Do You Love Yourself?
If this question has you stumped, join the conversation and leave a comment below at the end of the article and learn what it really means to love yourself and how the foundation of self-love is key to creating your career, a happy life, the relationships you desire, and enjoying your healthy, happy body!
What does it really mean to love yourself?
Self Love means knowing and valuing yourself for the essence of who you are – not what you earn, or do, or who likes you – just because you are you! Self-love shows up in the way you live your life by taking care of yourself the way a good parent takes care of their child or a pet. This means listening to your adult self when making decisions.
Building a relationship with your power, integrating it into who you are becoming, strengthens your voice and ability to get what you want in life.
Giving away our power is something we have been taught since childhood by unaware adults in our lives. As children we were taught to override our inner sense of knowing and our right to determine for ourselves what we want to do. We were encouraged to feel toward others that which we are discouraged from feeling about ourselves. This repression continued, most likely, in many experiences at school and in situations at work. Taking back our confidence in our inner knowing and ability to stand for our truth is self-love. With clients, I use flower essences to reactivate our ability to bring forth self-love as your “heart of knowing” what is right.
What is body Self-esteem?
One of my most respected teachers, Emilie Conrad, (the founder of Continuum Movement) defines love as “no resistance”. When it comes to our bodies, we actually hold resistance wherever there is judgment, held emotional pain, or an attachment to other people’s beliefs. In body-centered therapy, such as what I do, the client finds his or her body self esteem by exploring where the places of physical and emotional holding are and releasing them. The body self-esteem arises out feeling like we are safe to be our true self and this leads to a certain kind of felt sense of being strong and confident in the body. When we have no resistance to accepting and taking care of our bodies, we are able to love ourselves better. This is also associated with a better outlook on life and enjoying a healthier body.
Self-Love and Relationships
Loving ourselves attracts others to us and allows us to open to other people in a loving way. Actually, one of my teachers, Laurie Handlers (the founder of Butterfly Workshops) emphasizes that the relationship we have with ourselves is primary to the happiness we can find in partnership with another. Laurie explains, “when we make love, we are making love to ourselves”. I know this sounds like an oxymoron, but, think about it: The positive feelings that come from healthy relationship come from the reservoir of love that we have for ourselves. We are sharing ourselves with our partner. Of course we share our love for our partner, but that love is transmitted through the vehicle of self-love.
Self-Love and Abundance.
Self-love holds a belief that you deserve and can have abundance in your life. Since your outer reality is simply a reflection of our inner reality, you start creating abundance in your life through realizing your self-worth. In other words, the vibrational content of your self-esteem is key to creating happiness in your life.
Creating abundance of love and money in your life is a parallel process to tending to your self-worth on a daily basis. This cultivation is called manifestation or actualization of the self. The art of manifestation involves allowing the universe to support you while you use your unique gifts to fulfill your purpose in life. Self-love is knowing yourself in a larger context where you can feel and experience that you are supported. In other words, you know who you are as part of the bigger picture of the spiritual world, nature and humanity. Holding an appreciation for yourself from this perspective helps you plant yourself firmly in a reality where there is flow in your life that is in harmony with others. Embracing flow, (or synchronicity) with gratitude when it arises in our daily life raises your vibration and allows you to increase the momentum of manifestation and abundance.
Self-esteem is the reputation you have with yourself
Could this be you? You know you are a good person, friends and family love you, but you don’t really feel loved. Because of the way we structure our self-concepts, its possible to have a positive self-image and still lack self-esteem and self-love. It’s not them, it’s YOU who needs to love you more! You receive accolades at work, but don’t feel satisfied with your self. Have you confused self-confidence with self-love? There can be blocks to self-love at our most vulnerable places, even when we are successful or confident. Why? We learn early on to judge ourselves from others who have (maybe unknowingly) judged us. Those aspects of ourselves that we judge don’t get integrated into our personality (we don’t “love” certain aspects of ourselves that we deem unattractive or unwanted). It is those dark places inside that hold us prisoner until we bring the courage and the light of acknowledgement to all the aspects of ourselves. Sometimes our self-image has been wounded. You can heal the reputation you have with yourself by taking the courage (sometimes with the help of a therapist) to explore the censored aspects that lurk in your “shadow” and therefore still have control over your life in some way. Once we identify and acknowledge how it got there, we can understand why it held your self-love hostage. At that point, it loses its power over your life. You are free to become more dynamically YOU; more satisfied and effective in love and life.
Is it time to improve your reputation with yourself?
You deserve support – accepting it is an act of self-love! For some in-depth, one-on-one time to explore these and other issues please connect with me to schedule a session.
