The Importance of Self-Love with Jenna Banks

Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, as is the far more enjoyable Galentine’s Day. Ass commercials and Instagram tend to shove all kinds of colorful, heart-filled content in front of us, it’s important to take a step back and realize that hey, you’re pretty darn awesome.

Jenna Banks is a public speaker, podcast host, and author of the upcoming book I Love Me More: How to Find Happiness and Success Through Self-Love. She believes our relationship with ourselves is the most important one we’ll ever have—and we need to make it a priority.

Jenna sat down with Good People, Cool Things to chat about some self-love saboteurs, a time she had to break her heart to move forward in life, and why we need to redefine some of the phrases we use to describe ourselves.

What are some of the saboteurs of self-love?

One of the most insidious saboteurs is letting social conditioning (or social norms) guide our behavior. For example, most of us have been socially programmed to be “the nice girl” or even “the nice guy”.  But often, this can also mean abandoning yourself and what you are really feeling in order to comply with this social norm. The problem is when we don’t honor ourselves first, we send a message to ourselves that what we feel doesn’t matter and that we are not our highest priority, others are. And this is a huge saboteur of self-love.

Another saboteur is needing external validation or approval for what we do. When our actions are motivated by seeking validation, acceptance, or approval from others, we end up creating a false version of who we think we are based on how others feel about us. This sets us up to be disconnected from who we really are, and can even cause us not to like ourselves. How can we like ourselves, let alone love ourselves, when we can’t feel free to be our authentic selves? When our actions are instead motivated by seeking our own approval, we feel free to be who we really are, which then frees us to truly love ourselves. 

When we let guilt drive our behaviors, this is also another self-love saboteur. Whether it’s mom-guilt, guilt based on religious beliefs, or any other driver of guilt, when we let guilt affect our behavior, it can work against our self-love. Most people don’t question the nature of what guilt actually is. We tend to think that the feeling of guilt is telling us we are going against our moral code. But researchers, psychotherapists, and other experts have uncovered that this is not always the case. For example, feelings of guilt can also come up when you are going outside of programmed behavior. Guilt keeps us in our programmed lanes. If you try to go outside of the lane, feelings of guilt come up. For example, if you try to show yourself love by putting your needs above the needs of others, feelings of guilt may arise, causing you to go right back into your programmed lane of self-sacrificing.  This is why guilt can be yet another saboteur of self-love.

There are many other saboteurs which I cover in my book, I Love Me More: How To Find Happiness And Success Through Self-Love.

Why should some people break up even when they're in love?

I’ve been in this exact situation myself so perhaps the best way to answer this question is to share this example with you. I had never felt as in love in my life as I did with my ex-boyfriend (we’ll call him “Dave”). I had been bending over backward for Dave, helping him with his kids, his business, and his psychological needs, draining myself and my energy without getting what I needed in return. When I would try to communicate my needs to him, he would just tell me he wasn’t capable of meeting them. I thought, of course he was capable, as he had no problem meeting them at the beginning of our relationship.

This thinking kept me in another trap that I refer to as “false hope” driving the relationship. Despite all that I was doing to try to single-handedly keep this relationship strong, I felt drained, resentful and didn’t have the energy to focus on pursuing my own dreams, goals, and passions. But, I love myself more than I loved him. At some point, I realized that I had to break my own heart and break up with him in order to do what was best for me and prioritize my life’s purpose. Had I not broken up with him, I probably would have never had the energy or bandwidth to do the work that I’m doing now, giving back to the world in this way and empowering others to love themselves more.

What's a time you embraced the unknown and are happy with the way it turned out?

I have come to learn that the unknown is where all possibilities lie. We have to be willing to jump into the unknown to make positive change in our lives. I learned this valuable lesson at a very early age. I was raised with a lot of trauma growing up. But I decided I didn’t want to continue with things the way they were any longer. Something had to change.

I faced my authoritative father when I was just 14 years old, telling him that I no longer wanted to live under his roof. I had no idea what the future would hold for me. But I was willing to face my fears. First, my fear of confronting this person I was quite scared of, and second, I had to face the fear of jumping into the unknown.

While the next few years after leaving his house were far from being a fairy tale, I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything. I’m so proud of myself for being brave enough to face the unknown at such a young age. Rather than fearing the unknown, this set me up to be in a place of being excited about the possibilities that lie in the unknown.

Why is now the right time for a book? And what can readers expect?

If you can’t say you live most of your days in a state of happiness and fulfillment, then now is the right time for a book. Happiness is a choice, it’s not something that happens to you. In my new book, I teach readers, through stories from my own life’s journey, insights from experts as well as scientific data, that self-love is not selfish. It’s absolutely necessary to make your needs and your happiness your #1 priority. When you love yourself first, you have so much more love to give back to others as well as to the world. If only everyone would learn to love themselves more, this world would become a much better place for us all to live.

What's something that surprised you when writing your book?

I went through many months of self-reflection when writing this book. What surprised me was that I had a motto for my life that I had been living out, but hadn’t consciously connected the dots until I put it into written words. This motto is “Your love is your power”. When we don’t love ourselves, we cut ourselves off from our own power. When we always give our love (aka attention/energy) away to others without first giving it to ourselves, we drain ourselves of our own power. This can lead to feelings of depression, anxiety, insecurity, neediness, etc. When we first give ourselves our own love, we fill up what I refer to as our “power container”. When our power container is full, we feel like we can accomplish anything we set our minds to, we are energized, radiant and can give love to others from a much better place. We also attract love from others because our FULL power container acts as a magnet for love.

What's next for you?

I’m currently working on a course, workshops, and a journal which will be available on my website. These resources will provide a deeper dive into reframing how we should relate to ourselves, provide valuable tools for how to fill up our power containers with our own love as well as learn how to stop the drains of our power. 

I’m also the co-founder of a new company called Tiger Feather, an empowerment brand for women and girls.

Lastly, on March 8th (International Women’s Day) I’m launching the PowerFULL Women round table talks in an effort to shed a light on the unconscious social norms that hold women back from embracing their power. We need more women in positions of leadership and power if we are to bring about much-needed balance to our currently out-of-balance power structure.  As women, we need to redefine the meaning of what being PowerFULL is so that we can stop associating it as a purely masculine trait and believe that we can, and should be, PowerFULL.