Katy Perry Gets Real About Her Journey To Self-Love
“I was basing my love on all those things that people give me, and I wasn’t giving it to myself.”
For a special live episode of The Thrive Global Podcast, Thrive Global founder and CEO Arianna Huffington sat down with Katy Perry as part of the singer’s “Witness World Wide” livestream promoting the release of her new album Witness.
Katy Perry has learned a lot about love.
And not just the kind of love she receives from others. These days, she’s focusing on self-love.
“I always learn from making mistakes, and I’m a person that has to have rebirth constantly,” Perry told Huffington.
“I was really addicted to love,” she said. “The love that someone could give me, not the love I had for myself. And I got so addicted to it that when that love was taken away from me, I felt like I couldn’t live.”
But the star said her outlook has changed drastically. “I’m not so addicted to it,” she said, “although I enjoy it and I enjoy the companionship and the teamwork and the partnership.”
So how did Perry get there? Through, as Thrive Global calls them, “microsteps.” She told Huffington that she doesn’t “play chess anymore.” Instead of hyper-focusing on her appearance and saying “all the right things,” Perry embraced her real self.
“I’m like, ‘This is me, come as you are, my intentions are pure.’ And sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t.”
Instead of fixating on the negatives of every relationship that didn’t work out, she views each partner as a teacher.
“They’ve been a mirror,” Perry said. “They’ve shown me some things that are difficult to see. I’ve learned so many great lessons. I wouldn’t go back even if I had the option to go back because every lesson has been valuable.”
And she extends the same attitude to social media. When Huffington asked about self-worth in the digital age, Perry said it’s been a journey. The path to understanding her self-worth hasn’t been easy.
“I’ve got millions of ‘likes’ in my life,” she said. “I’ve felt so much pain and loneliness and despair, and I’ve felt like I wasn’t enough. It doesn’t matter how I painted my face, doesn’t matter what label of clothing I wore, how much money I made or who I was dating.”
And now?
“Now, I really love myself and I love this big life that I created. It’s so wacky and wild. Beauty is internal. Beauty is in different shapes, in different sizes, in different colors, in any way presented. It’s all internal. It’s not external.”
To hear the full conversation, stay tuned to ThriveGlobal.com and iHeart Media.
