SPEAKER_01: 0:00

The number one emotional health wound most every human being experiences is I'm not good enough, I'm not lovable, and I'm not likable. And by the way, dating and relationships can trigger this like nobody's business. So if we can be objective about that, coming from a place of, hey, look at I'm worthy versus I'm unworthy, and at least shifting to that energy of worthiness.

SPEAKER_00: 0:29

Welcome to this Empty Nest Life, the podcast dedicated to helping you embrace this transformative season with purpose, passion, and joy. In each episode, we explore stories, strategies, and insights to help turn your empty nest into an exciting new chapter. Whether you're redefining your identity, pursuing new passions, or finding peace in the pause, you're in the right place. Here's your host, the Empty Nest coach, Jay Ramsden.

SPEAKER_02: 0:51

Hey there, my empty nest friends. Do you ever wake up in the morning, look in the mirror, and maybe just not love what you see? When we hit midlife, it's not uncommon to become unsatisfied and then struggle to find the courage to love ourselves again, or maybe even for the first time. Today we're going to get into that topic, and with me in studio is Jonathan Aslay, McClaims' success coach, author, and renowned expert in midlife self-love and relationships. After experiencing the profound loss of his 19-year-old son Connor, Jonathan embarked on a deep, soul-searching journey that reshaped his understanding of love and happiness. The author of What the Heck is Self-Love Anyway? Jonathan explores the essential mindset of unconditional self-love as the foundation of true happiness and lasting connections. Jonathan, welcome to this emptiness life.

SPEAKER_01: 1:41

Oh, thanks for having me, Jay.

SPEAKER_02: 1:44

Yeah, I'm I'm so excited that you're here. I think self-love is one of those things where, you know, as parents, we can just get involved in a relationship, and then we have kids and we get going and going, going, forget about ourselves. But I think self-love is just such an important concept. But let's get into actually what it the name of the book. But what is self-love, Edia? What the heck is that?

SPEAKER_01: 2:04

Well, I it's funny because I've I've shared the analogy that uh if you've ever been on an airplane and the flight attendant says in the case of cabin pressure change, oxygen masks will be dropped from the ceiling. And if you're traveling with the small child, is put the mask on yourself first. And the the same concept as self-love is is to the extent that now, and I'm I'm gonna say, how can we love another if we don't love ourselves? And not that we ever fully love ourselves to any degree of like mastery per se, or at least that might be the goal for some. It's kind of recognizing that self-love, well, really quickly, let me just say when I think of self-love, I think of words like self-worth, self-esteem, self-confidence, self-reliance, self-discipline, all wrapped in the package of love. But where people get hung up is that again, like this is a something that we achieve before, like I said in that mastery. And what I look at self-love is like we all have an emotional six-year-old inside of us. And oftentimes that emotional six-year-old can be a little bit scared of their environment, of their circumstances, their experience, even empty nesting can be a scary thing. And self-love is just nurturing that little six-year-old inside of us. So, along with that self-worth, self-esteem, self-confidence, it's also taking care of the little six-year-old inside of us.

SPEAKER_02: 3:39

Okay. So, and I would imagine parents are thinking, well, I had kids, I know what a six-year-old is, I can do that for myself, but we we really don't know how. So, how do you how do you go about helping people like share the tools, figure out how to love themselves again?

SPEAKER_01: 3:57

Oh my gosh, we could peel this onion for days, weeks, months, if not years. So, from a simplistic standpoint, when I read wrote the book, it was some principles that I thought of that related to me at that point in time in my life. Chapter one is, for example, is speak your truth, do it with kindness. And that is, we all have our truth. What our truth doesn't necessarily mean it's the truth, it's our truth, our feelings. And a simple principle is to share your feelings, doing it in a kind way. Another principle, and since I'm a dating or relationship coach, is like in chapter nine, if it's sincere and from the heart, you can't say the wrong thing to the right person. And a lot of people feel are in fear of both speaking their truth, but more importantly, that their truth will be scare someone away. And when you're with the right person, it doesn't scare them away. So the the encouragement is to speak from your heart. And those are just a couple principles in the book as a brief example.

SPEAKER_02: 5:05

Right. You can't say the wrong thing to the right person. I love that phrase. That's so powerful for people to hear. And I'm sure I've got people who are listening to this episode who are think, oh, he's a dating and relationship coach. But you you do it for women to figure out about men. It's more, yeah, it's not it's not like here's what men want. It's like, oh women, here's what it looks like if you're looking for a man. Here are things that are like red flags. That's what you do with folks. So I'd I'd love to hear a little bit about that and how maybe the book plays into that as well.

SPEAKER_01: 5:40

Sure. So my journey began, and maybe I should go a little bit back in time to give some context. So after turning 40 and going through a divorce, I found myself out in the dating marketplace. But at that same time, I lost my high-end corporate job, paying me well over 250,000 a year, and the market crash of 2008. So my identity was pummeled from an emotional standpoint. And I'll be frank with everyone listening. Besides doing drugs and alcohol to cope, online dating was one of my other coping mechanisms. And why I'm sharing this is because I didn't have, I didn't realize that this coping mechanism was going to turn into a profession for me. But it was to really help the reason why I work with women is to help them understand men from that emotional point of view. And while most every woman wants that strong, confident, smart, alpha, maybe even the James Bond archetype, the average male is dealing with stuff, particularly midlife. We, when the blueprint of our life that we thought was going to be collides with our reality, that's where midlife crisis occurs. And so I wanted to help women understand the emotional effects of the dating pool, because roughly 75% of singles over 45 years old that are in the dating marketplace are divorced. And divorce comes with it, the unraveling of the tapestry of your life with another human being. And both whether you're a man or a woman, and there are can be profound emotional effects, even to the extent that it could be traumatic. And I wanted to talk about that from the male point of view to help women understand men from that vantage point.

SPEAKER_02: 7:32

I think that's important. When you think about it, I was talking with somebody the other day and I was like, oh, well, my baggage isn't your burden. Yeah. And so in the dating pool, when you hit over 40 and most of the people are divorced, it's two people bringing two sets of luggage with them. But it shouldn't, it shouldn't be the burden on the other end. It's more like, okay, how do we understand each other? And say we do bring this to the table. And I think self-love has to play into that.

SPEAKER_01: 7:58

Well, what's interesting, my baggage isn't my burden, but at the same time, my history is part of my life. There's the history part of it. And then do we carry that history with a lot of heaviness, hence the burden, versus this has just been part of my experience. It isn't necessarily always going to be my experience going forward, but at the same time, something can change in an instant. I learned that lesson real quick when my son passed away that wherever you might be the happiest, joyous place today, and that can change in a nanosecond a day later. So, but certainly we all have history. And what self, how self-love plays in that is to recognize one of the you know principles within self-love is that everything that's happened before us has happened for us, not to us. So we can look at some negative components in our life and we can have it weigh us down, or we can look at it from the vantage point that that's all part of the experience. That's one fundament, one element of self-love.

SPEAKER_02: 9:06

Okay. So taking off on that, like one element of self-love is you talked about it before, one of the components is self-worth. Yeah. And the importance of self-worth. And that has a lot to do in your work in terms of attracting healthy relationships. And I would imagine that's just relationships in general, not just romantic relationships. So, what are some of the common barriers for people facing being able to cultivate self-love and how can they start overcoming them so they can develop self-worth?

SPEAKER_01: 9:39

I think it starts with self-awareness. And that's just my perception that I'm not saying this is an absolute fact. This is just my lens that I'm looking for. So, what is self-awareness? And I think the way I look at it, it's the capacity to recognize your fears, your insecurities, your negative patterns, your limiting beliefs, your judgment for others, how your actions affect other people. And then from the vantage point that imagine you're the actor on a stage experiencing all of this. Well, self-awareness is the audience member, which is you sitting watching all of this to be able to witness this. And if you have a command of those areas of your life that maybe give you some angst from an objective point of view, I believe that's the starting point because it's easy to focus on all the good feelings. It's easy to focus on the joyous feelings. But really, the challenge most human well, let me reframe this. I've observed, and this is anecdotal on my part, the number one emotional health wound most every human being experiences is I'm not good enough, I'm not lovable, and I'm not likable. And by the way, dating and relationships can trigger this like nobody's business. So I had no doubt. So if we can be objective about that, coming from a place of, hey, look at I'm worthy versus I'm unworthy, and at least shifting to that energy of worthiness, of confidence. And not that we are always going to maintain that, but from the vantage point, like I said, that little six-year-old. And if we could take that little six-year-old inside of us and say, hey, you're worthy of this experience, you're worthy of love. It's okay, that's that's the tipping point to being in more, I would say, I don't want to say in control of your emotions and feelings, but certainly to be able to navigate them with a little bit more ease. Okay.

SPEAKER_02: 11:49

So for the people who are listening who aren't divorced and aren't searching for love, maybe they are in a relationship now, but the kids are at the point they've launched and they are looking at each other, going, okay, now what? How can we use these tools to kind of reconnect and re-kindle love as well?

SPEAKER_01: 12:07

Oh, shoot, this is a great question because what's interesting in a long enough timeline, you can go through a lot of different experiences with a spouse. Certainly, as I said before, in that blueprint, many of us were raised with was go to college, get a job, meet someone, get married, buy a house, start a family. That was the blueprint of happiness. Didn't teach us how to be in a good relationship. And certainly when you're focused on the children as your primary source of fulfillment, it's a great opportunity to reinvent your relationship with your spouse. And to the extent it's a shift of an old identity, the two of you can create an amazing identity together. And where self-love applies, one of the principles within self-love is that intention to grow on an emotional level, to heal the wounds of the past, to navigate relationships with a more harmonious mindset and intentionality. So I think what I would say is I now I'm a junkie for personal development, self-help, spiritual work, and even therapy. Okay. When I say I'm a junkie, I'm I'm I embrace it wholeheartedly. And as a couple, I would encourage doing couples workshops together. Learn. There's so much, there's so much within a human that you can't even learn all about a person in one lifetime. That's why we have multiple, we have soulmates throughout throughout our our thousands and thousands of years, because you can learn from that person more and more each day that you're with them. And so one of the self-love principles is to invest in oneself on an emotional level and do it with a partner.

SPEAKER_02: 14:01

Yeah. And I know people who say that they like are into personal development means that, oh, yeah, we like to examine things and it's not easy to look inward and say, okay, here's what I need to be self-aware about myself because it shines a light on the things that perhaps we don't want to talk about or we don't want to show others where we might have a weakness in ourselves. Yeah. So it's one of those things where it's like, oh, yeah, we love it. We're coaches, obviously we love it. But you also say it's not easy as much as we love it to look to shine the light inward.

SPEAKER_01: 14:33

So well, it's interesting. It's not easy. And there's no doubt that that is so true. And I also believe it's it's how you decide to look at it. So my beloved, my sweetheart, she she always she laughs at me because not only can I recognize when I'm in fear, when I'm in insecurity, when I'm in judgment of others, but then what I do is, and I'm not I I didn't write this in the book, but I look at it from the vantage point is wow, that was a silly way to be today. I look at it from an absurd point of view, how ridiculous I am to be in those states of fear, insecurity, even judgment of others. And so when you can even learn to laugh at it, I believe it takes the energy from a lower vibration to a higher vibration.

SPEAKER_02: 15:28

Yes, yes. I used to work someplace where our kind of our leader always said, humor restores. Yes. And if we can look at ourselves with a little bit of humor, we can restore pretty much anything. For the people who are listening, I can imagine, okay, my my honors is probably split. Some are divorced, some are single, some are married, some are happily married, some are feeling maybe not so happily married. But for the person who said, Okay, I hear you guys talking a lot about self-worth and self-awareness and no judgment and all the things, but I just feel stuck. I feel stuck in old patterns, and I'm just resigned to being lonely, even if I'm in a relationship. What's one powerful mindset shift that they could make like right now, today, listening to this episode?

SPEAKER_01: 16:47

I'd I like this question, and the first thing that came to my mind is it's it's I was trying to think of the acronym, but is what does Jonathan want, or what does Jay want? What does Sally want? What does ask yourself, what do you really want? What do you really want in your life? And and really noodle on that. Really, it's if it's romantic love, then it's romantic love. If it's peace and harmony, then it's peace and harmony. If it's more money in your bank account, then it's more money. But really create a North Star for oneself, something where you just go, this is something I want. Now, then the job is to remove all the barriers to getting what you want. And I believe oftentimes the greatest barrier is love, both love for self and love for others. Because when you're in a state of love for self, when you're in an energetic state of love for others, and I mean it in unison between the two, it's not 100% love for others and no love for self. I'm talking about really embody a mindset of loving oneself in the concept of what you want, then ask yourself, what's getting in the way of what I want and how can I go about it? Not from a pure goal perspective, but from a North Star perspective.

SPEAKER_02: 18:18

Okay. So it was interesting. I was reading a book recently that was talking about the just our strengths in as we age. And one of the things that they were talking about was like he was the author was some in like a museum and looking at art, and he was in the east, and the person was trying to help him understand how a sculpture comes to find a sculpture. Yeah. And and in the west, like we say, what do we think of art? And it's like, oh, it's a blank canvas. Self self-love is a blank canvas. We have to figure out even how to paint and do the struck, the brush strokes to get it there and actually paint the picture of what self-love is. But in the east, they say in a block of wood or a block of marble or jade, it's the art is already inside it. Yeah. Right? I think that's what you're trying to say with self-love. It's like self-love is already inside. You have to chip away to find it. It's not something you have to create new.

SPEAKER_01: 19:11

Exactly. I believe even Michelangelo, when he was sculpting David, was like I chipped away, it was already there in the marble or in the exactly. No, and I just chipped it away. If by the way, I could be butchering that story, but it's something along those lines. That's that's so true, Jay. We actually all have it inside of us. I think it was Rumi that said we have just removed the blocks to love. Um, remove the blocks. So, so having, you know, that that desire of what do I want? And you can make it simple. It doesn't have to be like I know I said North Star, but you can make it just for tomorrow. You can make it for right now, and and just keep plugging away at it, I believe, brings us more joy and happiness. Okay. When we have clarity on what we want.

SPEAKER_02: 20:06

Yes, clarity. Okay. So with clarity, right? Some people are saying, well, what can I do? Like, obviously, Jonathan's written a book on self-love. He must have self-love practices that he does each day. Is there is there something that you do each day? Is there one thing that you lean on regularly that somebody listening could take away from the episode and be like, okay, I can try it?

SPEAKER_01: 20:27

Yeah. And and this I'm going to share with you from my practice, every morning I do meditation, particularly, but even that's before that's from the moment I actually get up to actually going into the living room to meditate, I have a practice of gratitude. I spend a good 10 minutes every morning in a state of appreciation for all the blessings in my life. I believe gratitude, appreciation, being grateful are powerful tools to shift our energy. And if we can start every morning with that, and I actually do it before bed too. So it's the imprint I put into my consciousness before I go to sleep. But certainly when I wake up and then I do a regular meditation, 10 minutes, sometimes 15, sometimes 20, but 10 minute minimum of just some level of meditation. For me, it's guided meditation. Some I I'm not just sitting in Ulm with the blanks late in my head is a little bit more challenging for me. So I prefer the guided meditations. But I can say that appreciation gratitude is a powerful amplifier of joy in anyone's life.

SPEAKER_02: 21:49

Yeah, those are so good. And for people who are listening, guided meditations, it could be inside timer or calm or headspace are all ones that people use. I use Calm. And when I was really going through a difficult time in life during the pandemic, I did it every day for 370 some days. Every morning, 10 minutes. And I do it now, and I don't do it every morning now. I don't meditate every morning, but a couple of times a week just to clear my head when I need it to be cleared. So I think that's such a powerful thing. You brought up about the gratitude piece and doing it even before you go to bed, which is just a great reminder to folks like whatever you're thinking about before you go to bed, that's what your brain's gonna go to work on. So if it's negative things about yourself. Your brain's going to go to work on those. Right. But if it's gratitude and self-love, then you're going to wake up more in the morning probably feeling more refreshed.

SPEAKER_03: 22:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 22:41

One of the things I'm curious about is you help people find love, but you also help people go who are maybe going through divorce as well. Yeah. I know that's probably a good portion of our listeners as well, because gray divorce is on the rise in the US. People get to be 50 and the gray hairs come in and they look at each other and decide they don't want to be together anymore. Yeah. What are one of the things you do in terms of helping people through that scenario?

SPEAKER_01: 23:09

So let's, as I said earlier in the conversation, divorce is the unraveling of the tapestry of your life with another person. It's unraveling. And certainly it's if I believe it requires some reintegration into your own sovereignty. In other words, really examining who I am outside of this relationship, because we can oftentimes identify men in particular identify with their professional life. Women tend to, not always, but tend to identify in their relationships. Although that's it's probably now relatively 50-50, meaning both men and women are equally in that space. And gaining a sense of sovereignty, like coming back to what do I want? What do I want would be a great question now that I'm outside of this relationship. And it doesn't have to be about being in relationship, but the simple things do you want? Where do you want to live? How do you want to live? What brings you joy asking yourself these questions? And I think it's important to spend a bit of time by oneself. Um and now, if you're raising still raising children, if you're in a co-parenting environment, that makes it a little bit sometimes, it can be easy peasy. Most of the time it's challenge challenging because there's oftentimes a bit of animosity with someone that you might have gone through a divorce with, but certainly learning to integrate into your sovereignty, into yourself, particularly before you go back out into the dating environment, the relationship environment. And sadly, a lot of people immediately go back into the dating environment from a codependent place. And then they find themselves in another relationship, in another marriage that doesn't work out. So I would first start why by building a sense of your own self and sovereignty after a divorce.

SPEAKER_02: 25:11

Okay. So right now in your life, when if you're asking yourself that question, what do I want? What does that look like?

SPEAKER_01: 25:18

It's kind of interesting because my my relationship is relatively new. And up until that relationship, I wanted a signal, I wanted a life partner. And now I have a genuine life partner in my life. And so it's interesting because I'm asking this question with someone else in mind. In other words, what do I want in the container of our relationship? Now I've always wanted to make a difference in people's life. That's always been my North Star from a professional standpoint. But now I'm asking it with another person in mind because I really want to be in an environment where we co-create something together. So we are like in those throes of those questions as we're building a life together is how do we want that to look from a vantage point of a we? As a me, I still the most important thing is for myself is loving myself, loving others. Being like to me, and I know that sounds a little cheesy, maybe a little bit, but it's I wake up every day asking myself, how would love respond? Now, Jay, I say this because we have a lot of of discourse in the world, and that discourse gives me discourse. And so I believe love is the antidote. Now, and and I don't mean practic, you know, love is the antidote to build a building. I don't mean it from that vantage point, but from an emotional standpoint. And so what I want most is to live life from a place of both loving myself and loving others, from a place of love. That's so good. I love that.

SPEAKER_02: 27:01

I I'm curious, what's through your journey, right? You the divorce, the loss of your son, writing the book, losing your job, reconnecting and finding a new life partner. What's what's one thing you've learned about yourself throughout that journey?

SPEAKER_01: 27:17

Oh, yeah. So when I lost my identity, when when I went through this divorce, losing my job, and the market crashed and I got wiped out, my identity was pummeled. And for the longest time, I went to bed wishing I didn't wake up. That's how low it got for me. And yet I still and it's interesting because I would have never found myself on this path, but I found myself on a path of personal development, self-help, spiritual work, and therapy, which eventually led me to becoming a coach. And and then I've had other, we'll call them fall downs in my life. I certainly I had a relationship that didn't work out, and that felt like a fall down. Losing my son, most people would think, most people hearing that that have children think that they might not ever recover from something like that. And where I'm going with this is I have fallen down a number of times, and I know I can get back up. It's like instead of being afraid of falling down, it's knowing that if it happens, I can get back up. And and most people feel like they never going, like, and many times they're stuck in the pit of despair and they'll never get out. I believe we all have that capacity. And I know this is going to sound cheesy, but when you love yourself and when you love others, you get out much faster.

SPEAKER_02: 28:51

Yeah, is I'm sure people listening to this episode are like, okay, these two are talking about a lot of woo-hoo-e kind of things, but I think you're spot on. It's like in order to get out of whatever I call it the river of misery, I love that you just say your fall downs and not your failures, is that self-love is the key to to get out. Because once you look and once you shine the light inside, that becomes your ladder, your ladder or your life preserver or whatever you want to call it to get out of whatever you're going through.

SPEAKER_01: 29:22

Well, and I want to add something to that because here's the thing. I believe another principle of self-love is having victor consciousness, not victim consciousness. You know, sadly, here in the United States, we are swimming in a sea of victim consciousness. And so when you operate from a victor consciousness, and again, it's not like you're gonna achieve the greatest thing on the planet, it's just being able to just operate from a place of ownership within yourself. In other words, ownership. That's what self-awareness is, is self-ownership of everything in your field. And so when you operate from that victor consciousness, that self-ownership con, and again, I'm wrapping it all up in the word love, okay? It's the umbrella, the blanket, yeah. Well, the blanket umbrella for self-word, self-esteem, self-confidence, self-reliance, self-discipline, all these juicy self-words. And so it's really, like I said, putting the oxygen mask on yourself first. And I believe, and oh, what I wanted to say to everyone listening, look at I think there's a reason why you landed on this podcast. There's a reason why you're here. And maybe it doesn't land for you 100%, but then you'll listen to another one and another one, another one. And all of a sudden, things start to shift in your life when you're focused on nurturing your soul. That's what podcasts do. That's what watching videos there, I believe they're really there to nurture your soul, to shift perspective. And then once you've shifted enough, things will start happening in a positive manner, if you will.

SPEAKER_02: 31:05

I love I love the whole concept of nurturing your soul. Like that speaks to me a hundred percent.

SPEAKER_01: 31:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 31:13

And as you think about that piece, what what are things that you do right now in your life that nurture your soul?

SPEAKER_01: 31:20

Oh, well, well, it starts with that practice of gratitude and meditation. You know, to the extent that I love being of service. And when I mean that, I love making a difference in people's lives. So being in a space of contribution, I'm also rather selfish too. I love my connection with my beloved. I love our physical connection with one another. I'm I am I am very from that vantage point, I can be a little bit selfish. I don't think she'd ever say that about me, but I'm saying that those are things that I like to do is connect, um, both on and and I'm I I hope you get my drift when I'm saying physical connection. I love connecting with my friends. I love connecting with my my son and my family members. All of those things bring me joy. And even if I have to connect through this medium, and what I mean to say is I love physical connection, but if I just the other day, it turns out I was trying to plan a double date with a friend of mine and her spouse, and we were like, the dates don't work. I go, well, let's do a Zoom date together. At least we can connect that way. And finding ways to connect with people brings me the most joy.

SPEAKER_02: 32:39

That's so good. I love that. Jonathan, thank you for being here for a little bit and sharing a little bit about your journey. Before I let you go, yeah. What is your life motto right now?

SPEAKER_01: 32:50

It's been a motto I've had since my crash, okay? And it's a Disney quote, and it's very simplistic. Not it's not just keep swimming, but it's along those lines of keep moving forward. And and it was something I heard in a Disney movie. And I don't know why that's always that's been a mantra for my myself to just keep moving forward. And that to me means keep growing emotionally, creep, keep growing with my family and my friends, just keep moving forward because I've fallen down and I felt like I was trapped. And what got me through it was that mantra of just keep moving forward. And what that means to me simply is even one tiny baby step in the direction of what I want and the things I want in my life feels like I'm moving closer to them than being in the idea that I'm stuck and I can't go anywhere.

SPEAKER_02: 33:52

Yeah. One little baby step forward can make all the world a difference. Yeah. And so, Jonathan, thank you so much for being on the show today. Folks, Jonathan's book, What the Heck is Self-Love Anyway, is available wherever you buy books. Go and get it. It'll help you take that next baby step, I have no doubt. And Jonathan, it's been a pleasure having you on This Empty Nest Life.

SPEAKER_01: 34:14

Jay, this has been a true pleasure. I love what you're doing, particularly for empty nesters, because I'm in that space. I get it for those of us in midlife, and I appreciate your interviewing style. So thanks so much.

SPEAKER_00: 34:27

Thank you for listening to This Emptynest Life. Remember, this chapter isn't an ending, it's an invitation to redefine, rediscover, and reignite your life. If today's episode sparks something in you, don't forget to take that first step and visit thisemptynestlife.com and click work with me to get the conversation started. Until next time, keep your heart open, your mind curious, and your spirit shining. This Empty Nest Life is a production of Impact One Media LLC, all rights reserved.