This is episode 1045. Welcome to the Daily Meditation Podcast. I want to welcome you to the launch of a brand new meditation series.

This is part one of our seven-part series. We're launching into this week on how to use different meditation techniques for self-care.

And this is a request that comes from a long time listener, Beverly. Beverly wanted a series on self-love to where you focus on caring for yourself and drawing your confidence, self-respect from yourself rather than relying on other people's opinions of you.

And letting those opinions influence how you feel about yourself. So I thought this was an important topic that many people battle with.

But I want to mention that as I considered different techniques for this particular topic on self-care, I realized that really self-care is so much about being open and receptive to who you are.

And so this week's series is going to explore different ways to focus on your needs rather than on your wants.

Because you'll find that when you allow yourself to be influenced by other people or other situations and their influence carries heavy weight on how you feel about yourself,

this often has to do with focusing on what you need and what you want. And so you're going to explore the difference of wants and needs throughout this series as well as mindfulness.

In fact, today's meditation technique is going to be all about mindfulness. You'll also explore throughout the week how to act from your needs rather than from your wants.

How to practice some good self-care, how to set boundaries, how to protect yourself, how to forgive yourself, and how to live intentionally with your own true nature, drawing that out a little bit more.

And this is a series that I adapted from a seven-step protocol for self-love. And this is from Dr. Deborah Koshaba.

And this is from an article she wrote for Psychology Today where she talks about what self-love is and how to cultivate it.

And basically, what she shares is that self-love is a state of appreciation for oneself that grows from actions that support your physical, psychological, and spiritual growth.

She says self-love is dynamic. It grows by actions that mature us. And what she means by this is that when we act in ways that help to nurture us and recognize our strengths as well as our weaknesses,

we have less of a need to explain our shortcomings, we have more compassion for ourselves as human beings struggling to find personal meaning, and we're more centered on our life, purpose, and values.

And as a result of this, we expect living fulfillment through our own efforts.

So in today's meditation technique, which I encourage you to do, is to become more mindful. And when you become more mindful, you know how your thoughts influence you, how situations, and people influence you.

You become really attuned to how you're feeling in the moment. And this is exactly what you cultivate as you sit down and show up for yourself day in and day out as you meditate.

So as you sit down to meditate today or as you go about your day, the focus is all on mindfulness. And in that mindfulness, as you settle yourself in to your meditation or as you go about the day and listen to this episode,

focus on how you're feeling, where you may feel a certain emotion or a certain thought in your body.

If you feel yourself tense or tight and somewhere in your body, become aware of this. When you become aware of these sensations, as you sit down to meditate, and as you go about your day and you're triggered by different stress and overwhelm and distraction,

you automatically revert to this habit you cultivate in meditation, where you start to notice, oh, this is kind of triggering me and I'm noticing my muscles tighten in my stomach. And I noticed that this particular person or a vet or situation triggered that.

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