---
Learn more about Jericha's work and enroll at www.itsjerichaszlo.com
Do you know what self-love means? Arguably it's the best kind of love - the foundation of all healthy relationships. And the first step to manifest self-love, is to have a clear definition of it so you can understand its most important aspects. If you're anything like me be before I had this conversation with Jericha Szlo, you might be thinking that self-love is self care, but they aren't the same...
Jericha Szlo is the creator of the Self Love Mastery Course launching on October 25th (2023). In her teachings she guides you on how to use neuroscience and spirituality to re-wire your brain & harness your energy to experience limitless potential in your life.
This conversation offers a starting point for forging a foundation of unconditional love for yourself. You'll learn the most important things that will have a positive impact on you whether you are trying to start a new business, land your dream job, or just generally live a happy life.
Jericha's wisdom and understanding on these topics really helped me to better understand the idea of self-love and all the good things that comes with it (it's way more than just positive self-talk). I promise you can manifest self love, but there's also a lot of hard work that goes into any self-improvement/self-growth endeavor. Don't expect everything to change in a single day. So dive in and learn some of the powerful ways and relatively simple steps you can take to start becoming the best version of your Self.
*Please note: the following has been redacted for this post. To listen to the full interview, you can do so above!
CLAIRE
What it is that inspired you to get into this work?
JERICHA
[My] journey started when I was younger. I just didn't have the best home environment and without knowing yet, it was reflecting into every area of my life. My relationships, my career, the amount of money I could make, just how I felt on a daily basis. I had severe depression and chronic anxiety.
And that's what kind of sparked a personal development journey in me when my seven-year relationship came to an end and I realized I didn't have an identity of my own. I put all my identity on this partner and that was because of a lack of self-love. And what really, really sparked learning more about the importance of self-love was my journey into entrepreneurship.
So I actually started my own business doing brand and website design. And I started to realize that you can't hit new levels of success, whether it's in business or in life, without cultivating more self-love. A lot of entrepreneurs will say that business is a self-love game, and I believe that life is also a self-love game. And that really sparked my inspiration into self-love specifically, but really just the mindset portion of neuroscience and neural pathways.
CLAIRE
I 100% do find myself being limiting. And this is really interesting... I've never heard it said that business is a self-love game - I love that.
JERICHA
Yeah I heard [my business coach] say that and I was like, that is so true. And that's kind of what started my realization into self love specifically. I call self love the umbrella. It's the part that holds all of your confidence, self-trust, self-worth, self-acceptance, all of that. And you need all of that in order to hit a new level of success, whether it's just in your life, your career, relationships, or your business.
Living from a place of self-love sounded like living from my best self, something I wanted for my daily life. But I realized, I wasn't even sure I even knew what it was, and without that, how was I ever going to manifest it? Clearly this was something we had to dive deeper into. So I asked her: how exactly do you define this?
Ooh, I like this question because I think, and just especially what I see on TikTok is people saying like, my self-love routine, and I'm looking at it and I'm like, that is your self-care routine. There is a big difference between self-care and self-love, and I think a lot of people have perceived the term self-love to just mean self-care, like, ooh, let me take a bubble bath every night, or let me do my hair mask once a week, like whatever it is, and that's great.
Self-care is essential for self-love, but self-care is not self-love. You can partake in as many of these self-care habits as you desire, but it does not mean that you are going to cultivate the inner self-love. So to me, just based off of my knowledge and my expertise and even my experience, self-love is in short terms the way that you view yourself and it's how you feel about yourself.
CLAIRE
Hmm. Is it possible to expand upon that a little bit more?
JERICHA
Yeah, so self love is like, when I say how you view yourself, it comes down to your self worth, like what you feel like you're worthy of. It's the imperfections you hold that you are able to accept and still love anyway, it is the ability to be confident in who you are, even if you have made mistakes in the past, like it's really just how you view yourself. And I say that [it all] starts with self acceptance. Like you just have to accept yourself for the way that you are and not in a way of not allowing yourself to reflect so you can grow.
CLAIRE
So, self-care is not self-love. Self-love is more on the acceptance side. But when you think about the different aspects of self-love and when you look at people who are trying to approach manifesting self-love and getting into this in a way that's more intentional, where do you have them start? What's the foundation?
JERICHA
For sure I would say the foundation is self acceptance and self-worth I and maybe even a little bit of self-trust in there but I would definitely say the top two are self acceptance and self-worth especially when it comes to "manifesting self-love" or even just manifesting something into your life whether it's your dream relationship or more money in your business.
The basis of the subconscious mind is that if your subconscious beliefs are not in alignment with what you desire, you will self-sabotage yourself away from it because it's not safe to your mind and your brain is literally designed to keep you safe.
So if you lack self-worth especially, and you internally subconsciously actually don't feel like you are worthy of having more money, if you are worthy of having a relationship that you desire so badly, if you don't feel like you are worthy of success, that you will self-sabotage yourself away from it. Therefore, you're not actually going to "manifest it". So I really think the foundation is self-worth and self-acceptance [to be able to] actually live a life of limitless peace, freedom and happiness because freedom is a mindset, might I add. It is not tangible, like materialistic things.
How can you live a life of peace, freedom and happiness if you don't accept yourself for as you are? Like I said, your reality is just a mirror of your subconscious programming. So if you don't accept yourself, how can you actually live that life of peace? And then what builds on to that is self-trust, like being able to actually trust yourself in decisions you're making or self-confidence, like having the confidence to actually go out and explore the world and to take the big bold scary risky actions that you want or that you need to take towards your desires.
CLAIRE
I love that. Part of me does feel like I do really accept myself and love myself in a lot of ways, but then I'm like, there's definitely also pieces that I'm missing. And it feels kind of intangible for me to understand where my gaps are. So how do you evaluate that?
JERICHA
I know what you mean. Yes. I think a great way to evaluate that is really just look at what you're trying to achieve and then looking at the internal dialogue that you're having towards that. I do want to add that no one is ever going to be at 100% full acceptance of themselves.
In this lifetime, I truly believe that everyone is just always on a self-love journey. Some people can have higher levels of it than others, but I don't think anyone ever is just going to be at a place where like nothing fazes them, nothing bothers them, like they can make decisions without fear. I don't think that anyone will ever come to that place.
The easiest tip that I can give is when you are sitting down and you're saying, okay, this is my goal and this is the action I need to take, what is the internal dialogue that is coming up when you need to take that action? So is it things like, I'm not capable of that? Is it things like, I'm not good enough? Is it things like, that's too hard? Whatever it is, look at the internal dialogue and that'll help you gauge where it is that you may be needing more subconscious reprogramming.
CLAIRE
That's interesting. I think the one thing that comes up for me specifically in this journey that I've had and it's kind of come to light for me more recently is that there's a lot of me that goes, "Oh, I can do anything. People create businesses all the time, really successful businesses all the time, and I have the skills and know how to do this and I can make it happen." But I don't really believe it. I know I don't really believe this.
JERICHA
Mm. Yeah.
CLAIRE
The reason I think I don't believe it is because I have had nowhere in my life an example of this happening in real-time. My parents never were super successful in the way that I'm trying to be successful. I've seen it happen, but it's on this other side of the wall where it's like, I see it happen on TikTok. I see it happen in the media. And when I think about little kid Claire, who knew that I was expansive and limitless and all that good stuff, then there's adult Claire that puts a limit on that and goes like, it's probably not possible to do that. And that's what I've been telling myself I realized.
JERICHA
See, and it's funny because the way the brain works is it acts on evidence. So if you're not finding that you have that internal evidence of like you've already done X, Y, Z, it's essentially a limiting belief because consciously you're like, yes, I can do it. I see other people doing it. But then your brain's like, well, I've never done this. So how are we going to do this? And it comes down to really just embracing the discomfort because a lot of the times, especially with really big moves like big bold risky moves, we need to act without evidence. And that's what's difficult because if your brain has evidence of it it's probably not much of a limiting belief that's where discomfort comes in and it's really just like allowing yourself to move through the discomfort and one of my favorite quotes is - I think Dr. Joe Dispenza said it and I'm trying to remember exactly what the quote is, but it is something along the lines of "your ability to move through discomfort is what's going to dictate your success."
CLAIRE
That's really interesting. So how do you tie that into self-love? Is it this ability to be uncomfortable and to root into that part that you know you're going to be okay because you love yourself and you have that connection and that safety net?
JERICHA
Yes. I think a lot of it really comes down to acceptance again, because a lot of the times we don't take bold moves without the evidence that it could happen because we fear failing, we fear making mistakes and comes down to self acceptance. Like if you love and accept yourself wholeheartedly, you're gonna be like I am allowed to make mistakes and I'm going to make mistakes, but it doesn't define the outcome. It doesn't define my future and it does not define me. So, self-acceptance.
CLAIRE
So you're bringing up something for me saying it's self-acceptance regardless of external factors. I think this one's tricky for me because self-acceptance regardless of what's happening around me, fine. That feels fine. But let's say I were to go through and put my all and continue to put my all into the stuff that I'm doing in my entrepreneurial efforts. And if they were not to come to fruition, that's where I go, "ooh, am I gonna still be able to be okay having self-acceptance?" So that's tricky. That feels like where the work really starts for me.
JERICHA
Exactly. Yes. That's why I say self-acceptance is really the foundation because in every move you make, you have to have that acceptance of A, I'm still safe and secure if XYZ doesn't happen, and also I'm still good enough if XYZ doesn't happen.
CLAIRE
I definitely see the importance of that. Can you share some ways to start approaching this in your life?
JERICHA
The biggest one is your self-concept. Like I said, self-love is how you view yourself and your self-concept is your identity, which is held in your subconscious mind, which is going to dictate the way that you show up on a daily basis, which is going to dictate your results because the famous formula I talk about literally all the time is action equals results. So self-concept [is the] biggest one. Really looking at what it is that you want and leaning into who you have to show up as in order to achieve it and then working through the limiting beliefs.
So like I said, one of the easiest ways to uncover your limiting beliefs is to pay attention to your internal dialogue, because that'll help you see where the limiting beliefs are. And then to actually reprogram your subconscious mind to then align with the self-concept and the goals that you desire. Subconscious reprogramming is done when you are operating under the theta brainwave state. The best way to do it is either first thing in the morning or right as you are falling asleep because that's when our brain is transitioning from beta to theta. And some really great subconscious tools that I love using are either affirmation recordings or hypnotherapy.
Hypnotherapy is great because the certified hypnotherapist that's doing it will actually guide you into the theta brainwave state so it's not something you have to do first thing in the morning or right before you go to bed.
But those are some really great subconscious tools that you can use and you can find recordings on YouTube. I just say with hypnosis, make sure it's from an actual certified hypnotherapist because when you're working, hypnosis is more than just speaking affirmations to your subconscious mind. You wanna make sure that you are doing it with someone who knows what they're doing because the subconscious mind is very fragile.
CLAIRE
100%, I've done hypnotherapy before and I've done self-hypnosis and I can absolutely attest from a personal experience it's a powerful tool, how effective it is, and so immediately effective. I actually have a session coming up this week and one of the things that I was thinking about doing, I was like, I need a really big sheet of paper so when I get a thought, I'm going to write down the thought, and then I'm going to bubble off, what are the negative thoughts that I'm thinking about that thought? So on and so forth. So I can just go into the hypnotherapist and be like, these are the things. This is what we're working on. This is how I need to approach this.
JERICHA
Yes, I love Hypnotherapy. I worked with a Hypnotherapist from the end of 2022 into the first couple months of 2023 and I was mostly targeting confidence because I was making a bit of a career shift and unreal shifts were happening. The Hypnotherapist I work with is actually now Hypnotherapist inside of my one-on-one mentorship container because I loved her that much.
CLAIRE
Oh cool, that's great! One thing I wanna ask you about the affirmations... do you recommend where you actually record the affirmations for yourself and then you're actually listening to your own voice, or do you have it where it's other people typically?
JERICHA
So, I personally record my own, and the only reason for this, because there are really great ones on YouTube, [but if those] affirmations are not targeting your unique limiting belief, it will not do anything. You will not see shifts. So I record my own, and it's something that I do with my clients too in my one-on-one mentorship container as we uncover their unique, I call them unique limiting beliefs because everyone's are different. I will then create an actual affirmation recording for them to listen to.
My best example [of this challenge] is if you have a subconscious block around money, and yours is fear that you're going to run out, but you're listening to affirmation saying abundance flows to me effortlessly and easily, that's not going to happen because that fear is still there. You're still going to fear that it's not going to keep coming or that you're going to run out. So in short term, you're not actually shifting the limiting beliefs subconsciously. Therefore, your external reality is not actually going to shift. So affirmation recordings, if you have the ability I would always recommend to do your own, but with that also [requires] the ability to uncover the unique limiting beliefs that you have [and that may require the help of a professional].
CLAIRE
Yeah. And I think that takes a lot of practice. I think I'm relatively good at it now, but I spent literally my entire 20s working on getting good at it with different teachers and all sorts of stuff. So, I think having guidance on that is definitely something helpful because when you're looking at yourself, you have a limited perspective.
JERICHA
Yes. And especially if you lack the self trust, you might not actually be trusting that what you're uncovering is accurate, which is also a limiting belief. So it can get tricky.
CLAIRE
I would love to see and hear from you some success stories that you could share and really, what does this look like? What is formulating all of this self-love and really creating this as a foundation do for you?
JERICHA
Yeah, for sure. So one of my very first clients, based off of [our] first initial chat, I got the vibe that she really wanted to make a shift into the mental health space. Like have a successful podcast, create a mental health community. She didn't really know what it looked like, but that was a goal of hers. And at the time she was a website designer for health and wellness entrepreneurs. [The client indicated that mental health was something she wanted to focus on down the line but] I just had like that gut feeling that she really, really wanted to make this shift now, but was having that scarcity and lack of self trust.
So through our time together in the first couple of weeks with her limiting beliefs, we really uncovered that she was having, based on her past experiences, because that's where limiting beliefs stem from, is she was having a lot of lack of inner safety and security and a lack of self-trust and a lot of fears of judgment.
Through uncovering that and then working to shift it. A lot of it was nervous system regulation because inner safety and security typically needs a lot of nervous system regulation because if you're not feeling secure and safe in situations, it's gonna cause you to operate from fight or flight mode, which is not ideal.
CLAIRE
Can you define that for us, the nervous system regulation? What do you mean by that?
JERICHA
Yeah, so there's a lot of aspects to the nervous system, but the biggest ones that I talk about are the parasympathetic nervous system and the sympathetic nervous system. So the sympathetic nervous system is the fight or flight mode and the parasympathetic nervous system is the rest and digest mode. When we feel safe and when we are operating from a place of comfort, we are in the parasympathetic nervous system. When you start to engage in activities that lie outside of your comfort zone or activities that are just making your brain feel unsafe, it throws you into fight or flight because the subconscious mind actually doesn't know the difference between what's real and what's not.
So it will, based off of the limiting beliefs that you have, it will actually deem anything outside of its belief system to be unsafe. So like as an example, this client, she was having a lot of that inner safety and security just based off of a very traumatic event that happened. And this caused her any time that the brain would detect her to be in a situation similar to that past experience, it would throw her into fight or flight. And when we're in fight or flight, we can't think correctly, we can't act correctly. Part of subconscious reprogramming and achieving new levels of success [is that] our emotional state of being needs to be in alignment with our subconscious beliefs. When we operate at different emotional states of being we play into the thought patterns, behaviors and beliefs that lie within that emotional state of being.
My biggest example is if you're having a lot of anxiety...What are your thoughts? If they're anxious thoughts, if you sit within an emotional state of being for a long period of time, it's going to become your dominant emotional state of being, which essentially is just going to be the habitual way that you think, behave and believe. And we obviously don't want it to be something associated with fight or flight. We want it to be associated with rest and digest because we want to not only just like feel safe, but also we want to play into thought patterns that actually align with how we want to feel and live. So, emotional state of being is very important and it really just comes down to nervous system regulation.
CLAIRE
That was a great definition. Thank you for expanding on that part. So back to your client story.
JERICHA
Yeah, so once we got her nervous system to be a little bit more dominantly regulated, she ended up saying that she decreased her anxiety by 75% since working with me. So obviously, like she had very, very [intense] chronic anxiety. So, within the period of being able to regulate her nervous system and really come into letting go of fears of judgment and cultivating more self trust and self acceptance, it allowed her to actually come to a place of, well, "I don't want to do web design. I actually really want to shift over." And I remember, I will never forget that call where she was like, "Okay, I think you're right, I really do want to shift over and I was like, I knew it. I could just tell by her energy the way that she would light up when she would talk about doing the mental health thing.
So yeah, so that allowed her to, and then she was also working with the hypnotherapist that's inside of my mentorship. And through the hypnotherapy and the affirmation recordings that I would provide, she was able to feel safe in making that shift in that transition. And then she actually did make that shift in transition. So that is, so the two biggest things that she left our time together feeling really excited and proud about was her anxiety decreased by 75% and she was able to step into what she truly really wanted to do and kind of just let go of those limiting beliefs that were holding her back.
CLAIRE
That's wonderful. What do you see are the biggest blockers for people? Where do people get caught?
JERICHA
Self-worth is a really, really big one. And confidence, especially with entrepreneurs, I've noticed confidence is a really big one because we compare ourselves a lot to other entrepreneurs around us, right? From the people we wanna learn from, but also just the people we follow online. And we see, you know, social media is a complete highlight reel. We see most of only people's wins. I'm very picky now about with who I will follow on social media. But when I first started my business, I would follow anyone and everyone and people like to flaunt, especially like the amount of money they make or whatever it is. So the biggest thing I've noticed is that comparing themselves to other people and their worthiness - [being able] to feel like they're worthy of the success that they desire.
Fear is [another] really big one. A lot of people don't realize that they actually have a fear of success, not just a fear of failure.
CLAIRE
What do people typically fear in the success?
JERICHA
Specifically with money, is a lot of people, they think that they, you know, they consciously think, well, if I have more money, I'll live a better life, but subconsciously, they're thinking people will view me as greedy, people won't like me if I have more money, I'll become a shittier person. They just think all these things, which subconsciously is actually holding them back, and it's fear of success in a way because they're like, well, if I become successful, I won't be liked. So I'm gonna fear it because I don't want people to not like me. Another really big one, and this ties into people who aren't even entrepreneurs, is lack of self-trust. Not trusting ourselves to take action and make risks, or sorry, take risks, because we fear that we might fail or we feel that it might not work out, and we don't have that like trust in ourselves to be like I can make those moves and if it doesn't work out I'm fine. But also I trust myself to even just move forward in making the move because I trust myself to be good enough. I trust myself to be worthy enough.
CLAIRE
That resonates for sure. That it's like, hey, what if it doesn't work out? And for me, one of the things that I'm going to the hypnotherapist for, I've been dealing with a lot of fear and not just fear in the business, but I have such a hard time, even just looking at my puppy dog, every time I look at her, I'm like, oh my God, it's gonna suck when you die. You know what I mean? And I'm like, this is too much, Claire. This is too much. I need to pull back on some of this fear stuff because this is not living. This is just being in fear.
JERICHA
Yes. Fear was my biggest lesson in my journey, especially recently has been fear. Especially like I grew up in a very emotionally insecure environment, so I had a lot of that safety and security kind of ripped away from me. And what comes with that is a lot of fear, like fears of like, if it doesn't work out, I'm not going to be okay. Fears of just like, not my safety as in like, I could be like physically harmed, but like my safety as in like, will I be okay? ...I resonate with fear a lot.
CLAIRE
So much about it in my life I love and it's so wonderful, which is great, but then what I do is I go, "oh, when's the other shoe going to drop?" And so for me, one of the things that I want to work on with this hypnotherapist is feeling sure in myself and feeling clear that even if my puppy did die, even if my husband did die, even if the whole world around me crumbled.... Would it suck? It would be the worst thing I could possibly contemplate. But to feel confident that I would still survive and I would be okay ultimately through that. So that's, and I think that's like the most extreme, like the nth degree of what we're talking about here of death and dying, but it's that same type of thing in business, right? If my business dies, if it fails, how am I gonna survive that?
JERICAH Yep. Yes. Or if my business can't make enough money, how will I pay bills? Yeah, fear is a big one.
CLAIRE
And this self-love piece ends up being the foundation of this. [I'm understanding that] when you're confident and secure and worthy of love or whatever it is you want, regardless of the external factors, that's what actually enables you to move forward with not reckless abandon, but with an abandonment of this fear and abandonment of anything that potentially is holding you back to actually get you to that next important step. Yeah, that's wonderful.
JERICHA
Yes, yes. And that's not to say that you'll never experience fear if you hold a lot of self-acceptance or you hold a lot of self-worth. Again a lot of fear can come from lack of safety and security, but for sure the biggest thing if you want a result, you got to take action and what's really going to help you move forward is the self-acceptance, the self-worth, and the self-trust.
CLAIRE
Mm-hmm. That lands really well for me. I think you've helped clear up this definition for me now.
Jericha Szlo's insights on the power of self-love, positive affirmations, and the law of attraction offer valuable lessons for personal growth and success. Her emphasis that self-love is not self-care but about how you view yourself. In reality, self-acceptance and self-worth are the foundation for manifesting positive changes in life.Through regulating the nervous system, addressing limiting beliefs, and fostering self-trust, you can be well on your way to fostering more self love.
At this point, I wanted to understand more of what it looked like to work with Jericha in her programs. She described her 1:1 coaching as staring as a 3 month program where you meet for 2 hours every other week and have support via Slack in between metings. You can choose to work with just her or with her and her recommended hypnotherapist for eve more positive manifestation of your self-love goals. She offers extended programs as well, but at the end of the day, it's all about what works best for you.
Something new she's releasing this month (Oct 2023) is her Self-Love Master course that will allow you to go through a self-paced self-love journey within her framework backed by principals of neuroscience.
JERICHA
The essence of it is I am literally giving you not only science-backed concepts as to cultivating our self-love or what self-love will bring to you, but also just my personal experience because like I said, I have been on a massive self-love journey and it is going to be absolutely everything from self-acceptance, self-worth, self-confidence, self-trust, but even like attachment styles and boundaries and habits, just literally everything and anything that you need to cultivate the inner self-love. I say: Cultivate the self love that you desire, deserve and require in order to live a life that you love. It's gonna teach you how to fall in love with yourself so you can fall in love with life.
And if that doesn't get you excited, I don't know what will!
1 comment
I FEEL THIS SO MUCH! My father & brother passed this year & I thought,“That’s it” I’m going to make the rest of this crazy thing called life the best I can! I’m leaving a relationship, saving some money & moving from a bad relationship. I got this! Thank you ladies ! I needed reassurance! Joe dispenza is a no for me but I agree with everything else
———
Soul Spheres replied:
Gena – I’m happy this resonated with you! And I’m so glad you are finding the place in your Self to take charge and do what’s right for you to live the best life you can <3