to marriage, betrayal and divorce.
She uses her life story to show us that we, too, can become the alchemists of our own lives by transforming pain to love.
Here are 7 important life lessons from Glennon’s memoir, Love Warrior, to help you become a love warrior in your life.
1. Just the next right thing.
“I will go to sleep. The sun will rise. I will make breakfast. I will take the kids to school. I will come home and rest…Just the next right thing, one thing at a time.”
When, at a therapy session, Glennon found out about her husband’s betrayal, she panicked as she watched her life spin out of control. Not knowing what to do after coming out of that session, she did the only thing she could do with her life.
When you are in situations of panic or disaster, or have hit rock bottom, your plan can be as simple as hers.
Just take the very next step.
You may not know what all the right things are and what the future holds but you can do the next right thing. Whatever feels right next, do that.
2. Doing the precise thing.
When other people blamed or scorned her for her dissolving marriage, Glennon stopped asking for advice from others and pretending that she didn’t know what to do. She stopped fretting about whether her next actions were right or wrong.
“It’s about doing the precise thing. The precise thing is always incredibly personal and often makes no sense to anyone else.”
You have to do what’s right for you. The divine is speaking to you at all times and guiding you in your life. You know what’s best for yourself. The precise thing is the right thing for you to do next.
3. Tear down the walls and face what’s underneath.
When Glennon didn’t know how to fix – or whether to save – her marriage, she realized that it wasn’t about her marriage.
“All I know is that I need to tear down my own walls and face what’s underneath.”
You have little control of the circumstances and people outside yourself.
To become who you are, you must be willing to go within. To fix the outside, you have to start with the inside.
To progress and become who you are may require going backward and unbecoming who you were.
The journey to who you are requires an internal detour.
4. Sitting in the hot loneliness.
You have a sense of loneliness within you that you may have tried to escape, just as Glennon tried to do.
“I thought I needed to hide these feelings, escape them, fix them, deliver myself from them…I didn’t know that it would pass.”
Just like a hot yoga class that Glennon found herself in, sometimes all it takes is sitting on your yoga mat, feeling pain and not running out of the hot yoga studio.
The pain may be uncomfortable and the heat intolerable, as will be the loneliness. However, if you sit tight and allow the uncomfortable feelings to pass, you’ll realize that you can get through it. The feelings of discomfort are temporary and passing.
5. You are everything you already need.
“What if I don’t need Craig to love me perfectly because I’m already loved perfectly? What if I am the warrior I need? What if I am my own damn hero?”
Your true identity is one of love. You came from love and you are love.
Yet you look for love on the outside. You’re looking for a person to love and complete you when you don’t need anyone to do that.
You just have to observe and embrace the love that’s already there.
Once you’ve embraced your true identity as a love warrior, you will become the most powerful force on Earth.
6. Be real, not perfect.
“I tell them that we can choose to be perfect and admired or to be real and loved. We must decide.”
If you choose to show up in the world as perfect, you have to be an inauthentic version of yourself.
If you choose to be real, you show up as a tender-hearted and vulnerable person. This person will likely suffer hurt more often but will be much stronger than the superficial version of yourself.
You don’t have to hide, terrified about what people think of you.
Show up as how you are with your faults and shortcomings. Your true self is your strength and your authenticity is your gift to the world.
7. Trust yourself.
“I will not betray myself. I will trust the wisdom of the still small voice…I will trust her and I will trust myself.”
It’s easy to let outside society dictate your decisions and actions.
Our intuition is strong, Glennon reminds us, and we should listen to it.
The inner voice that you usually drown out in the midst of a busy life is the voice of reason and wisdom.
The more in tune you are with that voice, the more you’ll take actions that are in your best interest.
Listen to it, trust it and know that it will guide you to what’s right for you in your life.
* Thank you to Adrianne Hillman for hosting the event. Pick up Love Warrior here in the Amazon store.
One of the biggest fears when you go through a breakup is that you’ll never be with someone again.
This will terrify you. It’ll cause you to lose many nights of sleep and go into a deep depression.
You’ll believe that no one will ever love you again, that everyone else with reject you and that all future relationships will end in failure, possible murder and tragedy.
You’re terrified of being alone because you’ll shame your parents and feel like a failure.
You’re scared of being alone because all your friends are in relationships and getting hitched. They’re hiring videographers, sending out wedding invitations and working on seating arrangements.
Or, most likely, this is the only picture you had imagined for your life. I mean, you had read about this story growing up. You had always believed that you would marry and settle down, and you were doing everything in your power to materialize this life.
Yet it’s not panning out that way.
You broke up…again.
You got divorced…again.
You’re alone again and struggling to make sense of life. You’re terrified about what the future will be because you planned for no other future.
Can I get an Amen?
Hold up, people.
Or person reading this.
Hold the &)@&)# up.
Let me tell you a story all about how…my life got flipped turned upside down…I’d like to take a minute, just sit right there, let me tell you how I became the prince of a town called Bel Air.
Oops, wrong story.
Let me take a minute to tell you that I was at a party – an Indian party with many married men.
The topic of wives came up and, interestingly, I heard a very comfortable, knowing and shared sentiment from everyone, though no one said a word.
The feeling wasn’t joy and universal acclaim.
It was something along the lines of “we’ve settled, we’re trapped and we can’t say anything.”
“Marriage isn’t the worst thing to happen to me but it’s not the best, either. I could have gone after my dreams and lived a great life but this ain’t that bad either. We got a house, kids and retirement.”
I felt a sense of gloom and doom and a tinge of sadness. I also felt giddy that the tables had turned.
I was the one who should have felt ashamed, alone and unhappy. My life had gone so far off course that I couldn’t relate to a single person at that party but I was the happiest lad in the room.
What gives?
Let me break it down for you, friends.
You don’t have to be afraid of being single. You don’t have to be afraid of your future. You don’t have to be afraid of filing your taxes single or being the solo RSVP for any party!
You can overcome the fear of being single and the fear of being a cat lady and the fear of being a lonely old man by…drum roll, please…
1. Loving yourself.
Loving yourself means treating yourself like you would treat someone you truly love. It’s the way you speak to yourself, the way you mentally judge yourself and how much you criticize yourself. It’s the way you treat your body and emotions.
A practice to love yourself and get comfortable being single is to treat yourself like you were in a relationship. Where would you go? What would you do? Which friends would you hang out with along with your significant other?
Live that love life even without the love from someone else.
Love yourself by loving your life and living it to the maximum.
2.Learning about yourself.
You have no idea who you are because you’ve spent most of your life believing that you need other people. You believe that you are your family. You are your partner. You are your relationship status.
News flash … you’re you. You may have no idea what that even is, but now it’s your responsibility and life purpose to figure out who you are.
(I have a couple of ideas about discovering yourself. If you would like a free guide on how to find yourself, sign up for my blog and I’ll send you a free ebook about finding and being yourself.)
Your job now is to discover your preferences, opinions, choices and purpose. It is to ask yourself what makes you happy and what you want out of life.
3.Cutting out the nonsense and noise.
The people around you often make the situation worse by putting more pressure on you or making you more scared than you already are.
They have their own agendas and reasons for intervening in your life.
If you’re getting a divorce in the Indian or Asian community, the people around you must salvage reputations and save face.
Your family could care less about you; they care more about the family name.
Keep the negativity and intervenors at bay.
You’re already hearing a lot of internal noise and negative chatter. You don’t need more from the outside world.
Stay hyper-vigilant about your inner circle. Make sure they are supportive and encouraging and that they help you feel more at ease.
4.Cultivating happiness and community.
You don’t have to wait until you’re in a relationship to be happy.
Let me repeat that: you don’t have to wait until you’re in a relationship to be happy.
You can find happiness today.
Your task is to cultivate happiness. If you have no idea how to do that and think you’ll need years of therapy from Dr. Freud himself, try this.
Do things that make you happy and that don’t destroy your health or well-being.
That rules out hard drugs, hard liquor and hard men. It includes simple pleasures, your favorite activities and new adventures.
If you don’t know what will make you happy, just get active and do something.
Get out of the house; stop wallowing in the sadness of loneliness.
5.Cultivating community.
This simply means doing things with other people.
You can ride your bicycle by yourself or join a cycling group.
You can read a book by yourself or join a book club.
You don’t have to go it alone.
Create situations where you’re around people and feeling less alone. Look for people you can do things with.
6.Giving back.
You may hate people and the pursuit of happiness and community.
Fine.
May I suggest giving back in some way, shape or form?
It’s weird but something is addictive about giving back.
Why do you think I write this blog? 99% percent of the people who read it do so at no cost and with no obligation whatsoever.
I spend half my life, it feels like, writing for this blog and other publications.
Why?
Because I enjoy sharing and giving… Giving back gives me immense pleasure.
The other 1% of people buy my books (which you can do here) or hire me for coaching (which you can do here).
7. Having balance.
If you’re working 24/7, you won’t have time for anything else.
If you’re completely occupying yourself, you have no space for all the parts of your life to flourish.
You must prioritize your down time and eliminate activities that don’t fulfill you.
Then you can create balance and down time to allow friendships to blossom, to allow yourself to socialize and date.
If you’re interested in another relationship, you must make the time and space for it.
Someone else will enter your life only if you make time for them. If you want a relationship, you must prioritize relationships.
8. Living with courage and hope.
You must exercise courage every day. You must find the courage to live without the fear of the unknown and the fear of uncertainty.
Yes, living by yourself is scary but you’re the captain of your ship and you’re in control of your life.
You had the courage to be in relationships and survive breakups in the past. Now you can survive without a relationship.
You can live courageously while being hopeful about a new relationship.
Back up the hope with action. You can’t hope your way to a new relationship. Get online. Go out. Volunteer. Get active in the community. Live your life and be open to meeting people who are potential partners.
9.Creating the life you want.
You’re waiting until you find that special someone to start living the life you want.
I propose starting that life today. No, you won’t be able to have kids and a family, but these days adoption and surrogacy make these options possible.
You can start living the life you want. You can go after the career you want. You can pursue the dreams you want. Start the business you want. Help the people you want. Travel to the countries you want.
You don’t have to wait until someday because that someday may never come.
Create the life you want today. Have a vision for your ideal life and start on it. A partner can enhance it but doesn’t have to be a critical component for you to get started.
Check on my books on self-love and self-acceptance at the Amazon store here.
Once you start on that quest for love and a new relationship, you’ll realize that you can’t open your heart to others until you open it to yourself.
Yes, everything they say about self-love is true. You need to have a deep, committed and fulfilling relationship with yourself before you can love another person.
But how do you do this?
How do you love yourself when you have trouble loving another person?
After walking the journey back from heartbreak myself, I don’t have all the answers but I do have my answers.
I get a lot of similar questions from readers of my blog and I decided to write this book, Loving Yourself After Heartbreak for anyone who was having issues with self-worth and self-esteem after heartbreak.
Loving yourself shows up in so many ways in your life.
It’s not just what you think about yourself and how you treat yourself but it’s about boundaries, it’s about making peace with your past, it’s about grieving and forgiveness, letting go of resentments.
It’s how to live your life, how to surrender and how you find happiness.
I took a stab at answering 21 of the most common questions I receive about the topic of self-love. A few have to do with heart-break but most have to do with taking care of yourself, healing yourself and rebuilding your self-worth after heartbreak.
Here are the 21 questions I answer in the book, Love Yourself After Heartbreak:
Chapter 1: The benefits of loving yourself after heartbreak
Chapter 2: How do you make peace with your past?
Chapter 3: How do you cope with the sadness and pain of a breakup?
Chapter 4: How do you overcome feelings of being “not good enough” or worthlessness?
Chapter 5: How do you overcome self-doubt?
Chapter 6: How do you stop the need for love and validation to feel good about yourself?
Chapter 7: How do you stop pleasing others?
Chapter 8: How do you find forgiveness when swimming in resentment?
Chapter 9: How do you let go of self-pity and victimhood?
Chapter 10: How do you stop judging and comparing yourself to others?
Chapter 11: How do you stop blaming yourself for the breakup?
Chapter 12: How do you deal with abandonment and loneliness?
Chapter 13: How do you deal with rejection?
Chapter 14: How do you deal with fear and worry of the future?
Chapter 15: How do you stop over-thinking everything?
Chapter 16: How do you let go of over-commitments and simplify your life?
Chapter 17: How do you find happiness within?
Chapter 18: How do you love when you’re afraid of love?
Chapter 19: How do you love someone when you have trouble loving yourself?
Chapter 20: How do you surrender and live more lightly?
Chapter 21: How do you love the next time around? Are you ready for a self-love cleanse? Need specific strategies and tips to make big changes in your life?
The suggestions and tips in this book are practical and focused on helping you make real life changes so you show up in the world differently.
Ready? Pick up Love Yourself After Heartbreakhere. It’s on sale this week for $.99.
The relationship is over but your past contains so much wreckage and rubble.
If your relationship was difficult, challenging and full of conflict, you’re not alone.
Likely, in the final days or months of your relationship or marriage, you both spent a lot of time tearing each other down.
After a long and conflict-filled relationship, you will doubt your own self-worth.
If you grew up having your family take shots at your self-esteem, your ex likely didn’t make it any better.
If your partner ended the relationship first and the breakup wasn’t mutual, you’re likely feeling worse about yourself than ever before.
Feelings of “not good enough” and “worthlessness” can consume your life.
This section from my newest book, Love Yourself After Heartbreak, will help you repair your self-worth and self-confidence.
7 Ways to Overcome Feelings of Not Being Good Enough
1.Being Aware. The first step to heal feelings of not being good enough is self-awareness.
Your ex might have destroyed your self-worth but if you dig a bit deeper, you’ll find that others sabotaged your self-worth as you grew up.
Who did? What did they do and how did their actions affect your self-worth?
If you can acknowledge the things that damaged your self-worth in the past, you have a starting point for the work and healing that you need to do. You know you’ll have to deal with the people who emotionally hurt you before – forgive them and come to terms with the hits to your self-worth.
Also, become aware of your belief system.
When things go wrong, what hurtful things do you say to yourself? When you disappoint yourself or make a mistake, what internal dialogue do you have?
The idea is to notice these thoughts and beliefs as soon as they pop up.
2.Prove your internal chatter wrong.
Observe your internal self-talk and how you’re putting yourself down.
Pick up on these remarks and prove those statements wrong.
If you’re telling yourself you’re not intelligent, remind yourself about your achievements and academic laurels.
If you’re telling yourself you’re useless, remind yourself about all the people you’ve helped and how many people appreciate you.
This is an active process of continuously rebutting the negative self-talk and self-criticism in your mind.
This internal chatter is simply a continuation of the attacks from people who ruined your self-worth as you grew up.
You heard others attack you and now you mentally attack yourself.
3. Rebut with positive affirmations, visualization
Not only acknowledge and rebuild this self-talk; actively replace the thoughts with more positive ones.
Some suggest the use of mantras and affirmations to feel more worthy.
You’ll know whether you find this helpful.
You can also visualize yourself in a state of worthiness and imagine what that would feel like.
How would you stand? How would you interact with others? How would you show up in the world? Continue to picture yourself in that state until you end up living in that state.
Visualize worthiness until you arrive at worthiness.
Replace your negative self-talk and improve your self-worth with words, emotions, images and beliefs of high self-worth. Take every opportunity to confront the negative view of yourself and substitute it with a positive one. Turn this into a daily practice.
4. Declutter your friendships and negative influences in your life
Another action is to see who is around you in your everyday life.
You may need a friend-and-family purge. Yes, in the ideal world you’re mature and strong enough to not let negativity bother you. If you’re already there, forget this step.
If you’re still struggling, take note of every person in your life, especially the people who make you feel terrible about yourself. Do whatever you can to reduce the time you spend with these people.
Stay as far away from them as you can.
If they live in the same house you do (for example, your parents), minimize the time you spend with them.
Create a negativity-free zone around your life and minimize the number of people who make you feel bad about yourself. This is not a permanent solution but a temporary strategy while you are working on your self-worth.
5. Doing good makes you feel good.
You feel good about yourself when you are doing things that make you feel good.
You will feel good when you take part in activities you do well in.
If you’re an expert in a particular area or the go-to person in your family for something, do more of that.
If you’re the family party planner, plan the party.
If you’re the creative one at work, do more creative work there.
If you’re the leader, lead.
Doing those activities you’re good at will make you feel better about yourself.
Soak in all the positivity, compliments and good wishes you get when you do those things you’re good at doing.
The other activities that make you feel good about yourself are those you generally like doing.
All of us have different healthy feel-good activities.
Drinking martinis or relishing carne asadas may be your feel-good activity but other things you do awaken your heart and bring your soul alive.
Which activities bring you bliss and happiness? Which activities challenge you?
Doing more of these activities will help you feel good about yourself. Spending more of your time in nature, gardening, surfing, going to the movies, shopping or whatever else brings you to a place of bliss – do more of that.
6. The expansive view of yourself
One more way to boost your self-worth involves the spiritual dimension.
Beneath your personality and outward appearance is the real you.
This is a person you hardly know or spend time with.
You have experiences as the “external” you who shows up in the world. You’re a sister, aunt, lawyer, friend, neighbor, etc. Everyone, including you, has a perception of who you are but you really don’t know who you are.
Getting to this person is getting to your essence.
Once you realize who you are and live from that place, you have the potential to live a highly worthwhile life.
When you’re living from this essence or your spiritual center, you no longer depend on other people’s values or perception of you.
How do you get there?
You slowly unmask and remove all the layers of who you are.
You detach from the different roles you play in the world, from family member to professional to parent, etc.
You become quiet and get into nature to see yourself as someone deeper and more spiritual than who you currently show up as. You get to the fiber of your being.
What do you do that helps you feel more soulful?
The church may be the last place that does this for you.
It could be as simple as spending time with your children or gardening.
Keep tapping into this spiritual realm.
Work on seeing yourself as part of the bigger spiritual fabric of the world.
7. Trust yourself more.
When you feel unworthy, you have no sense of yourself. You’re lost. You feel invisible.
To overcome these feelings of worthlessness, like you don’t exist, you have to not only get to your spiritual center as described above, but you have to get in touch with the wise inner person who resides within you.
You have a guide. You have a voice of reason and wisdom.
You have yourself. Call it your intuition, self-knowledge or higher self.
Within you is this all-knowing, all-wise person in majestic robes who knows what’s best for you.
This inner-person is guiding you but if you’re like me, you avoid, ignore and hardly acknowledge this voice of wisdom.
To live more in harmony with this voice and to raise your worthiness, listen to this voice more often.
Check in with this voice regularly and ask it to guide you in your decision-making.
You can read more about how to repair your self-worth in my new book, Love Yourself After Heartbreakhere.
I help people overcome their devastating breakups and divorces and find love again. Instead of visiting the Himalayas, sign up below and join me. I am taking a writing break but will be back soon.
This guide is free. A ticket to the Himalayas is $2000. Your move.
