The self-love struggle
Why is it so hard for us to truly love and accept ourselves? Why is it that no matter how much we say “I love myself” there is always a disconnection, we feel a knot in our stomachs and we still don’t believe what we are saying no matter how much we say it?
For the most part, we approach loving ourselves as a habit that needs to be learnt, which is usually accompanied by saying “I need to learn to love myself”. The truth of it is that loving ourselves isn’t actually something we need to learn to do, it’s an un-learning that needs to happen. Let me explain.
The place we currently find ourselves, which for most of us is a place of not accepting who we are and having an inability to connect with the feeling of self-love, is a learned response. You see, at the moment of our birth we absolutely love ourselves. We come in with this incredible energy of unconditional love, for ourselves and for others. I always know this to be true because when you look at a baby, you can feel it, it emanates from them, babies embody this beautiful energy of love and it invites us to love them.
As we grow up, particularly in the first 8 years of our lives we are modelling our behavior on those closest to us. We learn how to walk, talk, engage and respond to our environment by mimicking others. What we also learn is how to get the love and attention of our parents, our siblings and our our society through action. We learn that in order to feel “love” we need to do certain things, behave in specific ways or align ourselves to the desires of others. While we are doing these things and gaining their approval, it feels great. However, when they take that love away because they changed their mind, or we didn’t live up to their expectation or we have failed to deliver on what was asked from us, we are left feeling empty, alone and sad.
Through our upbringing, we have learnt that love comes from outside of us. We have unknowingly created an attachment style that finds love, joy and happiness in external things. We’ve attached these emotions to things like
The approval of others
What other people think or say about us
Living up to a certain definition of success - Degree, Good Job, Married, Bought a house etc.
Material possessions
Food
Activities like exercise, movies, adventures and even holidays like Christmas and Birthdays
Truly connecting with self-love and self-worth isn’t about learning to love yourself, it’s about unwinding all of the habits and beliefs that have caused you to fall out of love with yourself in the first place. This process takes time and is a journey, not a sprint. To be able to truly fall back in love with ourselves we need to consciously catch our ingrained habits and begin to replace them with new, more empowering and internally focussed viewpoints, beliefs and thoughts. Here are some steps you can take to get started on your journey.
Instead of thinking “How will they feel about this?” Ask yourself “How do I feel about this?” - Try to shift from thinking about what others think or believe about your actions and efforts and towards how you feel about it. Remember that how someone else feels has everything to do with them, their experience, beliefs and standards, and not yours. So to measure ourselves against what they think is futile because they may have completely different values, morals and expectations to us.
Get really clear on what it is that YOU want from your life. Take a good hard look at all of the beliefs you have and the things you think you need to be happy, and ask yourself if those are really your beliefs, or are they just societal things that you have simply accepted as your own?
Remind yourself that self-love is the only path. How can you expect or ask someone else to love you, if you haven’t yet arrived at a place where you love yourself?
Accept all of yourself. Everything. Even the things you would deem “flaws”. There is only one YOU on this planet, no one else is just like you and who you are is unique, beautiful and exactly what this world needs. If that wasn’t true, you wouldn’t be here. There is no one else like you, so make sure you own that, live it and love it!
Stop taking everything so personally! Everyone has their own lives, their own experiences and their own baggage they are carrying around. If they snap, get nasty or say something untoward, it has everything to do with them, and nothing to do with you. Have you ever met one of those people where nothing anyone ever does is good enough or right? Do you think the thousands of people who haven’t been good enough in their eyes are all failures? Or do you think perhaps the common denominator amongst all those who “Aren’t good enough” is just that one person and their viewpoint?
Start to treat others with the love that you wish to see around you. As you begin to look at others in a more loving and more accepting way, you will begin to love and accept yourself more as well.
Be kind to yourself - Treat yourself the way you would treat your child, with love, compassion and understanding.
Remember that this is a journey to falling back in love with yourself. This is a lifetime of conditioning we have to unwind and that takes time. Clearing Energetic blocks with The Emotion Code is also an incredibly powerful way to unwind the past, and let go of old patterns that are holding you back from experiencing self love so if you feel like you need some extra help on your journey, please reach out :)
Always remember, enjoy the ride, stop to smell the roses and fall in love with the process, not just the outcome.