Self-love. The secret sauce.

Self-love. What the hell is it?

I’ve spent the best part of 20 years fascinated with how to increase our love for ourselves, because I believe it to be the backbone of self-belief and self-worth, two things that have the ability to either catapult, or delay change.  

Love for oneself to me is about acceptance, compassion and having a high regard for the things that increase our wellbeing. It’s not perfecting yourself so that you are more lovable, or ignorance that you are indeed already perfect. I think it’s making your acquaintance with and acknowledging all that you are in the face of that perfection.

It’s liberating and its freeing. When we work on loving ourselves more, we inevitably become more aware of our own strengths and weaknesses and start to change and improve ourselves without the self-loathing that tends to keep us stuck where we are. 

I want to share a recipe I tend to see in some clients in an initial session. It’s a recipe they have been using for years and it looks a little like this. I’ve used it too and I’ll tell you first hand it’s not tasty!

Ingredients.

-          A desire to change.

-          Experiencing pain or fear.

-          An idea of what would bring happiness.

-          A belief there is something wrong with them.

-          Conditioning that tells them that they are certain things i.e., “lazy, smart, not good with money, a good communicator, can’t lose weight, bad parent etc” (aka a belief system).

-          An often-hidden hierarchy of what’s important and what’s not.

-          Confusion and frustration.

-          Self-loathing.

-          Usually tried a bunch of things, generally not long enough to see evidence of change.

Method.

-          Take the desire to change and their preconceived beliefs about what is inherently wrong with them and mix them in a large bowl.

-          Add a teaspoon of frustration, 1/2 cup of fear and 20 cups of negative self-talk.

-          Sit aside and melt together all the ways they have tried to change in the past and use them to remind themselves of why it’s all so hard.

-          Take a fresh plan forward out of the cupboard, one they are excited to try. Lay this plan on a baking tray and then roll out all the negative contents of the bowl on top.

-          Turn the oven up to berating and cook waiting for the negative topping to create rise, empowerment, success, change (spoiler – it’s rarely does).

Result.

-          A burnt (out), inedible, self-loathing tray of self who is trying to ‘be a better person’ through reminding themselves constantly of all the reasons why they are not.

You see it’s a pretty fruitless exercise. If I have learnt anything through my own personal experience and certainly professionally – we don’t become happier, healthier, more productive, successful, brighter, calmer, more content versions of ourselves through hating on ourselves…we do it through loving ourselves a little more.

Love the parts that come easy and work on accepting the parts that don’t (one day acceptance can become like, then love). We all have shadows, parts of ourselves we don’t like. If we can bring them into the light, it helps them dissipate and we can only do that through acceptance they exist.

Don’t worry, just because you’ve accepted them doesn’t mean they have to stay there but I promise if you continue your quest of hating parts of yourself and keeping them hidden, they will get even bigger in the dark.