Unlocking Inner Power: A Dive into Self-Love & Spiritual Wisdom

George was sitting in his weekly leadership group listening to a conversation. One of the men was sharing his life struggle. Another offered advice: "You have to do what makes you happy."

George was watching faces. He saw the moment land. Then he asked a follow-up question: "What makes you happy?"

There was a long pause.

"I don't know."

George felt sadness wash over him. Because if you don't have the answer to that question, there are so many other questions that have been left unanswered about yourself. So many things you've probably buried or packed away and haven't worked on.

The Most Important Relationship

George opened the episode with a disclaimer. Everything they were about to discuss was something he was still working on himself. The words coming out of his mouth might be things he'd listen back to and think, "I should probably start doing that."

Then he asked a single question: Who is the human on this planet you spend the most time with?

The answer is yourself.

"When you're in a room by yourself, you can feel bored, you can feel lonely, you can feel frustrated. Or you can feel joy and happiness. You can feel optimism and excitement. You can feel like you're in good company yet be in a room by yourself."

Everything that flows to the outside world starts inside you and your perception of who you are. If you're wanting to live a life beyond your default, you'll likely be focused on adding value to the world. And added value is way easier, maybe only possible, if you come with a filled cup.

"If a cup is always empty, if your cup is always empty and you need others to fill it, then this makes you an energy vampire. And people can feel that."

The Three Questions That Build Self-Trust

George framed three questions as a 1 through 10 scale.

Right now, do you feel like you can depend on yourself?

Right now, do you show up for yourself?

Right now, do you have things in place to protect yourself?

"When you depend on yourself, you show up for yourself, and you protect yourself, you start to build self-trust. When you start to trust yourself, that's actually how you kill the enemy in your head. That's how you kill the inner critic. Because you trust yourself."

If you focus on a healthy internal relationship, the inner critic speaks less. You grow internal love for yourself. And because of that, external love is what flows to the rest of your relationships.

"So I have to ask the listeners, on a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you trust yourself to have your best interest at heart versus always thinking somebody else is coming to save the damn day?"

The Mirror Moment

Liz shared her own answer to those questions. Six or seven months before recording, she looked in the mirror unexpectedly one day and realized the answer was no. She did not trust herself.

"It's a scary moment. Sometimes a lack of trust in yourself can manifest in the way of you making choices in your life not based on any sort of internal compass. I'm not saying you're immoral, but you may just end up in scenarios where it's like, why do I want this job? Why do I want this house?"

She had that moment of looking in the mirror and thinking, "I don't understand why I'm picking any of the things that I'm picking."

Because she didn't trust herself to build a life that would make her happy.

Aunt Nancy and the Anger

George shared where his own journey began.

Shortly after he met his wife Kelly, they had gone to some family events, reunions, dinner at her aunt's house. Her Aunt Nancy is someone George describes as an amazing human. Compassionate, loving, a tiny woman who exudes quiet power.

One day, Kelly came to George and said, in different words, that Aunt Nancy had observed something: "You're filled with anger."

George's response: "No. I'm not."

Then he caught himself. Wait. Why did that just come out that way?

"If she is saying this thing, I probably can't escape it. This is probably a truth. And what's interesting is I hadn't realized who I was willing to live with. I hadn't realized the amount of garbage that I hadn't unpacked from being a kid, from divorced family, high school dropout, divorce, lost friendships. There was just a lot of stuff. I was a hoarder of all the bad things of my life and emotions."

Liz named it: "Your own nightmare roommate."

George agreed. "We're more than willing most times to live with our negative self when if it was another human being, we would have divorced them years ago."

The Name That Changes Everything

George shared one of the most practical shifts he made: using his own name when talking to himself.

"Many times when we're talking negative about ourselves, we're like, you're stupid. You don't know what you're doing. We don't actually say, George, you're stupid. George, you don't know what you're doing. We don't even call ourselves ourselves most times when we're talking negatively."

If you stopped and just inserted your name, it would make such an impact that you would immediately think: That's unacceptable. I wouldn't let anybody else talk to me that way. Why am I talking to myself that way?

"It's important when you start to rebuild that you actually do use your name. When I'm talking to myself, I'm like, George, you got this. George, you can do this. George, now you know better than that. And I'll literally have a conversation with myself using my name because I really do feel like there's us and there's us."

Destroying the Ground to Build the Garden

George used a gardening metaphor to explain the work involved.

"You got a house. You got a yard. You decide, hey, I need to build a garden. The first thing that you have to do to build a garden is you have to rip up the soil. You have to destroy something. You have to destroy something to make something new."

Liz added context: "That is a Pablo Picasso quote. Every act of creation begins as an act of destruction."

George continued: "Just like yourself, you have to actively work on yourself. Now you've destroyed the ground as it was. Now you have to actively plant the seed. You have to actively water it. You have to make sure that you're giving it the best conditions to grow so that you can bear fruit."

He asked listeners to consider: Are you giving your garden, you, the best light, the best water, the best things to then produce fruit into the world?

"It's painful at first. But it's so good, and it feels so much better in the long run when you've got the garden for the second year, the third year. The plants are more mature. They're producing bigger fruit. You didn't have to necessarily destroy an entire area. You just had to maybe pick a few weeds out."

The Catalyst: Tired of Your Own BS

George was asked why this work became a priority for him. What made him realize it wasn't something you figure out once but a garden you need to tend?

His answer had no metaphors.

"I didn't like myself. I did not like myself. I did not like the choices that I was making. I kept putting myself in piss poor places in life, and I knew there had to be a better way. I had to convince myself, and finally did convince myself, that I was smarter than this reactive, angry, frustrated life that I was living."

He drew a line in the sand. Enough is enough.

Liz shared her own version of that moment: "I gotta be honest, George, kinda tired of my own BS."

Then she reframed it: "What if instead of saying the reason I made all these changes was because I was tired of my own BS, what if instead I started saying, because I'm gonna bet on myself because I'm worth betting on?"

The Tactics That Fill Your Cup

George shared four books that helped him cultivate a better relationship with himself:

The Way of the Peaceful Warrior. Soar by T.D. Jakes. Think Like a Monk by Jay Shetty. And The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks.

Liz added The Artist's Way for creatives, with its 12-week guided program involving stream of consciousness writing.

Beyond reading, George outlined specific activities:

Give yourself grace. Be compassionate with yourself and allow the understanding that you're an imperfect being who will make mistakes. Don't beat the crap out of yourself. There's a huge difference between beating yourself up and just noticing and then taking action on things you're noticing.

Get plenty of rest. When you sleep, that's when all the things firing in your brain all day are actually connecting and merging and rebuilding.

Talk to yourself using your name. Become your own guide, your own mentor. Talk to yourself like you would talk to a true friend having a hard time.

Understand your own love languages. George loves gifts. So he'll take time to gift himself. "You know what? You deserve a new watch. It might be dumb like new wipers on my car, but I'm gonna go buy me this gift because I know it's gonna make me feel a certain kind of way."

Pay attention to your core circle. Does it need to grow? Does it need to shrink? How can you be pouring into those relationships?

Liz added meditation, specifically using Headspace: "When I was really struggling to define my own happiness, often it was because I did not know how to sit in silence and stillness with my own brain and my own thoughts."

Love Your Neighbor As Yourself

George brought in scripture, with the caveat that whatever your beliefs, the words carry power.

Mark 12:30-31: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this. You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

His interpretation: "If you hate yourself, if you don't like to be in a room by yourself, if you are your worst inner critic because you haven't gotten to know yourself or cultivated the relationship, how in God's name are you supposed to follow the commandment of love your neighbor as yourself?"

It positions that you're supposed to love God, love yourself, and then that's how it flows out to the world.

Acts 20:35: "It is more blessed to give than to receive."

George's reframe: "We always talk about giving to others and helping the weak in this fashion. But if you just stop for a second and realize you're a human just like the rest of the humans, you're an imperfect human, you're a weak human, when's the last time you have given to yourself so, therefore, you could give to others?"

Three Warning Signs

George outlined how to know if you have an issue with your relationship with yourself.

When you're in a room by yourself, are you lonely or is it an opportunity? If it's an opportunity to fill your cup, to love yourself, to shake the rest of the world off, that's healthy. If you're lonely and frustrated and beating yourself up, that's a sign.

Are you keeping yourself accountable? If you say you're going to do something, then a weekend passes and it becomes "some of the times," then another weekend and it becomes "occasionally," you don't trust yourself. You don't believe in yourself. And if you don't believe in and trust yourself, it's very hard to love yourself.

Are you demolishing your own divinity? You have to understand you're a whole human. You are perfect as you were created. When you can't love yourself, when you're demolishing your own divinity, you're saying that you're a mistake. You're saying that you're junk. "God don't make no junk. The universe don't make no junk. You are here for a reason."

The Orange Squeeze Test

George closed with a powerful image.

"If I take an orange off of my counter, cut it in half, and squeeze it, what am I gonna get? Orange juice. Because that's what's inside of it."

"If life squeezes you and anger comes out, who are you? If life squeezes you and frustration comes out, envy comes out, who are you? If life squeezes you and grace, empathy, compassion, and love come out, who are you?"

Look at the times when life squeezes you. Look at your reactions. That's where you understand where you truly are and how you might need to change your inner self so that when life squeezes you, the external juice is what you want it to be.

Quotable Moments

"The human on this planet you spend the most time with is yourself."

"We're more than willing most times to live with our negative self when if it was another human being, we would have divorced them years ago."

"If we stopped and just inserted our name, it would make such an impact that you would immediately be like, that's unacceptable. I wouldn't let anybody else talk to me that way."

"You have to destroy something to make something new."

"Most people don't know their own self worth. They have never taken time to understand their self value independent of the world's opinion and validation."

Questions to Sit With

1. On a scale of 1 to 10: Do you depend on yourself? Do you show up for yourself? Do you have things in place to protect yourself?
2. When life squeezes you, what comes out?
3. Are you beating yourself up, or are you noticing things you want to change along the way?
4. Do you know your self worth, independent of the world's opinion and validation?
5. What makes you happy?

Press play above to hear the full conversation. George and Liz go deep into why this relationship matters more than any other, the moment that made George realize he was his own nightmare roommate, and the practical tactics for becoming your own guide, your own mentor, and your own source of a filled cup.