Hello and welcome to the Mindful Kind podcast.

I'm your host, Rachel Cable, author of the Mindful Kind book, Mindfulness Teacher and blogger at

Rachelcable.com. Each week, this podcast will bring meaningful tips, tools and strategies

so you can manage stress and live more mindfully in the modern world.

Hello and welcome to episode 316 of the Mindful Kind podcast.

Over the last 10 or so years, I've really been working on strengthening my sense of self-love.

I know that might sound a bit cheesy, but it's honestly been a really important journey for me

and it's something that I'm really glad I decided to prioritize. I used to spend a lot of time

criticizing myself and judging myself and I didn't really like myself all that much. I wanted

to be more extroverted, more open and smarter and have better style and feel more

confident and have a better sense of humour. There were so many parts of myself that I felt

disappointed about, both internally and externally. I was used to talking to myself unkindly and

mentally beating myself up over my mistakes and the things that I thought were

flaws. When I finally decided that I wanted to work on self-love, it wasn't even about loving

who I am. First, it was just about working on self-acceptance and learning to like the things

that make me unique. My personality and the way I look,

my ambitions, my choices, all those little things that allow me to be who I really am.

It's been hard sometimes, other times it's been really easy, especially after I started this

podcast and started hearing from people who are similar to me

in so many ways, it made me feel less alone and less alienated. And the more I accepted and

liked myself, I think the more I attracted people into my life who support and encourage me.

And I'll talk about this a little bit more later on. So I decided to create this

...