September 2024 Newsletter: Breaking Free from Limiting Paradigms: The Journey to Self-Love and Empowerment
Supporting you to free your mind so you can live from your heart!
“As I began to love myself I stopped craving for a different life, and I could see that everything that surrounded me was inviting me to grow.”
- Charlie Chaplin
Breaking Free from Limiting Paradigms: The Journey to Self-Love and Empowerment
I found myself staring at a blank screen for a long time, trying to put this subject into words. I wrote three different versions and then scrapped them before I wrote this article. It feels immense and profound. The subject is self-love.
In the 1950s, social philosopher and psychologist Erich Fromm proposed that loving oneself is not arrogance, conceit, or egocentrism. Instead, it is about caring for oneself and taking responsibility for one's life.
This journey toward self-love—learning to care for and take responsibility for ourselves—is the same journey my clients and I are on.
You might wonder, as I once did, what causes a lack of self-love. In my research, I discovered it often stems from the way we think and do things, our paradigms.
Author and teacher Bob Proctor explains that paradigms are subconscious mental programs that shape our habitual behaviors. These programs guide many of our actions, even when we don’t realize it.
Our core paradigms—our beliefs—are often inherited, passed down through generations and encoded in our DNA. During the first seven years of life, our minds are in a highly receptive, almost hypnotic state. We absorb everything around us, unquestioningly accepting the beliefs of our parents, teachers, and the media. After the age of 7, we unknowingly seek out experiences that reinforce these inherited beliefs.
Many of us, myself included, have paradigms that are deeply ingrained. Beliefs like “I’m not enough,” “I’m unlovable,” “I don’t belong here,” or “There’s something wrong with me” take root at a young age. Because of how the brain works, it will continually looks for evidence to prove these paradigms true—without us even realizing it.
When these negative paradigms are running beneath the surface, they significantly shape our lives. They influence our behavior, emotions, and how we experience the world. These subconscious beliefs, reinforced by the brain’s confirmation bias, can lead to various detrimental outcomes, including:
Low Self-Esteem: The belief that you're "unworthy" or "not enough" creates chronic self-doubt, harsh self-criticism, and a lack of confidence.
Perfectionism or Procrastination: Feeling "not good enough" can lead to overcompensating by striving for perfection, or avoidance due to fear of failure.
Difficulty in Relationships: Feeling "unlovable" manifests as insecurity in relationships, while beliefs like "I don’t belong" may lead to pushing others away out of fear of rejection.
Chronic Stress or Anxiety: These paradigms can keep you in a heightened state of anxiety, always expecting the worst and bracing for setbacks.
Imposter Syndrome: Even when you achieve success, you may feel inadequate, fearing you’ll be "found out" as a fraud.
Isolation and Withdrawal: Beliefs of not belonging or thinking others are "out to get you" may lead to withdrawing from social situations to avoid rejection.
Career and Life Limitations: You may hold yourself back from pursuing opportunities, believing you don't deserve success or that you'll fail.
Self-Sabotage: Negative paradigms can lead to self-undermining behaviors, like procrastination, addictions, or unhealthy habits.
Depression or Hopelessness: Over time, these beliefs can create a sense of hopelessness, where you feel stuck in a cycle of inadequacy and frustration.
For a long time, I identified with many of these negative outcomes. I labeled myself as anxious, depressed, suffering from low self-esteem and imposter syndrome. I walked around trying to "fix" these issues, but got nowhere because I couldn’t see the deeper paradigms running the show.
Fortunately, language reveals our mental paradigms. How we think is reflected in what we say. And I started to hear myself say my negative paradigms out loud while I was being coached. Once I heard and recognized the core negative paradigms underneath it all, everything shifted. I finally understood how my brain worked. Until I taught my brain otherwise, it would keep focusing on those old paradigms.
Through coaching, I learned to observe (not analyze) my thoughts, and with compassion, shift them toward something more empowering. I realized these paradigms were simply old ideas about myself that weren't true—yet thoughts I’d fixated on for so long that they seemed like reality.
As my mentor once said, “You can’t control your thoughts—try not thinking about a hot fudge sundae right now!” Of course, you think of one. But while we can’t control every thought, we can shift our focus. That is the essence of coaching. Over and over again, we work to redirect our thoughts toward something useful, something true. It's the work of a lifetime, but it’s worth it.
We are not here to be small, helpless, or victims of our circumstances. We are here to be powerful creators. This has nothing to do with being showy or flashy or leaving a legacy (unless that is what you want) or anything else that is being shoved down our throats as a life worth living.
It might be about finding the sacred in the mundane. Being a better spouse, partner, mom, dad, sister, brother, boss, employee, entrepreneur. Starting that buisness you always wanted too, finally writing and publishing that book, song, painting, getting healthier or letting go of a vision and creating a new one. What we create will look different for each of us because it is unique to our souls path. Together, we form a beautiful tapestry, each person contributing a unique and essential piece.
Self-love is the key to transforming your life from the inside out. It allows you to uncover the limiting paradigms that have held you back and replace them with empowering beliefs aligned with your true self. With self-love the goals that once seemed out of reach are now created with more clarity, focus, ease and grace.
When you learn to love yourself, you free yourself from the weight of negative self-judgments and open up to yourself in limitless possibilities and compassion. You stop putting so much pressure on the outside world to validate you. You spiritually grow up. You lose your fear of failure. You see failure as learning opportunities, not something personal. You see results as neutral and data, Not something to beat yourself up with. You cultivate resilience, confidence, and inner peace. In nurturing this profound relationship with yourself, you not only heal old wounds but also step into your true power, becoming the creator of a life filled with meaning, joy, purpose and contribution.
I Affirm: Today I look at myself in the mirror in sheer wonderment that I am alive. I slow my breath and drop my shoulders and see the love I am. I freely offer my love to someone today.
Step by Step,
Jessie
