We have all heard that we need to love ourselves. A simple google search on loving yourself will bring you a boat load of information on how to do so and why it is important. Make dates for yourself, put yourself first, get a massage, make time for just you, etc...the list goes on. These are fabulous things to do for sure! I have what I call a reset day with myself once a week where I have a spa night...and daily I make time for yoga/meditation/journaling. However, for a very very long time I felt inadequate because no matter how many luxurious bubble baths I took, how much I worked on my hobbies and took time for myself, I didn’t feel that passionate love and acceptance for myself that I thought these things would bring me. It took me a while to realize that these are things we do out of self love...not to cultivate it. I now have a true love for myself, even when I beat myself up and say negative things....there is an foundation of love that catches me in these moments and allows me to heal from myself and others. Below are there insights I learned that allowed me to build this foundation. I invite you to meditate/ponder on these words and take them with you as start to love yourself HARD!
#1 You don’t need to learn to love yourself: Love is not something we need to learn...it is our natural state of being! We are born loving ourselves (and others)! It is the natural state of our soul, our spirit, our true selves! When we really allow this truth to hit us hard right in the chest (or Heart Chakra) then loving ourselves becomes much easier. It stops being a quest and something we have to do or learn about. It becomes more about removing baggage and toxic layers of beliefs that don’t serve us anymore. That love...the most purest and true of all loves...has always been there. It has never and will never leave you because it is YOU!
#2 Forgive yourself: Forgiveness is a very difficult thing to do. I spent most of my childhood and teen years resenting and hating those who had abused me. When I found myself starting my own family at the young age of 20 I realized I need to learn to forgive in order to enter my new life in a good space. It was during this time that someone said to me: "We are all victims of victims." Something clicked with me in that moment and it was all very clear. I was able to forgive those people that hurt me because I could understand that they were in pain as well. And not only that, but that they came from a perspective that was limited to where they were at that point in their lives. This allowed me to move on from a lot of pain. I still had a long way to go, but it a very important realization. It wasn’t until 10 years later that I found myself in a place where I had made some serious mistakes and had hurt others that loved me that I had to learn self forgiveness. I struggled for a few long years with this. Self abuse was a standard behavior for me (mentally) and I was so accustomed to it that I often didn’t identify it as abuse. I made it my mission to figure out a way to forgive myself. While I was on this path I occurred to me that maybe I needed to apply the same grace to myself that I gave to others. I had learned to forgive the people who had hurt me most...the very same people who were supposed to love and and protect me. If I could give them grace, then I can certainly give it to myself! It wasn’t an easy road, but using the same understanding I gave them on myself certainly made it possible.
#3: Let go of “rules”: We often put rules up around loving ourselves. We feel like we need to give ourselves permission to love ourselves! We will think things like “I want to love myself, but I need to lose weight...it will be easier then.” or “I will only love myself when I get that promotion”. We might never realize we are saying these words to ourselves. We do this because society makes us think this way. We all know that we don’t need to me a yoga master to do yoga (and if you don’t know that...I am here to tell you that you don’t need to be a yoga master to do yoga!) but when we look at pictures on social media or magazines and see the people doing very advanced yoga poses we think “ugh...i'm not that good..i need to to be better” and then consciously or subconsciously will tell ourselves that only when we reach this point can we love ourselves. The trick is to know that this is happening and train your mind in the opposite direction. On your very worst days tell yourself that is is OK and that you love yourself even though you feel awful. We all need to love ourselves for the sake of love and love alone. We don’t need to reach a goal, be in a certain mood, or be at a special checkpoint in our day to love who we are and where we are in that very moment.
#4: Words have power: How we say things to ourselves matters greatly! Just changing one word around in negative self talk with make us realism what we are actually saying. I use to say “I don’t deserve forgiveness and love.” Then after a therapy session took out the word ‘don’t’ and said to myself “I choose not to deserve forgiveness and love.” Doing this a few times everyday when I would show self hatred forced me to realize that it is a choice not a fact. Everything we tell ourselves we will end up believing. If we say we are ugly even when we believe ourselves to be beautiful we will end up believing ourselves to be ugly...and vise versa. All thoughts and beliefs are narratives forced upon us by others or ourselves. Our brains are trained to create stories around our experience here in this life. We have no choice in this as it is part of being human. The good news is that we have the power to alter that narrative in a positive way.
If you choose to remember one thing from reading this blog, remember the first point: You are love! You were born into this world for one purpose and that is to love! So love yourself hard core starting today no matter how awful you might feel! Love is your destiny
Love (much much love!) and Light
Shannon