RM of BTS stood before the United Nations in 2018 and gave one of the greatest Self-Love speeches ever heard: speak yourself. But the moment that stopped me was one sentence, the one where he claimed the very label people used to dismiss him. Episode 93 of Self-Love Through Their Eyes goes inside the speech, the UNICEF Love Myself campaign that came a full year before it, and the story of a boy from a small town who stopped hearing his own voice, and found it again in front of the world. I was living in Hong Kong then, when BTS were the air we breathed, and this speech found me at the exact right time. We close with a practice to try this week with one person you love: one true thing, spoken in your own voice.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why "idol" was a put-down in K-pop, and what it meant that RM led with it at the United Nations
• The UNICEF Love Myself campaign that came before the speech, and the one belief it was built on
• What happened when a boy from Ilsan started seeing himself through other people's eyes, and how that story is ours too
• Why he calls his faults and mistakes the brightest stars in the constellation of his life
• The responsibility that comes with learning to love yourself, and why Self-Love was never meant to stay locked inside you
• A simple practice to try this week with one person you love: one true thing, given freely

Resources Mentioned:

• RM's full speech at the United Nations, official UNICEF video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTe4f-bBEKg
• Full speech transcript, from UNICEF: https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/we-have-learned-love-ourselves-so-now-i-urge-you-speak-yourself
• The LOVE MYSELF campaign, BTS x UNICEF: https://www.love-myself.org

Connect with Lulu:
Website: https://www.luluessey.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lulu.essey/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucille-marie-essey/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lulu.essey

This is an inside job. Please share this episode with people you love. And follow while you are here 💛

Love is a choice, not a feeling we wait for. bell hooks' "all about love" is centered around that truth, and I know the weight of it personally: I first picked up her book over 15 years ago and put it down twice, stopped in the Preface by what it showed me about my own story.

Episode 92 of Self-Love Through Their Eyes goes inside the book and looks at what love is made of, why real love cannot be sold to us, and the chapter she found hardest to write, her own Self-Love. Because the woman who defined love for a generation still had to practise it. And so do we.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why bell hooks insisted on a definition of love
• What changes when love becomes a verb, a choice we practise, instead of a feeling we wait for
• Why the chapter on Self-Love was the hardest one for her to write, and what her honesty reveals about knowing the work versus living it
• The inconvenient bell hooks: her warning about comfort that asks nothing of us, and why "lovelessness is a boon to consumerism"
• How fear stands between us and love, and what choosing love in the face of fear looks like
• One simple practice for the week: choosing love on the days you feel no love at all

Resources Mentioned:

• All About Love: New Visions, bell hooks, 2000
• The Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck, 1978
• bell hooks, her life, love and legacy, from Berea College: https://www.berea.edu/centers/the-bell-hooks-center/about-bell

Connect with Lulu:Website: https://www.luluessey.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lulu.essey/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucille-marie-essey/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lulu.esseyThis is an inside job. Please share this episode with people you love. And follow while you are here 💛

What does it take to stop judging yourself and truly see yourself? Self-Love through the eyes of Zanele Muholi, the South African visual activist who turned photographing themselves into a practice of Self-Love This episode opens a new series, Self-Love Through Their Eyes, where I introduce you to artists who reshaped how I understand Self-Love and Mental Fitness, and the window each one opened for me.

We begin with Zanele Muholi. Their exhibition toured Europe to record audiences before returning to Tate Modern in London in 2024, over three hundred photographs strong. In December 2024 I stood in those rooms with my niece, two South African women far from home, and what happened there is where this episode begins.

This is not art critique. This series is about how art and creativity have moved me deeply, how they helped me understand Self-Love, and my hope that they will do the same for you.

And in Zanele's own words, the words I have not stopped thinking about since: For once, take a look at yourself, and give thanks for living.

IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN

• Who Zanele Muholi is, and why they call themselves a visual activist, not an artist
• What happened when two South African women met Zanele's work in a London gallery
• Why choosing not to analyse a powerful moment can be an act of trust
• The story behind Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness
• Why Zanele set a goal of 365 self-portraits, and why its being unfinished changed how I see Self-Love
• A small witnessing practice for looking at yourself without judging

Explore Zanele Muholi's work:

Tate Modern exhibition, with the room guide and Zulu sound baths: https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/zanele-muholi
The portraits at Tate, including Bester I: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/zanele-muholi-18872/yes-but-why-zanele-muholi
The Muholi Art Institute: https://www.muholiart.institute/
Zanele in their own voice, on film at Art21: https://art21.org/artist/zanele-muholi/

Sources for this episode:

The 2020 exhibition closure and 2024 return: Tate Modern exhibition page above
Zanele's quote, for once, take a look at yourself: Attitude interview: https://www.attitude.co.uk/culture/zanele-muholi-interview-466960/
Zanele on Somnyama Ngonyama and founding the Institute: Juxtapoz interview: https://www.juxtapoz.com/news/magazine/features/zanele-muholi-the-bronze-age/
The 365 self-portrait goal, begun 2012: https://lampoonmagazine.com/article/2022/01/20/zanele-muholi/

Connect with Lulu:

Website: https://www.luluessey.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lulu.essey/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucille-marie-essey/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lulu.essey

This is an inside job. Please share this episode with people you love. And subscribe while you are here 💛

The Lulu Essey Podcast is a proud member of the ALIVE Podcast Network: https://alivepodcastnetwork.com/

Does self-help leave you feeling like the problem? Like you did the work, followed every step, and your life still did not change, so the failure must be you? If self-improvement is not working for you, I want you to hear this: I reached the same conclusion about myself once, and it took me years to see that the reasoning was broken, not the woman doing the reasoning.

There is a shouty conversation happening in the self-improvement world right now, about what gets promised and what gets sold with the promise. Underneath the noise there is something more important: so many of us are measuring our lives against those promises, coming up short, and deciding that we are the problem. So this week I am not weighing in on anyone else. I am telling you plainly who I am, who I am not, and what you can count on me for in this space.

I will never hand you my life as a template, only as company. Blame and agency have been mushed together in this space, and we pull them apart. And we sit with the question that follows the words you are not broken: then where am I? The answer changed how I see this path.

This is Season Two, where we explore the space between knowing the work and living it. This conversation is the foundation everything else this season stands on.

IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN

• Why doing everything right and still feeling stuck was never proof that you are the problem
• The difference between blame and agency, and why confusing them leaves us feeling worse
• What it means to be whole and becoming at the same time, and that both can be true
• My honest take on the wounded healer: why wounds give you a lens, not a license
• What fluid, not flimsy looks like in practice
• Why I chose the words Mental Fitness for this show, and never self-help

Connect with Lulu:

Website: https://www.luluessey.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lulu.essey/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucille-marie-essey/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lulu.essey

This is an inside job. Please share this episode with people you love. And follow while you are here 💛

The Lulu Essey Podcast is a proud member of the ALIVE Podcast Network: https://alivepodcastnetwork.com/

Do you feel guilty every time you rest? Like rest has to be earned, and you have not earned it yet and you definitely don't deserve it? I know that voice well. It showed up this summer, big time, when I took my first break in 88 episodes.

Welcome to Season Two, Beauties. I am opening this season with the truth about that break. For weeks before it, a voice in my head listed all the reasons I hadn't earned the right to rest. I didn't fight that voice. I didn't obey it either. I sat down with it.

In a workshop with Elizabeth Gilbert, I heard her describe fear as a passenger that rides sidecar. I loved it, and I do not drive. So I did it my way. I invited fear in for a coffee, let it say everything it had to say, and then asked it one question.

This episode names what Season Two is really about: the gap between knowing this work and living it, and what it takes to truly embody the work. We have never consumed more of this content, and so many of us are still stuck. Closing that gap is uncomfortable, sometimes painful and often awkward. That is exactly where we are going together.

And some news that means the world to me: The Lulu Essey Podcast is now part of the ALIVE Podcast Network, founded by the incredible Angel Livas.

In This Episode You Will Learn

• Where the belief that rest has to be earned comes from, and why it gets louder the harder you work
• What happened when I stopped arguing with fear and let it speak instead
• The Coffee Invitation, a practice for hosting a feeling without letting it decide
• The one question that reveals what a feeling is really trying to do for you
• Why knowing this work is not the same as living it, and why that gap is the heart of Season Two
• What joining the ALIVE Podcast Network means for this community

Next week on Season Two: trust. I tell you plainly who I am, who I am not, and what you can count on from me in this space.

Explore the ALIVE Podcast Network: https://alivepodcastnetwork.com/

Connect with Lulu:Website: https://www.luluessey.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lulu.essey/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucille-marie-essey/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lulu.esseyThis is an inside job. Please share this episode with people you love. And follow while you are here 💛

When group chats go quiet and friends stop reaching out, the silence can start to feel like a judgment. Researchers are now talking about the friendship recession, adult friendships fading with no argument and no goodbye, and it is happening everywhere. This episode is about what that silence does to our sense of worth, and the one question that stops it.

What makes a fading chat so painful is seldom ever the absence of messages, but rather the meaning we attach to those missing messages. And somehow we always seem to reach for the harshest explanation and treat it as fact.

This conversation feels personal because I am almost always the one who messages first, so I know this silence from the inside. What years of being the one who reaches out has taught me about what the silence has meant, and what it has never meant, sits at the heart of this episode.

This is a short summer episode, honest and practical, made to fit inside the season you are living. And it is the last one before my four-week summer break. I will be back on Thursday the 13th of August, and there are 88 episodes waiting for you in the meantime. If a silence has ever told you a story about yourself, join me. Let's stop that story together.

In This Episode You Will Learn

• What the friendship recession is, and why adult friendships now fade instead of ending
• Why the person who never replies almost certainly is not thinking what you fear they are thinking
• What being the one who always texts first taught me about what silence does and does not mean
• The moment the silence starts talking, and how to recognize whose voice it really is
• The one question that stops the story mid-sentence
• The one message worth sending, and the two reasons never to send it

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Connect with Lulu:Website: https://www.luluessey.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lulu.essey/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucille-marie-essey/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lulu.esseyThis is an inside job. Please share this episode with people you love. And follow while you are here 💛

Summer feels too short, so we grip every warm day and demand that it counts. Make every moment count sounds like such good summer advice, and it is also one of the fastest ways to miss the season entirely. This episode is about the moment the review begins, and the two small questions that keep us from throwing our summer away without realising it.

This is not a conversation about doing more with your summer. It is about the invisible standard so many of us hold our days to, where that standard came from, and why someone else's measure leaves us feeling behind in a summer meant for joy. There is a scorecard involved, a ruler that was never ours, and yes, a gorgeous sundress. The sundress will make sense, I promise.

I share the two questions I use when the pressure to make the most of summer starts humming, a small piece of Mental Fitness that turns the season from a test back into a life. To me, this is Self-Love in practice, choosing our own measure of what counts and letting the rest go.

These summer episodes are short, honest, and made for the season you are living right now. If your summer has started to feel like something you are performing instead of something you are in, join me. Let's put the scorecard down together.

In This Episode You Will Learn

• Why making every moment count is the opposite of what it promises to be
• The invisible standard we hold our summers to, and the surprising thing you find when you go looking for its origin
• Why the same habit that has us measuring our bodies in summer also has us measuring our time
• The question that catches you mid-review and brings you back into your own evening
• What adapt, not adopt looks like when you apply it to time itself
• How to write your own measure of a summer that counts, and the case for letting one moment count for nothing

Connect with Lulu:Website: https://www.luluessey.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lulu.essey/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucille-marie-essey/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lulu.esseyThis is an inside job. Please share this episode with people you love. And subscribe while you are here 💛

The summer comparison trap is one of the most diabolical things we do to ourselves, and it bites hardest when everyone else's summer looks better than ours. One minute you are scrolling through other people's summer escapades, the next your own summer feels insignificant, grey, and just not enough. This episode is about what is really going on in that moment, and the small shift that brings you home to the summer you are living.

This is not about where we are or are not going this year. It is about how fast a screen can lift us right out of our own life and place us in the middle of someone else's. And the longer we linger there, the more of our own summer slips by while we are looking the other way.

I share one simple question you can reach for the next time the scroll starts to sting, a piece of Mental Fitness that gently calls you back to your own life. And yes, there is a caftan involved. It makes more sense than it sounds. To me, this is where Self-Love begins, in coming home to the summer you are standing in and deciding to enjoy the hell out of it.

These summer episodes are short, honest, and this one made me laugh more than most. If comparison has been running off with your summer, join me to find a lighter way to hold it.

IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN

• How an ordinary scroll can talk you into believing your whole summer is a write-off
• The slightly absurd thing we all do the moment someone else's summer looks better
• What it truly costs us to go and live in someone else's summer instead of our own
• One simple question that gently calls you back when the scroll starts to sting
• Small, gloriously ridiculous ways to celebrate the summer you are actually in
• Why coming home to your own summer is something you do, not something you wait for

Connect with Lulu:Website: https://www.luluessey.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lulu.essey/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucille-marie-essey/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lulu.esseyThis is an inside job. Please share this episode with people you love. And follow while you are here 💛