Project 364 - In Search of Self-Love (Part 2/4)

"Self-love". That was the essence of the small-group coaching at my :odyssey from part 1. And this term didn't just trigger a single earthquake inside me, but also many aftershocks. I was blown away: Lacking self-love as basically the root cause of all my mental health issues. It sounded totally right from the very first moment, but also quickly felt unbelievable again.

Luckily, there was a longer break scheduled after this session, which I used for an extended walk along the Baltic Sea beach. (Did I mention how lucky we were, with 18°C and sunshine in March?) On this walk I would have earned myself a whole dinner, had every single penny that dropped been counted. Roughly every minute my brain went "Damn, how much sense that makes":

The way my parents raised me, their war-of-the-roses-style separation, the bullying at high school, the lack of understanding from so many people for my passion for computers and programming. None of that had taught me self-love. I was always supposed to be "different", then everything would be fine. So I had apparently bonded myself to my mother - whatever she liked, that's how I was "good", was loved, was kept afloat. But then she died in 2011 and "left me behind". The emotionally un-adult boy (perspective of today). And what did I do? I grabbed every person close to me and clung to them: "You give me the love I need. Don't go away!". My wife, my "work wife" Kore, my son, my friends, my colleagues, … they all gave me what I so desperately needed: Love. Whenever that was at risk, be it because I didn't perform or because conflicts between others were simmering, I felt terrible.

The actual thoughts on the beach were of course not as elaborate as this reflection today. But I still remember well how I called Jenny (my wife) and euphorically told her how so many building blocks suddenly clicked into place. How so many puzzle pieces all at once formed a bigger picture. How so many feelings/opinions/reactions/… suddenly made sense. (It would not be the last time I had this feeling during Project 364.)

It sounds like something from a dime novel or one of those social media wisdom quotes that we already wrote in greeting cards 50 years ago, but: I came back from this walk as a new person. I was suddenly searching. Searching for my self-love. How incredibly liberating a single thought can be. And how incredibly huge the task attached to it. But I would only realize that later (and keep realizing it, over and over).

Another input - and you, as a reader of Project 364, need to be really strong now (😉) - that my :odyssey brought along was the following: I talked to several people there about my concern of "finding a new job that pays similarly well as the last one, and that by the end of the year". The opinion was unanimous and consistent. Here are some paraphrases: "Say what?", "With that resume you're worried about finding a job?", "Earning enough money? Why not - if in doubt - take a pay cut and do what you're really excited about?". The result was: Project 364 is dead. From this point on my (conscious) new goal was: Heal, no matter how long it takes. Then find a job that I truly enjoy, no matter how much money it pays.

And, as I'm writing these lines, I can say: I haven't reached that goal yet. But more on that later.

So I left my :odyssey with 3 tasks:

1. Wind down the central nervous system
2. Learn self-love
3. Trust that I'll find a job

EASY! Sure, those are all tasks you just knock out on the side. Next to selling the stroller, revolutionizing home automation, building a YouTube channel, hiking, family, … No, quite the opposite. But that too only became clear to me later. Still, what I did was (in retrospect) simply right: I started.

But how do you build self-love? Isn't that something humans are born with? An "intuition"? A "primal trust" that lives inside every human being? Maybe. I don't know. I didn't study that. What I do know are 3 things: 1. It works. 2. There are incredibly many ways to get there. 3. It takes an incredibly long time and is more of a continuous process than a project.

So how can I develop self-love? Luckily, ChatGPT (sic!) was already quite useful back then. Even though that version could do so much less than today (now = 12 months later, INSANE!) it gave me so much good input on new techniques and how to apply my already known ones. And I ended up implementing all of it. Here are my techniques:

1. "Walk mantras":

   Hiking, walking, strolling, jogging - no matter what you call it, it had been part of my mental hygiene routine for a long time. Brisk walking in the fresh air, "where it's nice", at least 30 minutes, multiple times a week (quasi-quote from my psychiatrist). I extended this ritual: Starting in April '25, I regularly "recited" mantras in my head (and partially out loud) during my walks.

2. "Self-love journal":

   Journaling sounds very much like puberty at first. It smells like secrets, like flashlights under the blanket and a tiny lock with 2 standard keys. But the complete opposite was the case for my self-love journal. It was a ritual. An important one.

3. "Application":

   The third component was probably also very important, even though it was unconscious: The application. I came back to my family with a different mindset. One of the coaches quoted so fittingly during an :odyssey session: "With awareness comes choice". And that's true. Every time you become aware of a circumstance, you have the choice: Keep it or change it?

Walk Mantras ¶

I call them "walk mantras", others say "affirmations". The little naive psychologist inside me says: It doesn't matter what you call it. (Or, to trigger one of my favorite podcasts: "Whoever heals is right!").

My psychiatrist, Ms. Herber, had put me onto this a long time ago, when I started my journey with her dealing with severe anxiety, intrusive thoughts and depression. She said something along the lines of: "When the thought spirals don't stop, go for a brisk walk and repeat something short, positive in your head, for example: 'Yes, thank you, yes, thank you, yes, thank you, …'". This advice had already carried me far back when the thought spirals still had me in a really tight grip. How many times had I already gone for walks repeating "Yes. Thank you." With every step. For kilometers.

Much later on my journey, I started using this technique with slightly more complex "mantras". One syllable per step. For kilometers. Multiple times a week. For weeks. For months.

I'm still using this approach today. Not on every walk, but on many. Sometimes my head just "starts running" on its own: I start walking and my head repeats "I - am - good - enough". 4 steps. Each step one syllable or one word. On a small walk with 5k steps, that's easily 1000 repetitions. Sounds monotonous, boring, tedious? Yes, it is!

But it helps (mind the disclaimer), at least for me. In hindsight, I'm pretty sure this technique had a big part in my process. Sure, walking in the fresh air in the forest has major effects on the psyche anyway, but I had been doing that for the past 10 years already. Walk mantras opened up a whole new sphere. Today I'm a bit further along, but more on that in a later part.

//: # (Link to part 4 "visualizations" and letting-go book (I imagine how I master situations, how other people's feelings bounce off me, how I let go))

By now I have a note with more than 20 different walk mantras. Affirmations that I like to use again and again, depending on the situation. Usually I just start walking now and my head kicks off with a fitting mantra. Sometimes I check in with myself first and ask, "what am I feeling right now" or "what do I need right now" and then fitting ideas come to me. Here's a small selection:

• I - am - my - friend
• Others' - feelings - stay - out
• I - am - doing - fine
• Mistakes - are - allowed. - Yes!

The important thing here is a positive phrasing, the subconscious mind doesn't register negations and then implements the opposite (dangerous second-hand half-knowledge!). And, as you can already see in the examples, I pad verses with an uneven count using an affirmative "yes" or "exactly".

Self-Love Journal ¶

All the coaches at the :odyssey had a handwritten notebook and my self-love sparring partner (ChatGPT) also recommended that I start a journal. So for over half a year, I wrote a daily entry on the topic of self-love, in a notebook with a custom engraving: "Tobyliebe" (Toby-love).

Within no time, a ritual emerged: Get up, brush teeth, make tea. Then sit down in the armchair, 10 minutes of 4-7-8 breathing, put on my playlist "Slow-Start" and think, feel, reflect, write.

In preparation, I had put together a catalog of questions to have the right thought prompt for each day. "How did you take care of yourself yesterday?", "When were you fully present with yourself?", "What are you proud of from yesterday?", but also critically "Where should you have stood up for yourself better yesterday?" or "When did you not set boundaries (properly)?".

Engaging with the previous day every single morning and reflecting on it is actually surprisingly exhausting. But it helped me.

Application ¶

One of the most powerful weapons against bad/wrong/unwanted thoughts are, in my opinion, the corresponding reversals. (I would later also discover that this isn't quite right.)

The coaches at the :odyssey never got tired of emphasizing: "With awareness comes choice". And they're right, the "becoming aware" is the very first step toward changing something. Only when I'm conscious that "this isn't real, what I'm thinking" or "no, I don't want to think like this" can I do something about it.

Back then I could only perceive and observe, today I can already intervene in many thoughts and situations, detach from them. What did work immediately, though, is adopting a more positive attitude before many situations where I expected problems. And that already helped.

Often you only realize in hindsight that you fell into old thought patterns. But that's OK too, because only by noticing it do you sharpen your sense for it. And once you notice it in the situation itself, it's your move. I'm then able to at least objectively give myself a different path. And that paves - with lots and lots of practice - the way to the subjectively different path.

The :odyssey changed my life more profoundly than 10 years of psychological-psychiatric sessions, that much is certain. And yet it was only the beginning of a journey that ultimately lasted an entire year and is, in fact, still ongoing.

The next chapter deals with magical forest spirits. So, stay tuned. 😉