Get To the Root with Rachel Logan

Hello everyone. Happy Wednesday and welcome to get to the Root with Rachel. Come on in, Come on in. Make sure you have some water, stay hydrated. It's a beautiful Wednesday. Welcome to fall everyone. So come on in. I am Rachel Logan. I am your empowerment coach and counselor. Today we're getting to the roots, so I'm super excited. I am located in Illinois and I serve individuals in Illinois and Missouri currently. And I'm excited. Welcome everyone to come on in. Let me know where you're from as we're getting to the root.

And today we're going to get to the root of love. What is love? Am I allowing love to come to me? Am I closing love off? So come on in, like and I want you to comment, let me know where you're from so I can continue to monitor where people are coming in from and participating. So come on in. As we're talking about getting to the root of love. So I want to give you a disclaimer. Have you ever been to the dentist and they do some work on your mouth and they numb it? Yes. Okay. But that happened to me this morning and my mouth is still numb.

So if I sound funny or look weird, you know why. But this has been on my heart. A lot of people talk about self love and they talk about self care. But do we understand what love is? And so today we're going to get to the root of it and we're going to combine scripture. We have to combine scripture because scripture is truth, right? So therapy plus healing equals. Therapy plus God equals healing. Let me correct that. Therapy plus God equals healing. And so that is what I want us to focus on today.

And I want you to identify within yourself, am I giving myself enough love? Am I giving myself enough love? So let's define it. I have my notes in my dictionary right here. Love means. It's a noun. It's a noun and a verb, right? So the noun says it's an intense feeling of deep affection, a great interest or pleasure in something that's so good. The verb means to like or enjoy very much. So love. Are you loving yourself enough? Are you demonstrating it by liking and enjoying who you are, mind, body and soul?

Are you showing intense feeling of deep affection? So some adjectives are being caring, friendly, warm, concerned, romantic, desiring. These are all adjectives that describe love. And I want us to get to the root of it because sometimes we are expecting people to love us, but we first have to love ourselves. And we want to be in relationships rather that's friendships or romantic relationships. We want love, we want to love someone. But do we understand what this entails? And are you allowing yourself to be open to receive or are you finding yourself closed off?

So sometimes people can desire love for themselves or wanting to give it away, but because they've been hurt, they've closed off this part of themselves that allows them to be even warm to themselves. So some of the things that causes people to be shut off is trauma, broken hearts, rejection, mistrust, someone lying to them, someone cheating on them or mistreating them. And so sometimes when those negative things happen to us, we internalize it and we make it about us and find ourselves not thinking that we're unworthy of love.

And that is not true. We find ourselves internalizing people's behaviors towards us as if we are not worthy to receive affection, warmth, love, friendship, adoration, desire. And that is not true. You deserve love. You deserve to love yourself with intense feeling of adoration. And you deserve to love others. So I want you to first acknowledge if you have a guard up or not. Do you have a guard up that says I don't want to be hurt so I'm not going to let anybody in. And when I do that, I'm also cutting off the love to come in or to go out.

So I first want you to acknowledge do I have a wall up? Do I find myself closed off for receiving love, affection and warmth? Or am I willing to receive it and give it first to myself and then to others? Love is unique. The love that we receive from God is unconditional. It never ends. It's forever. It's like an ongoing whale of love and affection and someone caring for you. And the Bible says to love others as you love yourselves. So I pose this question, are you loving yourself enough? And what would love look like from you to you?

What does that look like? What would that feel like? I'll give you an example. The other day I was, I'm taking a course and I completed all of my homework for the whole year. Like I'm done. I graduate coming up here in a couple of weeks. And when I got done I sat and I just thought about all the months and papers I had to write. Yes, I wanted people to congratulate me but I first had to just sit and just lavish and me praising me and self praise is not selfish. I sat and I just reflected and I congratulated myself and I took myself out.

I went about myself a necklace and it's a necklace of butterflies to represent new beginnings. I took myself on a walk And I listened to music and I enjoyed being me. I enjoyed the silence. I enjoy my own presence. So self love starts with self validation. Yes, we want other people to acknowledge and see us, but it first starts with you. It first starts with you pausing, celebrating, acknowledging and deeming yourself worthy of love and praise. So you can begin to practice self love by pausing and practicing, praising yourself, acknowledging the good, acknowledging your wins, acknowledging your growth, acknowledging what you're able to do and accomplish today.

So self love is affirming. Self love doesn't put you down, it doesn't criticize. It does not continue to replay all of your wrongs. It acknowledges what you're able to do, what you could do for that day. And sometimes you can do a lot, sometimes you can do a little. But self love is simply tender, it is simply warm. It is simply kind and caring. Mm. So I encourage you to make a list of ways that you can care for yourself today. How can you care for you? How can you show up for you today? What do you need to thrive for?

Today to show up for you is the win. So I want to leave you with a scripture that I encourage you to meditate on and to put on replay. Because the Bible does tell us what love is. And if we practice this type of love, mental health issues will decrease, anxiety would decrease, depression would decrease, and you will find yourself walking with ease and appreciation for your life, for who you are and what you do have. So self love, as we get to the root of it, it is you accepting and acknowledging your worth.

You were born worthy. You were born worthy. You asked me how does she know? I tell you how I know every time. If you ever been around a newborn baby, you think the absolute best for them. You see the absolute hope for them. I mean, you have absolute faith that they going to be like the President of the United States of America. You see no wrong. You don't see any flaws. You just see beauty. You see breath. You see, you see life that was once in a womb and now it's out. It's amazing. That's how I felt about my children.

That's how I feel when I see little kids playing. I'm like, oh my goodness, how little and cute they are. I hope they their life is amazing and they thrive and they win and they grow up and they meet all their milestones and they become popular and influential. Not popular, influential. Positive. Creative. Like the hope for a newborn baby or a toddler is endless. Why? Because we see their innocence. We see how they were born worthy. And I promise you when you were born, I don't care what environment you were born in.

When you were born, someone looked at you and said she and he is worthy. They saw your worth. You were born worthy, so you were born worthy of love. And that love starts within. And that love you can receive from above, and that is from God. And so in the Bible the Lord teaches us how to love and I want to encourage you to meditate on it so you can feel better, you can see the world around you better, and your mood will increase. So First Corinthians, chapter 13, verse 4 and it reads, love is patient.

Love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud, it does not dishonor others and it is not self seeking. It is not easily angered. It keeps no records of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. Meditate on that. First Corinthians, chapter 13, verse 4 through 8. Think about love. Think about loving yourself. Let's break down the scripture before I go. Love is patient, is kind.

It is not envy, it is not boast and it doesn't dishonor others. It is not self seeking and it's not easily angered and it doesn't keep record of your wrong. It is not delighting evil. So putting, you know, doing some things that's not good, but it rejoices in truth. So meditate on the truth about you that you were born worthy. I hope you are blessed. Come back next week for another getting to the roots of another word, another principle, another concept. Because as you know, you would do better, the more you know, the more you would do okay, so get to the root of your self love.

Care for yourself today and meditate on this scripture. Peace out.