My incredible guest, Eilat Aviram, shares some beautiful love and relationship insights.
Eilat has written 2 amazing books that I highly recommend reading:
If You Loved Yourself What Would You Do Now?
You Have Permission To Exist
She is a daring decision’s teacher and shares what self-love actually is, and how it’s different than self-romance. Eilat tells of the journey and process of loving her mother-in-law before she died. And how looking after your needs is not selfish, it really is a gift.
Learn more about Eilat here: https://ifilovedmyself.com/
Welcome to Lovin My Daughter-in-law Podcast, where my mother-in-law, relationship expert and master certified coach LeAnn Austin, will help you create more love and connection with your daughter-in-law and everyone else who care about.
Hey y’all, welcome to Lovin My Daughter-in-law, episode #80: Caring with Eilat Aviram
I love observing and connecting with other humans, especially noting how they feel and implement love into their lives and their relationships.
We have the incredible Eilat sharing some beautiful love and relationship insights with us today. Alright Eilat, briefly introduce yourself.
Hi LeAnn. Thank you so much for having me here. I’m really thrilled to come and talk to you and your wonderful people, daughter-in-laws, mother-in-laws. My name is Eilat Aviram, as you said, and I’m a clinical psychologist. I’ve been working with people for almost 30 years now. Hard to believe. I’m a hypnotherapist as well. I’ve written and published two books. A speaker. I run courses for healthcare practitioners to learn how to love themselves in their choices that they make in the daily choices and the big choices.
Oh, what an honor it is to have you, were you gonna say something else? I’m sorry, go ahead. No, I was gonna say that I call myself a daring decisions teacher, because I help people dare to love themselves in the choices that they make. So good.
And I just learned about your first book: If You Loved Yourself, What Would You Do Now? a couple months ago. And I love that book and I’m so excited to learn more and for our audience to learn more and read more about you. So thank you so much for being here.
Thank you. I’m always excited when people are benefiting from loving themselves more and learning how to listen to their own inner guidance, right. Because we so don’t feel like we have permission to do that. Exactly.
Well, I have five questions I’m gonna ask you today. So let’s go ahead and go with number one: how do you incorporate love into your business and life, and how does that impact your relationships?
Well, I’m all about love really, but actually I have an interesting little definition of love and of self-love in particular, which is what I teach so directly. In answer to your question, the way I speak about self-love is that it is meeting your own needs. Which is quite different. It’s not what we usually think of as self-love, which I actually call self romance. You know, have the bubble bath, go for the walk on the beach, go for the massage. Those things are wonderful, but they’re romance. It’s self romance. We know that you can do those things and not actually love yourself. Right? Yes. So true.
So for me I incorporate love into my work, into my life, into my relationships, by making very sure that I’m attuned to what I need, and that I do my best to meet my needs or at least acknowledge them. And that way, my work thrives. I teach other people to do it, but my relationships aren’t burdened by my needs because I’m in charge of looking after them. So good and so true. I love that.
Alright, so tell us what is something you love about you and why?
I thought about this and I think the thing I really like about myself is that I care. I used to think of that as a weakness and a sensitivity that was very annoying because it’s hard to care about everything and be all sensitive, but I really like about myself that I’m someone who cares very deeply about other people, about the world, about things. I think it drives my purpose and my mission. So I like it about me now. I’ve made peace with it. With having to live as a caring person in the world.
That is so beautiful. Caring. And I love that you recognize that as well, you know? Beautiful, thank you. It took a while to be okay with it. I was like, no, no. I don’t wanna be like this. It’s interesting how sometimes those things that it takes us a while to learn to appreciate, we almost fight against where it’s like, wait, this is a blessing. This is a wonderful thing about me. Yeah, absolutely.
Alright, so I love talking all things daughter-in-law. Any thoughts about either having or being a daughter-in-law?
I have two sons who are teenagers, and so I suspect I may one day be a mother-in-law. I haven’t had the privilege yet, but I have definitely been a daughter-in-law and I think for me, the most important thing that I’ve had to learn is to be honest about who I am and what is important to me, and what works for me and what doesn’t work for me.
Thankfully I have a very loving relationship with my partner, and so it, there is this acknowledgement that both of us love this man. So we have that shared common ground, which has definitely helped. She has passed away. But we managed to really create a very strong bond once she realized that I was not a threat to her child.
Ah, interesting. Yeah, so I think she was really nervous that I would hurt him or that I wasn’t good for him. She had her fears and about losing him or, you know, she had all her fears and when I could acknowledge her fears and when she saw that he benefited from my presence in his life, then we became a team. I love that. Then it was beautiful.
And both of you just getting to love him. Absolutely. And differently, loving him differently that she could offer things that I couldn’t offer and didn’t want to offer him. And likewise that I offered him things that she couldn’t offer him. And so it was, it was the both of us caring for this person that made it feel like family. Back to the caring part again. Yeah, absolutely.
And meeting of needs. So allowing her to be who she was and she allowing me to be who I am. It was a little journey and a little process, but we definitely made it. And she felt like a second mom to me by the end. I was very sad when she died. Well, and that’s so beautiful that each of you allowing each other to be who you were. That’s, you know who you are. I love that.
And I think it takes a lot of patience and kindness, and compassion. We were both strong personalities. So you have to accept and allow the other to be who she is. Yeah, and giving space and time for that to kind of develop as you figured it out. Absolutely. Yeah. Oh, so good.
Is there anything else you’d like to share and where can our audience go to find out more about you?
I want to say that looking after your needs is not selfish. In fact, it is the least selfish thing that you can do for anyone that you love. Because in your relationships, if you are looking to someone else, like a daughter-in-law, for example, or your child or your partner, if you’re looking to them to meet your needs, it burdens the relationship and it leaves you disempowered.
You give away your power. You say, oh I want to be respected. I need to feel loved. I need to feel appreciated and seen. I need to feel heard. All of these things are very legitimate needs and we have them, and especially in relationships and especially with regards to mother, daughter-in-law. We need to be acknowledged. We need to be respected. We need to be seen.
But if we’re waiting for the other person to do it, we are giving away our power. We also then are burdening the other person and it causes so much havoc. When we start to appreciate ourself or our efforts, or we acknowledge, or you go, well I like the food that I cooked, you know. Yes. Well, I am listening to me, or I will honor what I need right now. I won’t wait for her or him to do it.
Then we’re really gifting ourselves by taking our power back and strengthening ourselves, and we’re gifting whoever we are in relationship with. Because we’re freeing them from having to please us and having to run around and try and sort us out. It’s just a huge gift, and so it’s the thing when I’m teaching how to love yourself, how to listen to your own truth and your decisions.
The thing that people often get worried about, they say, isn’t this selfish? You know, what about other people? Okay, I can listen to myself when I’m on my own, but what about when I’m with other people? Surely I should put other people first. I should make sure other people are okay.
And I’m saying if you are doing that, but you are sitting feeling empty, deprived, resentful because your needs are not being attended to, it’s going to end up badly in the relationship. You’re going to be resentful, you’re gonna blow up at them, something will happen. They won’t meet your needs, and you’ll just, it’s so, it’s such an unhappy situation.
But if, for example, a mother-in-law is saying, well, I don’t like the way you’re doing this, and so therefore I’m going to do it in the way that suits me and meets my needs, and you continue doing it your way, and we’ll make a plan for both of us to get it the way we want it to be. My goodness. What liberation. Absolutely. Yes.
So I want to just, that’s my big thing is don’t think that looking after your needs is selfish. It’s actually the kindest, most generous, liberating thing you can do for everyone around you. And definitely for yourself. Absolutely. I think that’s the key right there. Meeting your own needs, so beautiful.
And that’s why the second book, because that was the question I kept getting from people. It was like, okay, I can love myself on my own, but how do I do it in relationships? And so then I landed up sitting and writing the second book, which is, how do you love yourself in relationships? How do you say no in a loving way. How do you set healthy boundaries? How does that all go?
And I am so excited to read this book. I didn’t know Eilat just told me about it right before this podcast, and so I’m going to get that right now and read that. I’d love to hear what you think. Yeah, that’s what we incorporate in Lovin My Daughter-in-law program is the boundaries, the manuals, all of that kind of stuff. So I’m so glad that you’re sharing that with everyone and excited to read that. Thank you so much. And thank you for your work in the world. Ah, you the same. My goodness, this is amazing.
And where else can they find you? How can they follow you? And I’ll put this in the show notes as well, but you tell us too.
Okay, thank you. My website is called IfIlovedmyself.com. And I have a weekly letter that I send out. It’s called the I Love Myself letter, and I send it out once a week on a Wednesday morning. With the idea being that it’s plunk in the middle of your week, you get a little reminder to tune into your own inner guidance and to ask yourself the love question, which is: If I loved myself, what would I choose to do now? And give yourself permission to exist. So once a week on a Wednesday morning. So that’s ifIlovedmyself.com/subscribe, and you can sign up for that, it’s a free resource with self-love. So good.
Alright, the last question. What is your favorite quote about love and how have you used it for yourself and in your relationships?
I have to find it. I did write it down. Okay, well it’s a little bit what I said just now. When you are the source of your own love, it won’t occur to you to look outside of yourself to get that love because you will feel and know it all the time. Loving others and receiving love from them will just be a fun addition to how you always feel.
Mmm, something to think about y’all. I love that Eilat. Thank you for sharing. Thank you so much. Ah, for sharing your tidbits of love and relationships with us. So beautiful.
Have a good one y’all ~ and here’s to caring and love.
If you enjoy this podcast, check out LeAnn’s Lovin My Daughter-in-law program where she coaches and teaches a variety of ways to have more fun and connection in our relationships. LeAnn also shares the five secrets she uses to create a beautiful relationship with me and her other daughter-in-law. She’s the real deal. I highly recommend you check this out.
And if you want one easy question you can keep in your back pocket and use to increase the love you feel for your daughter-in-law today, go to leannaustin.com and get the one question.
