What does it mean to love yourself unconditionally? Further, why is it important?
For many, the topic of self-love seems narcissistic, selfish, or ego-centric. For others, it may evoke warm and fuzzy feelings of indulgence or luxury, like getting a massage, buying a new outfit, or taking a bubble bath.
Yet, the truth is that unconditional self-love is an essential key to healing your body, mind, and soul! It a spiritual practice of reclaiming your truth and your wholeness!
Further, when you heal through self-love, it brings healing into your relationships and the world around you. When you cultivate love, compassion, and acceptance for yourself, you embody and share those qualities with others, and we all know the world could use a lot more love.
When Self-Love is Missing
So how does a lack of self-love show up in your life?
First, look at your internal self-talk. Do you call yourself names, or beat yourself up internally for your perceived weaknesses, failures or mistakes? Do you push yourself to be perfect or an over-achiever, with exceptionally high standards that deep down you know are unrealistic? Do you like to engage in the compare and despair story, seeking out proof that you aren’t good enough?
Next, evaluate the quality of your relationships. Do you constantly find yourself angry, frustrated, disappointed, or betrayed by your partner or by friends in your life? Do you struggle with relationship drama or find yourself in frequent arguments with others? Are you tolerating unhealthy or one-sided relationships?
Now reflect on your physical health. What about the quality of your health and energy, and how do you prioritize self-care? From both research and personal experience, it is very clear that a lack of self-love can have a detrimental impact on your health and vitality. Think about it for a minute, how much energy and vitality do you feel when you’re beating yourself up internally for not being good enough? How you talk to yourself is how your cells talk to each other!
Self-love is not a luxury, but rather a necessity – for you and the world!
As someone who spent years struggling to heal from trauma, illness and shame, I know this with absolute authority. It wasn’t until I began healing the relationship I had with myself, through unconditional self-love, that my deepest and most profound healing occurred. For the last 10 years I have been in the trenches of authentic self-love practice, and I consider it the most transformational tool on my healing journey. In fact, I wrote my entire masters’ thesis on it! I’ve done the research and most importantly, I’ve practiced it in my own life!
With that said, I invite you to re-consider what self-love means to you.
What Self-Love is NOT
Let’s start by exploring some common misconceptions about self-love:
- It’s narcissistic, selfish and ego-based
- You have to like everything about yourself in order to love yourself
- You have to feel good about yourself all the time
- You have to feel good in your body to be able to truly love yourself
- You have to be perfect to be worthy or loveable
- Self-love is conditional. “I’ll be able to love myself when I lose weight, make more money, achieve this goal, etc.”
- Self-love = resignation. “If I love myself, I will stop trying to improve myself and/or my life”
- It’s a luxury – I’ll do it when I have the time, money, energy, etc.
- It’s an all or nothing thing
- It’s destination to reach or goal to achieve
The Truth about Self-Love
Authentic self-love is not a destination, but rather a daily spiritual practice of loving and accepting all aspects of yourself – your imperfect human self – all of your wounding, survival patterns, limitations, weaknesses, and your fate, as well as your spiritual self – your soul, gifts, purpose, and highest potential. It is about honoring both the Heaven and Earth within – the human and the soul, in equal unconditional measure.
The practice of authentic self-love starts with allowing and accepting all of who you are, which allows you to reclaim your innate wholeness. From that place, you become your own healer, parent, soulmate, and spiritual guide.
Self-Presence
The foundation for an authentic self-love practice, starts with learning the art of self-presence. This is the ability to turn inward to face all parts of yourself, including the parts you want to run away from or deny. The goal is to cultivate self-awareness and self-reflection, and practice radical self-honesty – without judgment!! You cannot heal, change, or transcend that which you are not first willing to acknowledge and accept – with self-compassion.
Self-love is an active process of surrender to what is, and a willingness to heal, grow, and embrace your true potential.
However, the most important thing to know for this practice to be effective…you will never be perfect! This is a practice. Sometimes you will rock it and sometimes it will be messy, awkward, and uncomfortable. Do not approach self-love as a perfectionist…to do so misses the point completely.
Self-presence is about holding a sacred space for yourself as you are, in this moment, even if it’s messy. From that place, you can then step into the opportunity for healing and growth.
If you are interested in learning more, please apply for a complimentary breakthrough session.