Love yourself. It almost sounds cliche, doesn’t it? It seems like everyone everywhere is telling you to love yourself. Do you? Do you love yourself? What does that even mean, anyway?
Personally, that is my journey in this life: learning to love myself and my Self, getting to know the ego self and the Soul Self, and integrating the two. I never knew that I was enough just as I was. Nobody ever told me that I was enough. My childhood taught me that I was never enough. And because we get downloaded and programmed with these particular beliefs when we’re so young, we go through life without even realizing that we don’t love ourselves, and that we believe, deep down, that we are not enough.
So we look in the mirror, and we see what is wrong. Some of us, previously myself included, even feel completely traumatized by what we see as the reflection in the mirror. We look at our lives, and we see everything we don’t like, all that we want to change. We look at other people and wish we could be like them, while feeling like failures in our own lives. And so we go to work to change one thing or another about ourselves or our lives. We go on a diet – why? To lose weight? Why? To look acceptable to other people? To feel better about what we see in the mirror? What’s that about? Do you have to look just right before you can love and accept yourself? I’ve been there.
What about your situation in life? Do you give your power away to an employer? Why? For your employer’s approval? For money to buy more things that make you feel like less of a failure in life? Do you need a certain salary or house or car in order to win your own love and approval? Yes, I’ve been there too.
What about relationships with others? Do you settle for some guy or some girl, just for the sake of having somebody in your life? Do you need to have a boyfriend or girlfriend or husband or wife in order to feel complete? Is that what you need in order to love yourself? If this is your story, I know your pain.
If you need any of these things in order to love yourself, then you don’t really love yourself. You still don’t know you’re enough, and you’re making your own self-love codependent upon someone or something outside of you.
Take a breath. Think about that. I know how hard it is to stop trying to change yourself. It’s our nature to improve and grow and better ourselves, and we’re saturated with programming about being thinner and more beautiful and successful and with a partner and in the perfect house… the programming is everywhere we look in the western world! But it’s also our true nature to love ourselves, and our egoic programmed beliefs about not being enough, or not good enough, unworthy, worthless, not perfect – these keep us from allowing us to receive our own love. We think we have to be thin enough or pretty enough or rich enough or successful enough or popular enough or loved enough by someone else. Nuh uh! Not so!
Stop Trying to Change Yourself and Just Love Yourself
Do you realize that every change you are trying to make to yourself and your life is based on the backwards idea that you will love yourself once this is right, and once that’s fixed, and once you’re perfect and good enough? This is an exhausting way to live life! To wait until you’re perfect before you will love yourself. I know, because I used to live this way too. You burn out, trying to make yourself perfect enough to be worthy of your own love – and guess what? You never are! There will always be something that isn’t just right, something imperfect, something wrong, some excuse not to love and accept yourself unconditionally. All the while you keep trying to change, not even realizing that you’re doing it all to win your own love! So stop, take a breath, and just love yourself. You don’t need all that other stuff. You’re already perfect, for real!
Can you love yourself even if you’re single? Will you love yourself even if you’re overweight? Do you love yourself even if you are unemployed? Can you love yourself even if your whole life has been turned upside down? Do you love yourself even if you’ve lost your home? Will you love yourself and know that you are enough, no matter what has happened or is happening outside of you? And by “outside of you” – that includes what your body looks like. Can you stop trying to change this or that about you or your life, and just take a moment and give yourself the love you deserve from yourself? Will you stop putting conditions on love you give to yourself, and just accept yourself, exactly as you are right now?
This is much easier said than done. I know what it takes to drop everything, stop trying to change, and just love yourself. But one day, it clicks. The more time you spend with yourself – with your inner child, loving and accepting all versions of yourself, unconditionally – holding and comforting that child version of you when you were hurt – the more you get to know yourself, the sooner it all just clicks. You are enough. You are worthy. You deserve to love yourself just because you’re you. Just because you ARE. You don’t need to keep putting conditions on the love you give to you.
Get to Know Yourself, Get to Love Yourself
What helped me to get to the space where nothing else was needed, where self love really started to flow, was to simply spend time getting to know myself. Do you know that feeling you get, when you first meet someone you’re super excited about getting to know – like that hottie you’ve been crushing on, and you can’t wait to get to know everything about that person, and tell him or her everything about you? That’s what I’m talking about here. I spent time with myself as if I were my own crush.
I wrote lists of favorite things. I imagined my child self as if she were sitting beside me, and I asked her what she liked, and she had a lot to say. Do you know you have a child self inside of you too, who is desperate to get your attention? Connect with that little one. Imagine yourself at a certain age, perhaps 8 years old, sitting beside you, and having a conversation with this younger version of yourself. Take notes. The more you fall in love with these younger versions of yourself, the more you open yourself up to self love that is not dependent upon anyone or anything else.
When it comes to feeling happy in this life and raising your vibrational frequency, this is the one thing that stays with you – this is the gateway to the joy you seek. Self love is the key to everything. Don’t make it conditional. It’s time to let all those conditions go, and just be the change you want to see. Being the change means nothing needs to change. You are a Divine manifestation of Source… a piece of God. You are so amazingly special and magnificent. You are the love you seek. No strings attached.
