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Hey hey hey everyone. Welcome back to Pod and Chill. I'm Leo.

And I'm Gwen. It feels nice to sit down and talk with you again today. Some days feel light, some days feel heavy, and both are okay to bring into this space.

Speaking of heavy days, something happened to me yesterday.

What happened, Leo?

Yesterday I met a close friend of mine. Her boyfriend just dumped her, you know. She kept blaming herself again and again.

Oh, that must be really hard for her.

Yeah. She said she wasn't good enough and asked, "What should I change for someone to love me?" But she never paused to ask if she was already enough.

Well, that's today's topic. Learning to love yourself more than anyone else. This episode is for B1 listeners and strong beginners.

There'll be vocabulary and a PDF so you can review later. Now, let's begin.

Before we go deeper, hold one thought with us. Loving yourself is not pushing yourself to be better every day. Yes, it is choosing to stop being unkind to yourself. To do that, we first need to understand what self-love really means. Self-love sounds simple, but it feels heavy. I think many people feel a little confused right away. Like, am I allowed to love myself that much? And if I do, does that make me narcissistic?

Oh, Leo, that's a very normal reaction. Some of us imagine loving yourself means having a big ego, like you always put yourself first and never say sorry. But that's not what real self-love looks like at all. It often shows up in small moments that most people don't even notice.

Yes. And loving yourself actually starts with self-acceptance. When you practice accepting your imperfect parts, you stop building your worth on emotional dependency.

Yes. You accept that some days you feel clear and confident and other days you feel tired, lost or unsure.

Instead of fighting those days, you stay with yourself through them.

That's a big part of respecting yourself.

Well, imagine it this way. Loving yourself is like staying in an old house that you've lived in for many years.

And it has seen every version of us, right?

Yes. Some walls are cracked, some rooms are full of things you don't use anymore. And some corners are a bit dark and forgotten. But you don't destroy the house just because it's not perfect.

Yeah. Instead, you try to clean one small corner at a time, open the windows, let fresh air and light come in, and slowly the house starts to feel different.

That's when you start to notice new things.

Yeah. Like a quiet spot where you feel safe or a window where the morning light feels gentle. Those things were always there, you just didn't slow down enough to see them before.

That's how inner stability is built, by staying, not escaping. So, loving yourself is choosing to stay with who you are. You decide to care for yourself instead of judging yourself.

Before we move on, let's pause for a moment together. Ask yourself softly, am I treating myself with kindness? You don't need to answer it perfectly. Just notice what comes up. And we'll explore why this feels so hard in the next part. So, if loving yourself sounds gentle and simple, why does it still feel so hard sometimes?

I think one big reason starts very early in our lives. When we were children, love often felt like something we had to earn by being useful, being easy to love.

When love comes from outside, it can be taken away. Slowly our value becomes something fragile.

Yes. One failure, one rejection, and everything feels like it collapses. I've seen people who are very kind to others. They listen. They help. They show up when someone is tired.

But when it comes to themselves, they never let themselves rest or admit they're really tired. Right.