What Is Self Love?

Self love described through the beautiful words of my friend Creig Crippen:

“What is self-love?

It’s being gentle, compassionate, and patient with yourself. It’s trusting your intuition and honoring your own truth. It’s selecting beauty as your focus, choosing a life of love, and refusing to let others bring you down. It’s forgiving yourself, releasing regret, letting go of worry, and accepting all that has come before and all that is yet to come. It’s owning who you are, recognizing your flaws, embracing your quirks, and savoring your uniqueness. It’s investing in yourself by taking the time to nourish your mind, body, and soul. It’s believing that you deserve—and you’re capable of creating—the life you love. It’s bravely trying new things and experiencing the exquisiteness of what lies outside the comfort zone. It’s knowing with absolutely certainty that with all of your flaws, with all of your genius, you are loved, you are lovable—you are love.”

Thanks Creig!

As I read through Creig’s comments, I was “inspired” with several more for those who have been trying to figure out how to live this way and truly love self. And for those who haven’t yet taken the reigns of their own life and decided they are worth it …

It’s saying “no” when something doesn’t feel quite right for you right now. It’s setting clear boundaries and not allowing others to manipulate you into doing things you don’t want to do through guilt or a sense of obligation.

It’s taking actions you feel “inspired’ to take, not those you feel you “should” take.

It’s taking whatever time you need whenever you need it to come into center, balance, and inner peace.

It’s doing things that bring you joy rather than always being concerned for the happiness of others.

It doesn’t mean you ignore others and their needs … particularly if they are children or elderly or someone else that requires your time and attention. But it does mean that you often do come first in the hierarchy of needs. Because when you take care of you, you have SO MUCH MORE to give.

It means you take care of your health at all times … getting enough rest, exercise, sunshine, good nutrition, pure water, and whatever supplements your body needs. It means you rid your life of toxicity – in food, in your environment, and in the people you allow to be blessed by your presence.

If you don’t feel you are a blessing, then you haven’t stepping fully into self love.

Nowhere in this list am I saying to become arrogant or unkind. That is not at all what I’m talking about.

I’m talking about knowing who you are … what makes you smile and brings you joy … and honoring that.

I often talk about the 4 things I believe are necessary in every successful relationship: with self, the Divine, with others, and with nature. Those four things are to love, honor, accept, and appreciate. It begins with self. You have to love, honor, accept, and appreciate yourself just as you are … warts and all.

Expecting perfection in self and others is completely unrealistic. Humans are pretty much incapable. They have limiting beliefs and fears. They are good at some things and not others. They have bad days. Instead of beating yourself up about all that, just embrace it. You definitely want to try to do well in everything. But it’s so important to recognize your strengths and weaknesses and just be OK with it. Wishing you were different or that you could do something you currently can’t can only result in one of two things: 1) a great desire to learn and master something new so you actually take the necessary actions and learn it, or 2) great unhappiness. Sadly, most people tend to do #2 much more than #1.

Certain things like the body not working right (illness, disease, aging), financial struggles, or relationship issues can cause a great deal of stress and often results in poor decisions and sometimes unkindness to others. When that happens, genuinely apologize to those people in your life that you care about.

And remember, love, honor, accept, and appreciate self … then do the same for others.

Have a magnificent day,