Breaking the Cycle of Anxiety Through Purpose and Service
Welcome back to Live the With of Your Life podcast. My name is Aneta Ardelian Kuzma, and I am so glad that you are here. This is our first solo episode for the month of February, and we're going to talk about why self-love isn't selfish and why it's so hard for many high achievers. For most of my life, I believed that self-love and self-care were something that I had to earn.
after I proved myself, after I delivered enough, after I became enough. But my body was keeping the score, and it was exhausted. Today, I want to talk about why self-love feels so difficult for so many high achievers like myself and why that resistance isn't a character flaw; it's actually a nervous system response. So if you felt successful on the outside,
that maybe something inside was telling you that something is a little bit off. If you can show up for everyone else with compassion and care, and yet you struggle to extend that same kindness to yourself, if the phrase self-love makes you uncomfortable or feels indulgent or even selfish, I want you to hear this clearly. You are not broken.
You've just been programmed and trained. Trained to believe that your worth comes from what you produce, that rest is something that you have to earn, and that caring for yourself comes after you care for everyone else, after everything else is handled. And for high achievers especially, self-love doesn't always feel familiar. It can actually feel
like a betrayal of everything that we were taught to value. And for 25 years in corporate, I believed that if I worked hard enough, if I proved myself enough, if I delivered enough value, then I could rest, then I could slow down, then I could take care of myself finally. But that day never came because the goalpost kept moving, and my nervous system kept the score throughout it all. And here's what I didn't understand back then: self-love isn't selfish, it's survival. When we constantly override our bodies when we push past exhaustion or ignore our needs or dismiss our emotions, we aren't being strong; we're actually abandoning ourselves. And our nervous system registers that abandonment as a threat.
And even when our minds keep saying, we're fine, I'm okay. So we live with this low level of stress, always. Go to bed with it, wake up with it. Might feel always vigilant, always performing, always proving. And not because we're weak, but because we've learned that our value was conditional.
And for a long time, I thought that self-care was the solution. So massages, bubble baths, girls' weekend, and a tall glass of wine. But those things aren't really what make us feel better. They're great, but they're external. They're not internal. Self-love is internal, and self-care is what you do. Self-love is how you relate to yourself.
Self-care says, I'll take a break after I finish this. Self-love says, I'm allowed to rest because I'm depleted.
Self-care says, I deserve this because I worked hard. And self-love says, I deserve this because I exist.
Self-love says it is transactional, and self-love is relational. And for high achievers, especially women, although I see this with men as well, the shift from doing to being, from earning to existing, is one of the hardest things that we will ever learn. And yet it's one of the biggest life lessons that makes a huge difference.
because it requires us to unlearn everything that we've been taught up until this point. So what does self-love actually look like? And it's not grand gestures, it's not about perfection, it's often small, it's quiet, sometimes it feels invisible. It looks like noticing how you're feeling when you're exhausted, resting, even when the to-do list isn't done. It may look like
setting a boundary without apologizing for it, or feeling disappointed or sad or angry, and not rushing to fix it or to explain it away. And it looks like asking, what do I need right now in this moment? And then honoring that answer. Even if it's inconvenient, even if it disappoints someone else, including the version of you
who's used to overgiving. Self-love is learning to witness yourself with the same compassion that you so easily give to everybody else.
And here's what I've learned after years of doing this work. You cannot serve from an empty cup. We've heard that over and over again. It's actually really true. You can't do it sustainably, not truthfully, not authentically, because when you abandon yourself to serve others, you're not being selfless. You're actually teaching the world and everyone around you that your needs don't matter. And eventually your body will intervene, maybe through burnout.
illness, through collapse, maybe through resentment for others who you're actually over-serving. And then when you learn to tend to yourself, when you offer yourself the same care, when you take care of your nervous system, and you provide safety, something shifts. You stop performing service, and you start embodying it because you're no longer giving from a place of depletion. You're giving from fullness.
And that changes everything.
If you'd like to go deeper with this reflection, I've created something to support you. It's a short assessment. It's called Live the Width of Your Life. I do this assessment for myself every month, just checking in to create that self-awareness. It's a free tool, and it'll look at 10 different areas of your life, and you can identify where you're thriving and maybe areas that feel a little depleted or where you're abandoning yourself. And if you do it, I invite you to pay special attention to two areas.
One is your wellbeing and the other is joy. Two areas that we sometimes overlook or just think of as nice to have when we're really drowning in all other areas of our lives. Those are two places that we often disconnect. You'll find the link in the description below. And if you're listening or watching this and you think, don't know where to begin, but a lot of this resonates with me, start here, reach out to me. I offer free clarity calls every month.
No selling, no pressure, no pitch, just a space to be witnessed exactly as you are. I'll meet you where you are. And February is such a great month to begin. It really is an opportunity for us to learn to love ourselves again, not as an idea or as a concept, but actually to embody it in practice as a way of living. And I just want to thank you so much for joining me today. If the episode was helpful, please consider leaving your review subscribe.
Share this episode with someone else who might need to hear it. I just want to let you know that I love you guys, and until next time, remember to live the width of your life.