Nicola Fernandes Of ‘Self Love with Nicola’ On How To Learn To Finally Love Yourself
… So for me the biggest insight I got about Self-Love, the connection with yourself, the love for yourself can only come from you. So it’s nothing outside that triggers it. It’s really connecting to you and as I was working with my clients, it came from the invisible world, the different levels of you that you can connect to. And so I developed a course called Joyful You 2.0 (it is really funny how often that comes up in this interview, I guess Spirit really wants everyone to know about this amazing possibility to grow into Self-Love, Acceptance & understanding). In Joyful You 2.0 we’re bringing you to all the different strategies to connect with Self-Love, that True you, and I will share with you five of them here.
As a part of our series about “How To Learn To Finally Love Yourself” I had the pleasure to interview Nicola Fernandes.
For more than 10 years, Self-Love Coach Nicola has been helping thoughtful and open-hearted leaders to move from self-sabotage & doubt to Self-Worth, Self-Love, and Success! With her Wholeness Mastery Method she supports her clients to get re-connected with themselves and spirit — finally falling in Love with who they truly are and for filling their Dreams with Joy. She is a master trainer in Neuro-Linguistic Programming and a leader in her field. She is also certified in Hypnosis, Laughter Yoga, and Time Line Therapy — She has won several awards for her work. She has made it her life mission to help empower people and change their lives.
Thank you so much for joining us! I’d love to begin by asking you to give us the backstory as to what brought you to this specific career path.
Sure. My backstory is: I studied business in Munich, Germany, started working for a major music company in New York City, had a beautiful office on the 43rd floor overlooking Times Square and was traveling the world.
I got married, had my first child, had a live-in nanny — living the life.
And then my second daughter got diagnosed with autism and that changed everything. The doctor said they don’t know where it comes from and what to do about it. And so I stopped working and made it my job to look deeper and deeper for help with her. And my husband was very generous and let me go to a lot of seminars although we had three kids at home. And guess what happened, every time I came home after a seminar?
Every time I came home from a seminar Luisa was better.
And so long story short, as she got so much better, I was asking what’s my mission? What’s my purpose? Why is Luisa and this experience in my life? And so I started seeing clients as a Coach and healer and I started more and more boiling down to what is it in life, what makes life enjoyable at its core? What makes the biggest impact? What makes the biggest difference in people in the shortest amount of time? And to all of this the answer I got over and over: Self-Love is the key to all of it. And that brought me to being a Self-Love Coach and Shaman.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you hope that they might help people along their path to self-understanding or a better sense of wellbeing in their relationships?
Yes, I actually am, as I’m continuously following my intuition, I was guided to teach a course that shows us how our relationship to others and specially to ourselves is reflected by our relationship with money. So, my newest course is called ‘Money loves you… let it in!’. And it’s all about channeling the energy of money and seeing that money truly is there for us, but we are creating all these beliefs and blocks where we find reasons why we can’t let it in. And so there’s a saying that ‘people have issues with money when they have issues with self esteem, and for self esteem you need to have Self-Love ’. So you can really see that Self-Love actually can only be realized when we allow ourselves abundance and abundance means on all levels, being okay with being wealthy, claiming abundance and letting money in. So in my course we are actually using money to see all the triggers we have in life, we clear those with money and see money as a partner in life. Then we can let in all the other relationships, close loved ones, family and specially the relationship with ourselves. So money is such a great teacher. I think there are codes/downloads through money that open us up to that Self-Love allowing ourselves that huge abundance.
And so as we clear all these blocks, all these beliefs with money, we come to embrace ourselves for who they are, who we are allowing ourselves to be, what we are allowing ourselves to have which is abundance. The message that I get over and over is that the Universe, God, Source, the Creator (however you refer to a greater power) shows us through nature that there is unlimited abundance, and so there is unlimited abundance for us, in love as well as in money and wealth. It’s unlimited. It’s like love it expands. And the same way abundance can be unlimited for us. And so it’s a beautiful teaching, a beautiful learning for the well-being in relationships, when we clear our relationship with money. We get so much clearer about all relationships. It’s super exciting. And this is just the start so stay tuned.
Do you have a personal story that you can share with our readers about your struggles or successes along your journey of self-understanding and self-love? Was there ever a tipping point that triggered a change regarding your feelings of self acceptance?
Sure. My biggest opening to self understanding and Self-Love was through the journey of my daughter being diagnosed with autism and looking at her, receiving her love, showed me more and more that I could love. I could be more loving and I could not have such high standards and expectations on myself but just love myself for who I was. And as I got this message more and more that Self-Love is really the essence, that I can help and want to help my clients with, I worked more and more on it. Yet the biggest tipping point was when I had to separate from my husband because I realized it wasn’t aligned with loving myself. I wanted so much for him to be happy instead of making my wishes a priority. So when I got clear on that, I really had to accept that. For me it was better to separate as much as it hurt at the same time. So we say one of the definitions of enlightenment is to accept your choices and accept others choices. And so as much as I had thought I had accomplished that and was aware I guess there’s always another level. I’m in deep gratitude to my husband, because as much as it hurt to separate, I got a whole other level of possibilities of self acceptance, of Self-Love, of self understanding. And I’m reaching right now a level of Self-Love that I didn’t even know was possible, attainable, that I could reach. So I guess there’s always another level you can reach and it’s just exciting. Or you can actually choose if you want it to be exciting. One of the biggest learnings I share with my clients is that you always have that choice.
According to a recent study cited in Cosmopolitan, in the US, only about 28 percent of men and 26 percent of women are “very satisfied with their appearance.” Could you talk about what some of the causes might be, as well as the consequences?
So when we see that only about 28% of men and 26% of women are very satisfied with their appearance, that means on the other side, that almost three quarters of men and women are not very satisfied with their appearance. And it often comes because we trust too much those senses: what we see from the outside, what we hear from the outside, what we feel from the outside. It’s all from the outside and we make ourselves dependent on what we see on the outside. So unless you have someone or more than one person in your life that has a higher consciousness and can teach you virtues like compassion and kindness, you think the outside as you see it in magazines, in commercials, and in marketing is what matters. And so the consequence is that people think they have to fit a certain standard to be satisfied with themselves and from that to be happy in life. And it’s so important and I work with a lot of clients on that, where we travel back in time and go to the younger self and be that higher consciousness person that tells them that it’s important how you feel in your heart. We teach them to trust your intuition, that when you thought something is up, something probably was up; that it doesn’t matter what you see in the mirror. What’s real is what you decide you want to see, who you want to be, what you want to think about yourself; that everything starts with the thought, that’s what’s important to know. Yet if people don’t get taught that, they can lose themselves on the outside. I compare it with the image that you can choose between spiraling up (feeling better about yourself) and spiraling down (being more and more dissatisfied with yourself). And it can go not so well in a spiral down because in this case you make yourself more and more dependent on what you see, instead of who you are inside.
To some, the concept of learning to truly understand and “love yourself,” may seem like a cheesy or trite concept. But it is not. Can you share with our readers a few reasons why learning to love yourself it’s truly so important?
Definitely. Learning to love yourself is so important, because when you learn to love yourself, you truly connect with your inner self, with your heart. And so there’s a whole other level available for you to live life from.
First of all, when you love yourself, you feel love. And so your thoughts, your behaviors, what you do is all from a place of love, and therefore life becomes easier for you. You’re more in the flow when you have loving thoughts. Then with love comes that you feel worthy. You feel good enough, you feel you can do it. So it sets you up in a whole higher level of living life from.
Secondly your worries, your fears, your doubts, they just dissipate because you just love yourself for who you are, you’re just okay to make mistakes. And you’re okay. You love who you are.
And thirdly, everyone around you benefits, because with you, falling in love with yourself, you use these loving words with others, which is so nice for them to be around and they get a share of being loving. So everybody gains, everybody is on that higher level, everybody can see the world from a higher stage with love.
And finally, and that might be even the biggest one: The biggest search for most people is happiness. And when you are connected with your heart and feel that love for yourself, joy and happiness come in. And so what you can’t find anywhere outside, not in money, not in awards or accomplishments you get by loving yourself. Loving yourself brings that joy and happiness that can bring true fulfillment in life and lets you be who you are in this moment. Celebrating life for who you are.
Why do you think people stay in mediocre relationships? What advice would you give to our readers regarding this?
In my opinion, people stay in mediocre relationships because they don’t believe they deserve better and they’re afraid. If they leave, it might hurt. They might fear to be alone or to not find somebody new. And even though they might be aware that it’s mediocre, they rather have that than nothing. And so the advice I would give is realizing that to have something new, energetically, we have to first clean up the old or you won’t find a really good new relationship. Unless you let go of the old and close that door you are energetically not available for something that is different. And secondly, the relationship you attract will always be equal to where you are. So as long as you don’t think you are worth it, you deserve it, you won’t be able to have a really fulfilling relationship. You won’t be able to call that in. So you have to work on yourself, let go of all the doubt and the fear and the ‘not good enough’ thoughts. See where that comes from and heal it. Because then, automatically, you will have the courage to let go of a relationship that doesn’t serve you anymore. You might not even need to do anything, it just will dissolve, because it doesn’t work anymore. And then what’s important is to learn to be proud of who you are. And when you have this wholeness, it is easy to attract someone who is also whole. I see mediocre relationships like one person is a C and they’re just attracting another C, like each are a half sphere. The two make a whole sphere. But after a while that doesn’t work, because you always need the other one to feel whole and it becomes a dependency. So you want to heal as much as you can of your doubts and fears and uncertainties. So that you can start to become whole and attract another whole person. Then it’s a choice to be together or to do things apart and still to be fulfilled just by being you. So I’m here to tell you it is possible. You can do this and you deserve the best. Yet you have to be the one to allow yourself that.
When I talk about self-love and understanding I don’t necessarily mean blindly loving and accepting ourselves the way we are. Many times self-understanding requires us to reflect and ask ourselves the tough questions, to realize perhaps where we need to make changes in ourselves to be better not only for ourselves but our relationships. What are some of those tough questions that will cut through the safe space of comfort we like to maintain, that our readers might want to ask themselves? Can you share an example of a time that you had to reflect and realize how you needed to make changes?
Questions are really often about not stepping into totally loving ourselves, understanding ourselves, because there is a benefit of not doing so.
And so here are those tough questions are related to that:
How does it serve you to stay comfortable? How does it serve you to stay in this relationship? How does it serve you to not make changes?
What do you get out of it?
And then, what’s the worst thing that could happen? Really making us aware: What is the worst thing? Because that’s so often our fear that we try to avoid, what is the worst thing that could happen?
What would happen if tomorrow everything would be good and you would have the most amazing life. What would you be missing?
And what lessons do you feel like you’re learning right now? How do you get out of those?
Who are you gonna be when you leave that relationship? We’re going to be when you really look at yourself?
And do you have a game plan for after? That’s the other thing so often we are so afraid of not knowing, fear of the unknown, that we rather stay where we are. So it’s really important to make a plan.
For me, and many of you might be able to relate to that as a parent, over the years I got so in the habit of taking care of my kids, making sure they’re happy, making sure they are okay. And as each one of them is growing up, it’s not just once that I have to reflect and realize I need to make changes, but with each one of my three kids over and over and I know I need to step away. They need to make their own decisions, they need to live their own life. And to be honest, it’s just so easy to not reflect on myself and make sure that they are totally okay. And every time I get reminded ‘no Nicola, you have to take care of yourself’. They can do it and the more I believe in them, the better they can do it. So I am living my own teachings. Believe in your kids. And they totally will feel worth it.
So many don’t really know how to be alone, or are afraid of it. How important is it for us to have, and practice, that capacity to truly be with ourselves and be alone (literally or metaphorically)?
Being alone is one of those truths that everybody tries to ignore and distract themselves from. The saying is we are born alone and we die alone. So, especially me being a Shaman, I teach my clients to learn to be in that quiet space and be aware of your thoughts. We want to practice, we want to be ready, because one day you know what happens. It is said that research has shown that with 100% certainty one day 100% of us will die, yet most people avoid talking about it. And so the more we actually practice this aloneness, the more we are focusing on being aware of what we are thinking, the more we can get comfortable in the knowledge that our thoughts are going to come with us. And when we know in our last moment, we can have good thoughts, there is no more fear of death, because we can be at ease now.
So practicing this aloneness before and realizing it’s not really alone. And that’s what I do in a lot of my courses. It’s not that you are alone. You are really with Spirit, with your Higher Self, with your Guides, with your Angels, they are all with you. So there are so many beings in the invisible world that are with you. Yet, as long as we distract ourselves, with other people, with TV, with social media, we don’t learn this way of opening up to the universe, to the guidance, so that being alone is not at all alone. Instead it’s learning that you can in this moment, sit with yourself and connect to what is there in this universe. So it’s super important and you will see how your life becomes more at ease, more in the flow. You get to know yourself and you get to know all the guidance available and you experience that you’re never ever any more alone, because you have all this support from the invisible world. And with that life becomes so joyful. There is no more grasping and holding on to other people or other distractions, because you’ll always know you’re cared for. It’s one of the most wonderful feelings and I highly, highly recommend it. In Joyful you 2.0, one of my courses, you totally learn all the different energies that you could relate to. It’s like a boardroom that helps you be in this world, supported by the invisible world.
How does achieving a certain level of self-understanding and self-love then affect your ability to connect with and deepen your relationships with others?
That is a very good question. So the more you have that understanding of yourself and that love for yourself, the more you can just love others, because when you are in a state of that love and understanding, you will replicate that for others. When you are loving, then you will be so much more understanding and loving to others. And therefore, your relationship to others deepens, because people feel accepted, they feel appreciated, they feel loved. And so all your relationships will come to such a higher place, because love comes from you. You radiate that love out and people will love to receive that. That’s actually my wish for the whole world: If everybody could be in that Self-Love, then the whole world would be loving. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?
In your experience, what should a) individuals and b) society, do to help people better understand themselves and accept themselves?
So, what should individuals and society do to help people better understand themselves and accept themselves?
I would rephrase that and say what can they do? Because it’s all their choice. And so before they even can better understand themselves and accept themselves, there are a bunch of barriers that they put often unconsciously in place that don’t let us see what’s possible. So the first thing is really letting go of all these blocks, of limiting beliefs and to allow ourselves, that it’s possible, that we are allowed to, that we deserve to understand and accept ourselves. And then I actually have it laid out through my Wholeness Mastery Method which you can follow in my Joyful You 2.0 program. So there you will clear on many different levels, for example with your younger self, with your past self, with your future self, with your Higher Self. You will clear so many patterns and then open up to connect to the invisible world and with that, more and more, grow your intuition and therefore understand and accept yourself for all of who you are.
The goal is really, like the Yin and Yang, to be truly whole, and that’s part of my Wholeness Mastery Method, to be whole means to have both sides, to have the light and the dark of the Yin and Yang symbol. You are both, you are not just one thing. And the more you can love yourself for all your mistakes, everything you do, you have and you are, the more you can understand and accept yourself. So that would be really my highest recommendation to do the Joyful You 2.0, for individuals.
And our society is built up on individuals. So in my opinion, society shifts faster when you have role models, really shifting themselves and others then getting the inspiration to do it as well. But it still has to be done by each person individually. It’s like a huge meadow of grass, right? Each grass blade has to grow. Each one has to grow, each one individually has to grow. Each seed has to grow. And that’s the same with understanding and accepting. Each one of us has to do the work. And that’s my wish and why I created the Joyful You 2.0 program.
Here is the main question of our discussion. What are 5 strategies that you implement to maintain your connection with and love for yourself, that our readers might learn from? Could you please give a story or example for each?
So for me the biggest insight I got about Self-Love, the connection with yourself, the love for yourself can only come from you. So it’s nothing outside that triggers it. It’s really connecting to you and as I was working with my clients, it came from the invisible world, the different levels of you that you can connect to. And so I developed a course called Joyful You 2.0 (it is really funny how often that comes up in this interview, I guess Spirit really wants everyone to know about this amazing possibility to grow into Self-Love, Acceptance & understanding). In Joyful You 2.0 we’re bringing you to all the different strategies to connect with Self-Love, that True you, and I will share with you five of them here.
The first one is connecting to a memory from when you were little. And in the course we will bring you to a specific memory that is very important for you. It might be a peak experience, it might be a traumatic experience, it might be something that’s really valuable to you. But whatever it was, that experience brings you back to that connection to your younger self and from then on you have that younger self in your world. And you create that loving relationship in yourself. And as with all the other ones, as we do this process, I never know if the love comes from your younger self, or you loving your younger self brings the love, because your younger self one day becomes you. So there is so much love as you love that one that was once you or is you. So when I, to this day, do this exercise, there is so much childlike love, it’s so uplifting, it’s truly a fuel for my life. I have a specific memory when I was skipping along a meadow with flowers, and I was just so happy in my life. So whenever I call that back, I can call it in right now all that energy and life is just amazing.
The second one is connecting to your Soul, where in our course we go and feel that radiance of your Soul, that love that your soul has for you, that excitement that your love has for this lifetime and the plans it has. So it’s another way of you pulling yourself out of this mind, the thinking pattern, the trying to figure it out right now, to seeing your life much bigger. What were you planning? What was your mission? What were you hoping to accomplish? And when you see that, you start having so much compassion and kindness for yourself, because you had such big plans. And when you reconnect yourself with that you can love yourself for all you are. There might be some hesitation, but we let that go in a process and you truly can embrace your Soul.
And the third one is a really special one. It’s your Healed Self. We connect you with your Healed Self. And when we are done with the process, you always have again that Healed Self available for you. And for some people, it’s a Heal Self, that’s a physical Healed Self, for some people, it’s emotional. You know, I just started our ‘Money loves you’ course and we actually went to the Healed Self that totally embraced wealth and abundance. What if all your thoughts about money would just be healed and you could have that baseline of wealth? What would you do then in life? It’s just so phenomenal. So this invisible world, I see it like a boardroom, that calls in these different energies and as you step into it, you can love yourself because you take yourself out of this thinking mind, out of your daily concerns and societal norms to a much more expanded view of life. And as you do this with the Healed Self, it’s just so wonderful, I mean, I have done it so often and every time I do it with my clients I get so accelerated to watch that process. It’s like just Whoa, all the things that are possible!
So the fourth one is connecting to your heart. And that again is for everyone different. For some it’s the physical heart, for some it’s the emotional heart, for some it’s their spiritual heart. We go deep into and explore: What’s in your heart, where did you shoo away from loving someone, but you actually realized that you put a wall up and therefore excluded yourself, walled yourself in. And so opening that up and opening up the heart, making it, letting it, allowing it to be softer again and letting all that love in. And sometimes we have to fill it up with motherly love, sometimes with Spirits love, sometimes with whatever love, unconditional love that that person needs. And for me specifically, I learned so much unconditional love with my Dad who really loved me so much, but my husband, by challenging our relationship, really taught me to love him unconditionally. So who knows what’s in store for you with the most magical heart. Also, as we open up to all that love in the heart, we don’t need to figure out so much anymore from the head. The heart pulls through its love so much magic in and we become magical, we truly live magic.
And the last one, you asked me for five, we have much more in the course, is a Future Self. We call in a Future Self and that Future Self from now on is on your side. You know the teaching is that you can only be anxious about the future, but if you go to the future and look back, you can’t be anxious anymore, because it already happened. So as you connect to your Future Self, first of all, it hasn’t happened yet, so you always could rewrite it. There’s no set future. And secondly you go to the Future Self and you get an insight and your Future Self can tell you what you did and how it all happened. And that is such a relief, because finally you can say ‘okay, this is how it’s gonna happen, I can just focus on today, because I know all this is gonna happen’. Isn’t that awesome? It’s kind of like making a doctor’s appointment, right? You make the doctor’s appointment and you don’t need to think any more about ‘am I really going to have this doctor’s appointment’? No, you made it, in your future it’s happening and now you can focus on today. So with all these, and many more we have in the course, I love to live my life in that dance. You know, sometimes I just ask my Spirit, my Guidance, one of the many ‘who could help me the best, who could help me with this question’ and one of them steps up. And I know I have this boardroom of help in the invisible world. And the most important part though, is really to practice. In the course which is five months we really get to practice because that’s what I see out there is missing. You know, there’s so many tips and you can follow them all. But it’s the practice, it’s like a tennis player, a world champion. They don’t have one tennis class and now they want to win the world championships and don’t have a coach anymore. No, you need to keep on practicing and so that’s really important. That’s why we have the Joyful You 2.0 set up for five months. And over those five months you practice with all these different invisible helpers, energies that bring you up but you also get to practice. It’s one of my favorite subjects. It’s what I have been doing with so many clients for so many years. So I’m so grateful to share this. Thank you!
What are your favorite books, podcasts, or resources for self-psychology, intimacy, or relationships? What do you love about each one and how does it resonate with you?
Some of my favorite books are from Florence Scovel Shinn: ‘The Game of Life’ as well as ‘The Power of the Spoken Word’. I read them both periodically because they really wake me up to the knowledge that I am the creator of my life.
I also love audio books and so the conversation of the Dalai Lama with Desmound Tutu in ‘The Book of Joy’ is always a pleasant listen.
For fun I LOVE ‘Advanced Magic’ by Geneveve Davis. Learn, Practice and live the Magic and life will never be the same!
Finally I follow Joe Dispenza quite a bit and do his meditations several times a week. That reminds me also how I am the Creator of my life.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? Maybe we’ll inspire our readers to start it…
Starting a movement that is easy, two things:
One is to practice speaking lovingly to people, because I really truly think we can say anything and everything. It really depends on with what energy we say it and when we say it from the heart, with love, it can be received with love. And so it makes everyone feel so much better.
And the second one is, say only what you want. Imagine we would really know that everything we say creates an energy around us, like a bubble. And we only want to create a bubble that we like, so we only want to say what we want to see around us. So what if everybody would only talk about what they do want and not what they don’t want? Wouldn’t that be so beautiful? Everybody would use these positive words. I think it would be heaven on earth — again.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote” that you use to guide yourself by? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life and how our readers might learn to live by it in theirs?
My favorite life lesson quote is: How you do one thing, you do everything.”
This quote was and is relevant in my life because I truly believe that the first time we do something or we don’t do it sets the stage. That’s when we are hesitant, when we are thinking about it. And once we did it, it’s so easy to follow whatever we decided that first time and do it without thinking, just as we did the first time. So that’s why I think when you do something the very first time that’s really how you do everything. And on top, it’s about being aligned with who you are. There are no exceptions. There is no ‘oh, I just did this one time’, no, because you set up a precedent. And so how you do life in one thing, you do it in everything, because it just generalizes, it spills over. So in the smallest things, be honest with yourself, have integrity, be accountable, be truthful with yourself and others because that’s how you really practice and live being proud of who you are. For example you want to stop smoking cigarettes, and then you say, oh just one cigarette. With that one cigarette you are not being your word, you are not following what you initially said you would do.. You had told yourself to stop. So it’s easy to go to the second cigarette, because you already allowed yourself the first. But even more, the exception of the cigarette spills over into ‘oh then I also can have another drink, or go later to sleep, or spend more money’. Can you see? How you do one thing you do everything. As long as you allow yourself to make exceptions, you are not really the best you could be. So either say this is me, and this is not an exception or you do it differently. And then you are in integrity with yourself, with your choices and what you’re doing. When you are aligned doing the best you can, which means you are ok with every thing you are choosing, then it’s so much easier to love yourself. And that’s my wish for you.
You can find more about me here
@SelfLovewithNicola
https://www.facebook.com/nicola.fernandes.18/
https://www.selflovewithnicola.com/
And here the link to Joyful You 2.0, available right now for a huge discount
https://www.selflovewithnicola.com/joyful-you-2
Thank you so much for your time and for your inspiring insights!
