Unrelenting Self-Love
You can have unrelenting self-love. You are not bad or broken! You never were!
If you have lost your way in life, it might be time to reinvent yourself, starting with how you see yourself. Some call it self-confidence, but that’s a measure of external success. You can have unrelenting self-love instead.
No matter what you are going through, even if everything that gave you purpose is disintegrating, even if what defines you is lost, there is a way back. And it is not even that complicated!
Unrelenting Self-Love is a gift you can give yourself! It is your birthright to love yourself.
Self-Love
It is not vain to love yourself. It is not conceit. When you were a child, you had unshakable self-love. It comes naturally to a child. You knew who you were, and you liked yourself. You know what you wanted and unabashedly went for it. You felt good about who you were; you really, really liked yourself!
Why do we lose this self-love at the center of being a whole, unwounded, unbroken human?
When you feel hollow, like a shell of a person, when you feel empty and full of shame—that there is something uniquely and fundamentally wrong with you and you alone—you disconnect from the person you have become. When you don’t reinvent yourself, you might lose self-respect. You people, please care more about what other people think about you. You try to fit in. You stop caring for yourself and doing what makes you who you are—passions and interests fade.
If you have come to a place where you feel deeply inadequate in your current life—change!
Why not have a deep, calm, and kind self-love? The type you already have for yourself is still in there, waiting for you to pay attention.
You are, after all, already free.
Already Free
A great book is Already Free by Bruce Tift. The subtitle is Buddhism Meets Psychotherapy on the Path of Liberation. (affiliate link)
He uses both Buddhism and traditional psychotherapy to help clients. He admits that the two are irreconcilable, but in some circumstances, one works better. After spending the entire book talking about the problems with thinking you are not free, he discloses that you already are free, and all you have to do is accept that fact.
The Feeling of Self-Love
When you choose self-love, you give up the BS in your life. The toxic suitcases you are carrying of other people’s thoughts and expectations.
Once you radically accept your life just the way it is, you can end your suffering, expecting it to be some other way. While some suffering is necessary, other is self-imposed and stands in the way of your self-respect. You will love yourself more when you can peacefully observe your life flowing around you. Step into the stream and observe without judgment or expectation.
Drop the self-limiting delusions that keep you trapped in negative spirals of thought. Don’t pay any attention to the critical voice—all the self-judgment that aims to trap your soul—the one that says something is wrong with you. You are not uniquely bad.
Beyond the negative scripts programmed into your head is your goal. Self-love is there underneath all of the garbage on expectations of other people. Your inner beauty and creativity are there, just waiting for you to give it a breath.
Then, breathe it again because you program the positive circuits in your mind whenever you think of them. Neuroplasticity. You need to stop thinking of the negative patterns and have those neurons wither while you start thinking of positive patterns that will wire and fire together.
It is time to rewrite the programs running in your mind. Stop and observe how you treat yourself. Remember, no one will treat you better than you treat yourself.
No one is going to love you without self-love.
Start-Up Cost of Self-Love
Self-love is abundant and free, but there are start-up costs!
You can access many good feelings, but they must be earned. Beyond wanting to feel better, you must act as if you feel better. This is the imposter syndrome—who am I to deserve to feel good about myself?
You can have some anxiety about self-improvement, just like you have when you approach a new person who might be a friend or mentor. You can still be battling your fears of abandonment or not being worthy of connection and love.
You can be burnt out and deal with a famine of time freedom. Who controls the most important non-renewable resource in your life, your time?
There is a start-up cost to get past the inertia. You have not liked your life for a long time. It can improve, but it won’t overnight. And it won’t until you choose self-love.
Choose Self -Love
It is a choice! You can decide now!
Of course, you have to do the work, too.
The work is mindfulness, meditation, and a lot of inner child work. It is a full-time job to learn to love yourself after a lifetime of self-hatred and worse. Luckily, I’m retired and can devote whatever time I’m not with my children to this endeavor.
For what pays better dividends than being your authentic self? Than loving yourself? It is not vain or conceited. It is a choice. It is your birthright to be happy in your skin and love the person you are.
