Level Up! With Shay

Hello Level Uppers. I come to you today with a story of sorts. A realization. I come to you today as a new person, reborn. Truly. Every time we realize something, learn and grow, we become new people. At that point, we have the opportunity to live in this new identity we have of ourselves. Hopefully a happier, more full-filled and more loving identity. That’s the case for me. 

Today is a day where I share something pretty vulnerable with you. Something I’m not sure I’ve ever admitted out loud to anyone before. I realized the other day how much I hated myself. Not for anything I had done or said or tried or accomplished, but for who I was and what I looked like.

I’ve practiced and studied personal development for over 7 years now. I’ve tried all the exercises on increasing self-love – affirmations, reading, meditations. What I didn’t do was decrease the self-hate. So for years my brain had been in a battle between the self-love I was attempting to let in and the self-hate that had been branded deep inside my psyche. Once I realized this, it made a lot of sense to me. Seven years of personal development and I still am not successful? And by that I mean…happy?

No matter what I did, how many people I made laugh, how many people I inspired, how much money I had in my bank account, etc. at the end of the day something was still missing. I had understood the concept that having MORE wouldn’t make me happier, but I still didn’t understand what would. 

A couple weeks ago I got a haircut. And everytime I get a haircut, I don’t like it. The haircut is perfectly fine, lined up, professionally done, etc. but I just don’t like it. And I have this thing I say to people when they compliment my haircut. I say “Thank you” then I proceed to say “Yeah, it takes a couple weeks to let it settle in and look normal. And then the last two weeks before I get a haircut it’s a mess. So I’ve decided that two weeks in and two weeks out are when it looks good.”

Seriously… it had become a habit to say that. To other people and also in my head. So that means every time I get a haircut, there are 4 weeks where I do not like it. And if you do the math on that, I get my haircut about once every 2 months, so that comes out to 12 weeks throughout the year where there is something I do not like about myself. 

Three months out of the year I look in the mirror and there is something about myself that I do not like.  And that’s just my hair! Doesn’t even count my body shape or my eyebrows or my teeth or any acne.

Saying that phrase “It takes a couple weeks to settle in to look normal” has become a literal habit of thought and therefore a habit of speaking. It honestly seems harmless, right? It seems like it’s me being self-deprecating but in a funny way – because I am a comedian after all.

But that small thought has been a tragically harmful thing towards how I feel about myself. That thought treats me like a punching bag. Everytime I get a haircut, wake up and look in the mirror PUNCH. Self-hate. Everytime someone mentions my haircut, PUNCH. Self-hate. Everytime I see a picture of myself, take a selfie, or show myself on social media PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH. Self-hate. 

When you hate yourself, it affects your entire life. It affects your confidence, belief in yourself, feelings of worthiness, approachability, relationships, and causes irrational levels of anger, frustration and judgement towards other people.

And it’s interesting when I bring up these external qualities I hated myself for – such as my hair. People will say “you’re so beautiful!” And here’s the thing, I didn’t think I was ugly. I thought I was unworthy. And you could be the most beautiful person in the world and still hate yourself. Beauty shouldn’t be a standard or a benchmark for how much you love yourself. If you’re THIS beautiful you should feel THIS good about yourself. It doesn’t work like that.

So it wouldn’t have mattered if I had on the coolest clothes or drove the nicest car – it would all be to cover up the fact that I hated myself.

It’s hard to boost your confidence or sense of worthiness when it’s not based on a solid foundation of love for yourself. 

So with this realization, I made a promise to myself. I am going to start showing myself  unconditional and radical  self-love. And let me tell you, when I made that promise to myself, it was sooooo uncomfortable. I cried, actually. Unconditional and radical self-love is uncomfortable. It sounds like you’re just going to be full of yourself. But it’s not that. It’s about showing gratitude for what you have, no matter what. 

The cool thing is, once you get past the uncomfortable part, you’re free. You’re allowing yourself to feel worthy, to believe in yourself, to be confident, and to love others like you love yourself. What we need to keep in mind when we pronounce to ourselves that we are going to love ourselves unconditionally and radically is that it’s not just a one time decision. It’s a daily decision. Or a decision we have to make each moment we become aware of those thoughts of self-hate in our brains. I promise you there will still be times where I look in the mirror and for a moment, not like what I see. But because I have made the promise to myself to become aware of those moments and flip my thoughts, changes will happen.

These thoughts of self-hate that we have occur daily, more than we know at this moment. Each of those moments are opportunities to choose a different one. 

In improv class we used to have an exercise called “Choose again” where two improvisers would improvise a scene and sporadically throughout, one person on the sidelines would say “choose again” and the improviser would have to make a different choice. 

Improviser 1: The other day I went to the grocery store.

Sideline: Pick again.

Improviser 1: The other day I went to the circus.

Sideline: Pick again.

Improviser: The other day I went to the airport.

Sideline: Pick again.

And this would go on until the sideline person didn’t stop them anymore and they proceeded with that information. This is something we can start to fold into our own lives. If we hear a thought “Ugh I look so gross today.” Choose again.  “Ugh my face looks so weird.” Choose again. We have the choice to choose something else. 

So imagine this. Imagine if when you noticed a thought of self-hate, you chose a different thought. And imagine doing this day and in and day out. It’s just like working out. It may be hard to notice the results at first but if you stick with it, your life can transform completely. Boosts of confidence, putting yourself out there, fully believing in yourself, the incredible amount of love you can freely give to others.

If you want to see a change in your external life, you MUST start with the internal. Fight for yourself. Make unconditional and radical self-love something that is non-negotiable. And when you catch the self-hate, don’t beat yourself up over it. That will be just multiplying those negative effects.

Choose something different.

Choose you.

It’s time to level up.

Thanks for reading! This blog post is also a podcast episode on Level Up! With Shay. You can listen here.

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