Hi, welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness. In today's session, we're going to talk about the relationship between self-love and growth. I see for a lot of people, this fear that if I develop self-love, acceptance, even compassion toward myself, I'm going to lose my edge or I'm going to no longer want to grow in my life. I'll just passively resign to what is here, because now I love myself and no need to change. Well, that's an interesting interpretation and I'd like to dispel the myth of that, which is very common and pervasive, because self-love doesn't mean we don't see room for growth.

It just means that our feelings of worthiness are not contingent upon that growth. You can be massively hungry for growth and massively filled with love. The thing is a lot of times our growth, we have a toxic relationship toward. We're, we're growing. We're doing things.

We're building things. We're trying to change because we hate ourselves or there's a feeling of anxiety that if I don't do this, I'm not going to be worthy. And a lot of that is grounded in childhood stuff, relationships to our caregivers, our parents. Feelings that were developed, that I need to be this certain kind of person in order to be worthy of love, in order there in order to be safe. But that's only one form of motivation to change and grow.

And it's actually, it can be quite a toxic one that can always leave us feeling empty and unfulfilled. There are other motivations for growth that actually come when we feel more self-love within us. Love itself is a motivation for growth. We see who we are right now. We love who we are right now.

And we also realize like, Hey, we, we can even become better. We can, we can grow. We can change. And that can be motivated by love. Compassion can be a motivator for, for growth and for change.

Excitement, enthusiasm can be a motivator for growth and change. And even just the process of growth can be inherently rewarding. So in case there has been this fear that I need to be anxious, or I need to maybe not like myself in order to want to grow and change, I just want to let you know that, that that's one form of motivating our growth and change, but it's not the only one. And that form can be quite toxic. There's another form of compassion, of love, of care, of energy, enthusiasm that can also motivate us toward our goals.

And not only is it more sustainable, but it feels a lot better. We can be fulfilled and growing in the process. So I hope this gives you something to think about. We'll continue exploring how to develop self-love in our meditation today. But as always, just want to thank you for your practice.

Thank you for your growth journey. It's not just for you, it's for your relationships, your community, and our world at large, at large. So I have a lot of appreciation for you and let's settle in for today's meditation.