How can we truly give love to others if we don't have it for ourselves? In this episode, we peel back the layers of self-love and explore the baggage that often comes with it. We share personal experiences and discuss the way corporate culture can make it difficult to seek love and advice in the workplace.
Join us as we examine the impact of self-love - or lack thereof - on our relationships and the love we give to others. Discover the importance of self-judgment and how it can help us learn to truly love ourselves. We also delve into the power of mindfulness and self-care, providing practical tips on cultivating self-love and reclaiming our mental garden.
Tune in for an enlightening conversation on the importance of self-love for a fulfilling life, and how deserving to be loved and happy is not entitlement, but rather a rule of nature.
You'll also gain access to a downloadable PDF with steps for the self-love exercise we discuss in this episode, helping you on your journey to a happier, healthier you.
Need the transcript? Visit our EPISODE PAGE
Thank you for listening. If you have an idea or message you'd like to share, send us a message: Olivier Egli and Carlos Basurto
How can we truly give love to others if we don't have it for ourselves? In this episode, we peel back the layers of self-love and explore the baggage that often comes with it. We share personal experiences and discuss the way corporate culture can make it difficult to seek love and advice in the workplace.
Join us as we examine the impact of self-love - or lack thereof - on our relationships and the love we give to others. Discover the importance of self-judgment and how it can help us learn to truly love ourselves. We also delve into the power of mindfulness and self-care, providing practical tips on cultivating self-love and reclaiming our mental garden.
Tune in for an enlightening conversation on the importance of self-love for a fulfilling life, and how deserving to be loved and happy is not entitlement, but rather a rule of nature.
You'll also gain access to a downloadable PDF with steps for the self-love exercise we discuss in this episode, helping you on your journey to a happier, healthier you.
Need the transcript? Visit our EPISODE PAGE
Thank you for listening. If you have an idea or message you'd like to share, send us a message: Olivier Egli and Carlos Basurto
This is Let It Be Known with Carlos and Olivier. And we're back for number three. That's right number three, Let It Be Known. Let It Be Known, the podcast that helps men navigate troublesome times, where we speak about the unspoken. Yup, your hosts, carlos and Olivier. Ever since we learned to Let It Be Known right, things have gotten better.
Carlos:Oh, yeah, definitely.
Olivier:Yeah. So, how has your week been going?
Carlos:It's been pretty good. But today you hit me with something really good. Where made me start thinking.
Olivier:What did I do? What did I do?
Carlos:No, it's always like you, it's, it's, I guess, something that you know, but you just don't really say it to yourself or anything until you get a text message from you and be like self love, I'm like wow.
Olivier:Damn Self love. Oh, what did I say?
Carlos:You said, in the text message, you said I have a great thing we need to talk about. I was like, and then you just said self love. But it's crazy though, because I mean, now that we're Let It Be Known and everything, to me self love was a strange word, kind of corny, nerdy, maybe needy, I felt that way. That's why I kind of kept it to myself, like I didn't really want to speak on it or even think about it. You know, you say self love it just. I mean in a way, I don't know if anybody feels this way, but it sounds needy.
Carlos:Do I need something.
Olivier:Yeah, I think I know what you mean. I think it is.. It comes with a lot of baggage, right, and yet we know Somehow, we all know that it is important. We know it's important but, ooh like, i hope nobody knows that it's important to me. I hope nobody knows that I need it, that I'm lacking it, or right.
Carlos:Yeah.
Olivier:I know, you know, in my former work life because I have a former work life, which was very corporate, very corporate to talk about love, ooh, that was a bad thing, like it's like you're dropping your pants. It was kind of like. You know, you were in a room, i was in these boardrooms with clients and agency owners and creative directors and whatnot, and we talked about facts and ideas and numbers and you know how to kill it, what to do, what needs to be done, marketing this, sales, that. And amidst all that, there's one thing that you could always see behind the eyes of, i'm sorry to say, mostly man.
Olivier:There was pain, you know, there was like unspoken pain And you could tell, like you know, back then I didn't know what's wrong with us. You know, i looked at myself and was like you have that pain too. What is wrong? And one day I got confronted, you know, with this message oh, brother, you know how that goes Like when suddenly you become open to the things. Now they pop up all around you, all around. Yep. You hear it on the radio, you see book titles, even on social media, wherever Everybody talks about love.
Olivier:Suddenly, right, Suddenly everybody talked about love And I was like oh yo, i know how to love, i know what love is. You know, i love my wife, i love my car, you know, i love.
Olivier:I do love, and then I was like fuck, i think I don't know what love means, because if that's what love is, it's not working. It is not working because it makes me wanna more of it. I want more of that love. I want more of things I can love. I want more. I wanna be loved more. Right, and I was not allowed to ask anyone for advice because that would have made me this weird guy.
Olivier:Right, As you said before, needy guy, you don't wanna be needy, you wanna be shielded and armed and protected. And then I realized, oh, love is that thing that you first need for yourself before you can even give it or experience it in relation with someone else. Right, You know, as they say, love is the only thing that grows when you share it. But you can only share what you have. Does that make sense? It does make sense.
Carlos:No, no, no definitely.
Olivier:How can you give something you don't have?
Carlos:Well, have you ever thought about it? maybe the reverse way. And here's what I was thinking, like I think, and I'm sure some people, that we give love and show love to others so much, but I think that they don't know how to show it to themselves. You mean the ones that we show it to. Oh yeah, like you know, when someone's in need or we tell them certain things, we know we're showing a lot of love. I mean, people have told me Carl's such a great guy, you're listening. I mean it's love, you're showing love to others, but for some way I feel like I don't know how to show love to myself. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, you know.
Olivier:It's just such a weird concept to you know, there are so many people who are so giving, they're so giving, but the love they give is hollow, because they themselves don't have love for themselves.
Carlos:Yeah, I agree.
Olivier:And I don't wanna be the one who like pulls weird stories from his past, but there is one story. There's one story that really kinda shows. There's one story that really kinda shows in the very best way what I mean. There was this old woman in our street and she was like in her 80s and I was in my early teens and she was known to bake cookies for everyone. She let us play on her lawn, she let us do whatever. She was there for us when our parents needed someone to take care of us, she would take care of us right.
Olivier:So, you would say this was a very loving person. This person was giving, giving, giving. One day they found her drowned in her bathtub. Oh wow, she had died of a brain tumor that provoked a stroke and she was just paralyzed, slowly drowning to her death. And the way I remember that it was portrayed in the news, in the newspaper back then it was horrific. She died like the most horrific death, right, and I remember that everybody on our block said why her, why this loving, giving woman? We don't understand, and I also didn't understand.
Olivier:I was 12 years old, like, how can you wrap your mind around it? You learned that if you're kind and giving, you know you're gonna receive back things like that, right. Then it turned out that over the years I learned that she was a very, very bitter person. She was a person who held so much bitterness inside of her because of things that happened in the past that she was not able to forgive herself for She was haunted. She was a haunted person, but for us kids it was not visible, of course, right, and that reinforced my notion that you can give your last shirt If you're not willing to dress yourself first, if you're not willing to nurture yourself, if you're not willing to give yourself the space to be the beautiful self that you are, to forgive yourself for your past, if you're not willing to create that room for yourself, everything you give is nothing, nothing.
Olivier:Nobody will care, nothing will come back, nothing will happen for you. But you're here to live for yourself first. That is the important thing. I think that is the important thing, because if you live for the others, you're always expecting others to repay you, or you're hopeful that the others will, you know, pay that difference in guilt that you have inside of you, but that's not happening. No one else can do that for you. You have to have it first. Yeah, and anatomy is exactly like you know the safety procedures on the plane Before you assist others, you don't oxygen to yourself. Yeah, if you're passing out, you can't help anyone.
Olivier:Right, very true, but everybody, or let's say, a lot of people, think that no love is about just showing compassion, showing compassion, showing compassion. What if the person that's supposed to be compassionate has no compassion for themselves? There's nothing to give. That person has passed out, that person's gone, that person is nonexistent. You are giving something you don't have And consequently, you know, like in a partnership, if you hate yourself but you're in a partnership.
Olivier:That love that you give is clinging, it's robbing space, it's invading, it's demanding, it's dark. You can only give true love if you have true love for yourself. I am convinced now no, now that that pain those people had always in these boardrooms was not that they were not giving enough or not involved enough or in the world whatever. It was simply that deep down inside they knew they either have no respect for themselves Right, they're guilty of not following their heart. There's a lot of trash and baggage that carry on their shoulders from their past, things they can't forgive for themselves, things they know that their heart wants, but they don't give it to their heart because you can't do that.
Olivier:So all of that creates this, you know. It just creates this twist, this twisted version of love that then turns leaders into bad people. You know, because now you're lead without self love, you, you, you're a parent without self love. You're a partner without self love. Man without self love, you're like a tree that is void of life. Your fruit will be without flavor without life. You're giving fruit, but they're meaningless. I am convinced because we're like. Remember we said that we live inside out.
Carlos:Yeah.
Olivier:If there's nothing inside, there's nothing we can give on the outside.
Carlos:You know it's, it's, it's, it's amazing what you're saying. The reason I say that is because you're 100% right on those points. My question is and we go back to the other thing we talked about okay, I go back in time, you know, when I was little, like you said, right, And I've been taught we go back to that word, taught to love other people, treat other people great, but no one ever actually taught me to love myself, which means, like you said, me first, give myself oxygen first, because if I don't get oxygen, I die. And what am I good to anybody else out there?
Olivier:Nothing, The crazy thing is that then we don't do it because we think like it's a gothistical, it's narcissistic, it's selfish, it's self centered. No, it's not. That's life. We live for ourselves first, so that we can be complete beings that can give to others It's cause and effect. We have to understand the sequence of things. If the sequence is inverted, we will always just live for the outside world and never for ourselves. What happens then is we die better people, just like that old lady on my blog.
Olivier:Yeah, that was really such a wake up call, but I, of course, even being 12 and being told that I did not really understand what you do with it. Now that I'm way older, i realize it doesn't matter that she baked cookies for us, it doesn't matter that she took. she allowed us to play on her lawn right Because she was not filled with the love that she was trying to give others. The love that she gave was basically meaningless. She lived for nothing. She died bitterly. Yeah, i'm not going to say her life was in vain. Of course she touched us, but what did she teach us? She taught us that, as a better person, you should give. She taught us that you're not worthy of self love. Is that the teaching from her, because I know a lot of people are selfless, right Yeah, and then they kill themselves.
Carlos:Oh man.
Olivier:And we're like but it was such a good person. Good for whom? For themselves or for us?
Carlos:That's true. Oh, it's so, that's so. It's infuriating, it is.
Olivier:Like we're all such a good person, such a great person, why? Because they helped you. What about themselves? What about them? Right, yeah.
Carlos:Well, i mean it leads all into the mental health of men or women too. That I mean you're absolutely right. You know, when someone says I don't know, i can't believe this person did this or they, i mean they kill themselves because they were such a great person. But you're right, the bigger question is to who? To you, not to themselves.
Olivier:Who are we to judge someone else? We always love to judge other people as being loving, caring, or assholes and selfish.
Carlos:We do that.
Olivier:Yeah, but our judgment doesn't mean shit. The only judgment that is valid is the self judgment. So we have to go to these people and ask them how are you doing? And if these people say, i'm just done, i have given myself away and there's nothing left of me, it doesn't matter if they give things away, if they give themselves away. The fact of the matter is that they have barely enough to survive, and that's what needs to change. But see, what bothers me in all this is that we don't understand what the word love means. What does love mean? Commonly? it means an affection. It means to someone else, exactly To something.
Carlos:I mean, my wheels are just turning right now that you're asking me and saying, what is love, and I'm thinking well, now I have a different perspective, but for what I knew before, all this was love was how much I care for someone, what I did for someone else, but you know what That's wrong.
Olivier:That's not love. I know That is the emotion that we feel when we have love in us. It's very important, and I want to use this platform here to make this very clear, because if humanity could grasp this concept, everything will change tomorrow. Love and the emotional effect of love is not the same thing. When we're in a loving state, we feel care right.
Olivier:We feel care, or we feel the need to protect, we feel the need to preserve, we feel safe. You know all these things, but that's the effect of love. It's not love itself. The love that we think is real is actually a terribly dark force. Right, it's the one that makes us jealous, it's the one that makes us needy. Yeah, it's the one that makes us envious. That is not love, that's conditional love And, by definition, love is unconditional.
Carlos:So, whatever it is that we do when we you know, so if I buy you a dozen roses, that's a conditional love, because you're saying that if I give you this, then you're going to love me. Exactly, it's it.
Olivier:If, then You know.
Olivier:If you give in order to receive, which is conditional love, i will love you. If you love me, i will say I love you. If you tell me you love me too, don't you know that? you know, in those transactional relationships, when one partner says I love you and the other one doesn't reciprocate, something is off. It's weird, it's like there's a tension. But that's bullshit, because if you feel the need to say I love you, you should just say I love you and walk away. That's it. I said my truth. Let it be known, yeah, but if you let it be known so that they reciprocate what you said, you're full of fucking shit, you're not loving.
Olivier:It's not love, it's expectation. That's right Love, true love, does not expect shit In return. Yeah, you're right, true love just is It's the power that bonds, it's the power that makes things possible. And this is the fallacy of human beings. It's why we go to war, that's why men are struggling to be men, because we only do things if we get something in return. And guess what? That's not how life works. It doesn't work that way. You live because you live, you know You give because you want to give You love, because you feel that you want to love. You feel the care you just want to fucking give.
Olivier:But we are also transactional now because we are transactional, because we're so fearful. So now our love has become a fearful, twisted, perverted version of love. It's fear love, what we have. Most people marry on the basis of fear. Love to be safe, to be taken care of, to have someone you know Not to have to chase, to feel, you know, kind of provided for. I don't know, you know all these things. Right, this is.
Olivier:And then we call it love. It's not, it's just attachment, that's it. It's just fucking attachment. It doesn't mean shit.
Olivier:And then, of course, we feel betrayed when that person leaves us because that person suddenly doesn't feel that attachment anymore. You know what It's good actually that that person leaves, because I asked you what is the definition of love And I have it. I have it Hear my sleeve And that is worth more than any money we will ever make to know that, man, this is just. This is a true blessing to know that love is nothing else But us giving ourselves and those we love the freedom and space to be. That's the definition of love.
Olivier:So self love means to see yourself for who you are, to embrace yourself for who you are and to give yourself permission to be who you are. To love someone else means to give that person the space, the room and the freedom to be who they are and support them and be more of who they are. That's love. Everything else is just a lie, man. It's a lie. Man. You love your kids because you see them as who they are and you want them to stay as They are. you want them to stay true to themselves, so you provide for them to stay in a safe space where they can just be themselves. When you go and tell them how to be, when you tell them what not to do, when you force them to do this and that again say well, well, you're actually not loving them anymore. It's done, hey, you're done.
Carlos:You're done. You know how many people out there don't know the real definition of love 99 point Let's be nice 8%. No, it's. It's crazy, though, because the conversations I've had with people is exactly what you said, meaning this, but they don't even know it. That's actually what they're really trying to figure out, where. Oh, she doesn't, and what you said is like The love is, she doesn't understand me, that she's not giving your space to be you to be free.
Olivier:Yeah.
Carlos:Yeah, that's actually true love. So when someone actually loves you, they're giving you space to be exactly and they let you go.
Olivier:A Real sign of love is when the partner lets you go. So if you get to it in the end of the road, you know, yeah, your values don't align. You live different lives, you believe in different things. You just can't find common ground. There's, there are, you know, real obstacles. The idea is not to fight to make things work out. That's taking away space. That's like, oh, we have to work with compromises. No, love does not compromise ever. Right, love cannot compromise. What is true love in that case is I'm letting you go. I love you so much that I'm letting you go. That is true love. But the fear love that humanity has embraced is I have to hold on to you. We have to make it work. We have to somehow fight through this. We have to everything. That is the very definition of space and freedom. We oppose With love and what we do for ourselves, self love. We oppose ourselves. We take away the space to be who we are, and that's just insane.
Carlos:I have a friend who's always arguing his number one thing I remember he would say I only get like this when she was other People around, just because and you know, call it jealousy, but it's because I love her and At one point you're thinking like damn, and he must love her in a weird way, but in reality he's not letting her go. No, no he doesn't love her.
Carlos:No and by versa. It's like it's crazy. and so many people out there I mean I know people listening right now They're like honestly, it's hit them in a certain ways, like Damn, like seriously, and people think the oppa, you know it's crazy, people think that by you, not by you, letting me be me, my space, you don't love me?
Olivier:Yeah, the opposite of that. Yeah, and why? because the context of their love is fear. So it's like you have. You have the big, you have this onion, and the outer shell is fear, and inside is the love that fear allows and the only love that is allowed in the rain of fear. So, when your mind is wired for fear, the only love you know is the one of safety. So when it keeps you safe, so that love Holds on to people, holds on to money, holds on to things, holds on to titles, holds on to you know, or gratification and affection, attachment, holds on to everything that's safe. It holds on to that, and he fights and Defends everything that threatens the fear love. It's horrible, it's. If you look at it from the outside, that's a completely a rotten onion. It's the fear onion. You know, yeah, people are fear onions and, and When I see, then you know people say like, oh, we fell in love with each other.
Olivier:And then you, you know, you know, you usually know one of the two they get married, right, yeah, or that are now a new couple, and then share it with you. You know one of the two and you know that that person, a has a completely twisted notion of love And you know that that person also has no love for themselves, and you know exactly what's gonna happen. You can see the two of them running hand in hand full speed into a wall. You see it, and I mean the statistics are on my side There's barely any marriage.
Carlos:That is not either suffering, compromising, which is ending right those are the so big on compromising, though, and they think that's actually a healthy thing.
Olivier:Yeah, they think like oh well, you know, that's what marriage is about.
Olivier:Yeah, it's not it's not, it's it's. That's bullshit. If life was a compromise, then you're not living. You're not living. Life is thriving. You thrive or you move the fuck on. That's very simple, because as long as you use love to be safe, you're in survival mode. You just married or in a partnership, or even just with yourself in a partnership, to survive. I Really hope that every guy listening Will agree. Just looking at it from afar, surviving is not enough. No, nobody wants to do. 80, 90 years of surviving, 80, 90 years of compromise and Self-love that is compromised. Man, you're living a compromise with yourself. How horrific to wake up. You wake up and already you have to compromise. You have to compromise the way you feel with your own dream. You kind of have to be like well, you know, i would really love to, but fuck that, i'm not worthy of it.
Carlos:Man, you know. It's crazy, though Also is that when, when people man, i know especially We're like man, this is a lot of work. And I started thinking like, okay, it's a lot of work Why? oh, because I have to do so much just in that Showing my love. But it's just like if you actually knew the true meaning of love. Like you said, give them space, let them be, you'll be surprised. You won't even get tired, it's no work at all.
Olivier:Exactly It's. The hard work is to shift I give you that, no, i give you that to shift from this, this violent fear, you know, this fear laden idea of love, to shift from there to real love. I mean that's, yeah, it takes effort because you have to, like, reset yourself. You have to reset your mind. Yeah, that's hard, it is. It takes you getting into silence. It takes you looking within. It takes you getting to know yourself. It takes you facing your demons. It takes all this work, everything that I do with my clients on the daily. It takes that, yeah, you need to be guided. Most men will not manage to do that on their own because It's just too much distraction to fall back into the, into the fear love and then hating yourself again. You know that's the hard part.
Carlos:Oh I, i mean, i'm going back to thinking when I was in a relationship that shit would be really hard If I had to do the shift and start, like you said, like you know, making that move. It's like for her to understand, for me to understand too.
Olivier:It's, it's. It won't be easy.
Carlos:I get you because so many years have been implementing ourselves what we thought love was and Clearly for, like you said, 98 per 99.8 percent of the people out there, it's just not working out No and they'll keep going. They'll keep posting up this big old picture of it And like everything's great, but it's not great. No, it's not you know but.
Olivier:But then, once they're on the other side of the door, there's the door again. You go through the door and you embrace unconditional love as your operating system. Mm-hmm, no, it's easy, not now. It's much easier than it was ever before. That's the irony These people telling you it's hard, changes hard, yeah, but flowing is easy. I mean Me and my wife. We have a relationship where We just, you know, we just let each other be, but we, while giving each other the support we need.
Carlos:Hmm.
Olivier:And? and if that means that she has to take off for a week or I have to take off for a week, there's no second thought, there's no like well, don't you love me anymore, or?
Carlos:you might know by yeah, you leave me here by myself. It's like.
Olivier:Obviously, you need something. Is there anything I can help you with? No, i just need to be by myself or need to, like, figure something out, or I need time for myself. Great, what can I do anything? No, okay, be gone, you know, let it fucking be known. Yeah, it's. It's so important because If you have false love in you, a false perspective on love, you know the love that Needs to be reciprocated, the love that lives outside of you.
Olivier:You're exposed and vulnerable all the time. Everything will always threaten your integrity. You will always try to measure up to You. What did he mean by that? Mm-hmm, what was that? Why didn't he shake my hands? Why did my parents not call? Why did she not call? What did he not look me in the eyes? What if you have self-love for yourself? you like, i don't give, i don't care, i just. I mean, it would be nice to know, i guess, but I have enough in my cup. My cup is overflowing with love. There's no space for more. I'm good. I am good. But if you go out there and you're this needy self that is just looking for love, false love in all the false places, you're done. You're toast. Whether you're a man or a woman, you're just a puppet. A puppet on strings Dancing the dance of false love doesn't work. It's why a lot of platforms they're supposed to make people fall in love don't work.
Carlos:Online dating doesn't work.
Olivier:It can bring people physically together, but then they have to work Exactly.
Carlos:So so here's a. So I know some people out there are not in a relationship. Now I was in a relationship. What I'm learning is and by bowing, you know not just the men and women as well I didn't give her her space Like I'm guilty of it 100%. Now that I'm not in a relationship, i'm taking care of myself, but you are in a relationship with yourself, exactly So I need to. I'm working on and it's not easy, but to it is easy. It's just the guidance that I'm trying to to follow us self-love. What you hit me with today And I'm like man, and it was just like before I could ever love anyone or give someone the space, because now I know what it is is that I have to be good by myself, because if I go into a relationship where I don't love myself and then I'm trying to give conditional love to someone, i'm gonna end up in the same place I ended up before.
Olivier:Absolutely, you know So. And also then imagine two people who are damaged goods trying together to build something. I mean, damage good plus damage good is mega damage good and damage good plus non-damage good equals still damage good. It is damage, man. It's just math. People should be complete people by themselves so they can join forces and be good together. You know It's math, it's simple math. People who think they need a partner to compensate for a lack to have in them, they're also fucked.
Carlos:Yeah.
Olivier:Because you cannot compensate the lack that you hold inside with pills and drugs and band-aids outside of you. That's unfair for the other person, exactly You, basically, you're not telling them in the face, but they know that you are my crutch, you are my pill, you are my drug, you are my way of coping, not fair. We're not here to do that. We're not here to do that.
Carlos:Now some of the questions I have is okay, self-love, what guy? I mean? what tips or guidance can you share as far as? because I mean, there's people out there like myself that are okay, you realize you need to love yourself. you know self-love, and how do you do that? I know there's not literally a book. it's like here's the steps of how to self-love yourself There is? there is actually.
Olivier:Right, yeah, there is, and it's very successful. I have to do it with every single person I work with. Really, every single person needs this, and it's very simple. You just have to understand that the fearful mind that has engaged in the false kind of conditional love right, it's one that's full of noise. It's full of noise. Oh what if? what? if what if I have to? oh no, i'm afraid that. And if not, then what? Right, it's just noise. It's like a radio that's tuned to a frequency of noise with the volume cranked all the way up. That's how the people who love today walk around.
Olivier:It's just noise. Questions what if I'm not good enough? What if she doesn't love me? What if this and this happened? Oh, I totally deserve that. I deserve to be, you know, left. I deserve to be abandoned. All these things? that's just noise, noise. Noise Inside the heads of all these people that have this pain behind the eyes.
Olivier:First thing you have to do is you have to create space for your love to bloom inside of you, right, and that is silence. Silence is the first, foremost thing that we human beings need to reconnect with ourselves, because when there's constant distraction, noise, we can think, we can think straight. We don't know anymore who we are because there's constantly someone telling us who to be and what to do. So silence And with silence I mean just total exclusion of external triggers and distraction right, you have to carve out space for yourself. Say, like, for 10 minutes a day, there's a time just for me, no phone, nothing. You can black out a room, you go into nature, whatever, but you tell yourself this is my reconnection space And there's nothing, no distraction, it's just me, it's for me. That is sacred. Most people don't have that.
Olivier:They don't have no way, they go into nature, with their earbuds on or with their phones.
Carlos:Or you know constantly.
Olivier:No, nothing. Why? Because creating space for your mind means to look inward, and you can only look inward when there's no trigger.
Carlos:no, excitement from the outside. Correct cell phones, anything like that, Yeah.
Olivier:And you say, okay, i carve out, this time in a controllable space where I will not be disturbed, where it's just me And my intention is just to be. And now you do this Silence, close your eyes. You imagine you're tumbling in water. You're just drifting in water drift. There's no up, no down, no left, no right, bottom surface, nothing. It's just an endless body of water and you're just drifting. Okay, and now comes the trick.
Olivier:Most people will tell me I don't know how to meditate, i can't do this because I don't know what to do and there's constantly something happening. Yeah, that's because the mind needs to be thinking. To be in silence doesn't mean to silence your mind. If you go into silence with the expectation condition Correct To silence your mind, you will fail. You might as well just go to the movies.
Olivier:But if you just drift and you allow your mind just to speak up, you tell your mind, tell me what you think, what's going on. And as you drift mentally in the silence and you allow for your mind to speak, everything that's in there just vomit all the thoughts out onto a blank canvas. Two things happen. First, your mind is relieved. Everything that's suppressed is now out, right. Second, you get to see your mind. You get to see what's in there, which means you become conscious right, something that people who are running around with their head chopped off and all scared right Looking for love never do. They never know what their mind is actually up to right And also never let their mind really speak up. But now that you do this and when you do that, something magical happens.
Olivier:Slowly the mind gets calmer and calmer, because it's like a child that you allow to yell. At some point it gets tired. It's like, okay, i've set my truth, i've set my peace, and you're still tumbling in your mental space in silence. You know you have to do that every day a little bit. Maybe you start with five minutes, don't start with an hour. You can't do that, you will not manage. Start with three minutes, five minutes And over time expand it to 10, 15, two times 15, two times 20 minutes, right, until it's intoxicating. It's intoxicating because it just clears house.
Olivier:And then you imagine, you get into, you know, when your mind has said its truth, you go into this space And I call it the secret garden. And the secret garden is just that. It's a garden with tall walls, open to the sky, and in the middle there's just, you know, there's a lawn and you tell yourself this is where I'm gonna plant my tree. So when you're completely clear in your head, you go into your secret garden. And now that you're in your secret garden, you do step two you plant your tree. And planting your tree means simply to say I am enough. So when your mind has completely opened up to you and it's completely spoken its truth and realizes that you're not an enemy, you're friendly. You just want to look. Then, when it's open, lies open before you as a garden. You take your little seed and you plant it by saying I am enough, i deserve to be loved and I deserve love. So whatever you plant in that garden will grow, because you're now at the heart of your mind.
Olivier:You know what I mean. I don't exactly know what you mean. If you show up continuously in your garden, in your mental garden, and you plant continuously every day, you plant the seed of self-love, which is nothing, but I am enough, i deserve to be loved, i deserve unconditional love. That will grow, that will become the tree in your garden. Your garden will become about that. It will start to be about that And what it does.
Olivier:It's a trick. You take the back door into your subconscious, telling your mind mind, there's nothing to be achieved, there's nothing to be fought for. Everything's already here, we're good, we have it all. We're perfect, we're complete. That is all that exercise does Versus. We're missing this, we're missing that. We have to find this, we have to achieve this. We have to fight for that, all the things that make us miserable as men. We can simply change it by going into our garden, plant the seed of unconditional love and that just says I, as a human being and as a man, am enough. There's nothing that needs to be achieved, there's nothing that I need to go for. I just need to know that I'm worthy, i'm enough and I choose unconditional love. That's very important, that we say that we choose, because it also means that, hey, not only are we, but we consciously choose it, i choose it.
Carlos:You also said a word deserve that. You deserve to be happy. You deserve, you know, and I think that's really I mean for most people. I don't think they feel like they deserve any of this.
Olivier:Well, because they don't love themselves. If you don't love yourself, you think that you're non-deserving. To deserve literally means to love yourself, to say I deserve this.
Carlos:It's not entitlement, because I think that's what people think, that you're trying to be like all your I mean entitlement, that whole thing like oh, people feel entitlement, like someone owes you something.
Olivier:Well, in when you work with someone else. If you add someone else to the mix and you say I deserve your love, then you're entitled. But if you turn to yourself and say like no, no, i am. I'm a beautiful human being, i'm a child of nature. I deserve, as such, unconditional love, because unconditional love is a rule of nature, as such, i deserve it. You were born so, therefore, you deserve unconditional love. I'm here to claim my throne, i'm here to claim my garden. This is literally what I mean, you know, with that exercise.
Olivier:I am just asking people to reclaim their garden because right now in that garden it's completely overgrown. It's overgrown with shit. We know many people have planted all kinds of crap in your garden. That's why you don't know anymore what to go for. But when you go with a clear mind, with access to your subconscious, and you drop the line, i am enough. You do that 21 days, and that is that science, the science of repetition. You go for 21 days, consecutive days, constantly. You show up in your silent space looking inward and plant the seed of enoughness. Watch what happens. watch what happens. It changes your perspective.
Carlos:No, i mean, i mean I'm not. I mean there is definitely steps and everything. And I can tell you this, you know, is that I've gone through the door and I'm at right now, the point where I'm at with myself is showing up, staying consistent of having that space to myself, no cell phones, no distractions or anything. You know, i do it in a closet, i just sit there and I started off with three minutes. Right now I'm at between seven to ten minutes and that's why I'm just tripled.
Carlos:Yes, i'm just, i'm just in there and I'll be honest, sometimes I come out just, man, what did I think about I? sometimes it's just completely just quiet, it's just been quiet, awesome. You know, now the old me would be like, well, man, like if I, if I didn't think about anything, or you didn't feel anything, it was just a waste of my time. Yeah, exactly, but I got. I'm getting to the point where I need. I need it every day.
Olivier:That's what I mean. It's addictive, right? Yeah, of course, because you're finally engaging in self-care. You know self-care? there's so much hashtag self-care bullshit on social media. That is not self-care. Mindfulness, mindfulness I actually just just today I published an article on mindfulness. Are we mindful or do we get our mind full of? shit right mindfulness can also mean that we're overloading our mind. Mindfulness is actually the art of observing your mind. It's I like to compare it to. You know well you, maybe you know National Geographic right.
Olivier:Wild live photographers are experts in unconditional love. To set up your camera outside, watching a hole, right, yeah, where an animal might or might not show up. That's exactly what you do when you meditate. When you meditate, you set up camp in front of your mind and you just observe it until it decides to show itself. You ask it who are you? what thoughts do you have? what's inside of you? Yeah, you don't tell it. I want you to be calm, i want you to be focused, i want you to be kind bullshit if you say that it's not gonna come out the cave, because it's like what the fuck do you want? I'm like, i'm good.
Olivier:I'm good man, leave me alone but if you just like hey, i'm just here to see an old friend, i'm just here to, i want to check in on you. Then the mind is like well, okay, here it is. And now the fox comes out of the cave, comes out of the burrow, out of the hole. And what you do now? you just watch, you just watch. And what happens with all these wild live photographers? they start bonding, right, oh yeah, at some point the fox is not afraid of the photographer anymore. That same with your mind.
Olivier:At some point, you and your mind, you have a bond again. And when you have a bond, you can tell your mind anything and it will be like all right, you deserve it. And that bond is to tell your mind you're enough, you're beautiful, you're perfect, fine. Then your mind opens up and says like all right, what you want, let's do it right. That is the beginning of everything. We have to do that first before we can go. For you know the things, the boons, we first have to have this foundation, have coffee, have tea with an old friend. That's what I do when I go and visit my mind in meditation, my silent space, reconnect with my own conditional love. I always tell my wife I'm gonna go have tea with the old guy, with the old friend. Having tea with an old friend? so much better than refocusing your mind, changing your habits, reprogramming yourself. No, you're just simply going to visit your mind, opening yourself to it, and then you drop the lines like I'm enough.
Carlos:I know it sounds simple oh, it's not, though it's definitely not. It's not no, but I will tell you this when you start feeling that change, like, it's amazing, it's addictive, like what I was telling you yeah addictive.
Olivier:It's a ritual yeah, it's a ritual, and you increase the ritual and at some point, that ritual will be all your waking hours.
Carlos:You know, you're so conscious that you're constantly connected well, because of that, i'm finding myself to stay away from loud and negativity environments. That's right or more, that's right I just don't need to hear it, i just, i just find myself just moving away it's a choice, right, yeah, but it makes sense now yeah you reconnected?
Olivier:yeah, if you don't reconnect, then you know advice like less social, less social media, less toxic relationships on. It's good, nice, but it's just little goalposts yeah but if it comes from a mind that's truly reconnected with unconditional love, it helps it grow.
Olivier:You know that seat that I told you to plant in your secret garden mm-hmm that hatches and grows the more attention you give to the things in your life that are supposed to give you space, like relationships and all that, yeah, but self-love stands at the very center and beginning of the journey of happiness, and being a man without self-love is a terrible place to be, especially in these times, because you're subject to all these ideas what life is supposed to be, what you're supposed to do, who you're supposed to follow. With self-love, you're immune to that. You're immune. It's your immunization, it's it's that is your safety shot, that's that's what you have. You reconnect with yourself. Love, you don't have to fall for the bullshit. Powerful, i think, yeah, yeah, i think that that's it for the day yeah, that's probably enough, man powerful.
Carlos:I don't, i don't know why I talk so much no, man, just I don't even know how white time goes by so fast. Well, but great. I mean, like I said when you, when you told me about this, it was just man gotta know more about it. And definitely man, and I know how people out there listening it's hit them in a certain way where I guarantee you they can't express it or tell anybody yet, but I know him them less than in the shaking their hand.
Olivier:We like yep yep, and I don't know, but at some point, maybe already when this is up, we're gonna leave in a show notes a little downloadable PDF. You know, with the steps for the exercise.
Carlos:Yeah, yeah, that'd be great, man. I'm like, no, i don't, i've never had a bug. You're like dude, there's actually a bug, does very well, but no, in those steps. I'm sure people want to know more about the steps. So yeah, like when you actually do the notes on the show and everything that you can put a PDF file for them exactly and and reach out.
Olivier:I know if you do this unguided, it's hard it's hard and the likelihood for people to hit a wall and give up and go right back is almost a hundred percent. So guidance is important. To have a guide by your side that at least gives you pointers and kind of pushes in the right direction is very important, especially so early in the on the journey. So, yeah, reach out. Or if you have any more questions or any added comments, comments you want to add to this, we're completely open because we too, we don't have all the answers, but we try to look at it and raise the uncomfortable questions, make them visible and with that I'm out, and I'm out too.