We all want to take care of ourselves better, but what does that even mean? Self-care is a very big buzz word, but it lends us to believe that self-care is our sole responsibility. This can make it feel as though caring for ourselves is just one more thing to add to our ever-mounting to-do list.

When we bring about the thought of loving ourselves, it gives rise to another way to think about self-care. Loving ourselves requires that we know what we need, what we want, and what we are. When we come closer to these three concepts, we often notice that we don’t actually know ourselves very well.

That is because as we grow, we need to focus on the world around us so that we could protect ourselves. When you reach a place of contentment as an adult, you may realize that it feels like something is missing in your life.

It is because what you were focused on obtaining (a house, a car, a job, a marriage, a family) may not be what you had actually wanted all along. What you wanted was love. You are going to want more love in your life always. It is what makes life worth living. When there is no love, then we lose hope and life doesn’t feel like it should.

Self-Love is Kindness

As someone who has struggling with loving herself, I know too well the internal struggle that comes up when we think about being kind to ourselves. When I was young, I didn’t think of myself as a person deserving of love. It wasn’t until I did my own inner work that I began to love myself. When I was growing up, my parents struggled to be present. They had very traumatic upbringings because their parents had traumatic upbringings, and so forth. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. However, it deeply affected my ability to love myself, because I didn’t feel like I mattered.

Why am I sharing this? I am sharing this because who I am hasn’t changed. I was exactly who I am now, and both versions of me were deserving of love. Self-love isn’t something that is dependent on what we do or believe. It is inherent. We aren’t less deserving of love because of what we experienced growing up, how much trauma our ancestors endured, or how much goodness we do in the world. Love is what heals us. It helps us be good, because without it we suffer. And it is those that suffer who inject suffering into the world by hurting others.

Kindness towards ourselves is the first step towards love. It is cordiality. It is being as okay towards a stranger out in public towards ourselves. Kindness doesn’t take a lot of effort. It just requires us not to intentionally hurt. Many of us learned to intentionally hurt ourselves from living with parents who were unkind to themselves. It isn’t because they were unkind to us, but because we learned that kindness was not to be given to ourselves.

When we learn as adults that we do deserve to be kind to ourselves, we can begin to build a positive relationship with ourselves. Kindness is an important first step towards connecting positively within. You can start being kind by noticing the thoughts that are negative, and offering a more positive sentence to try re-working your automatic response toward yourself.

Self-Love is Being Kind Towards Others

It may seem counterintuitive, but being kind towards others allows us to build our connection with ourselves in a positive way. When we are kind to our friends, family, acquaintances, and strangers, we feel good about ourselves. When we don’t, we often either blame ourselves, or we blame others. Either way, we can’t give ourselves love.

When we are kind to others, we are kind to ourselves. Being kind to others doesn’t mean that we have to be inauthentic. Authenticity is an important aspect of being kind, as inauthenticity will create more internal stress, making it hard to feel calm and at peace. It isn’t very hard to be kind, however, it is hard to be authentic. Authenticity requires us to know who we are.

Growing up, we often stop being authentic in order to please others. Pleasing others requires us to let go of what pleases us, because the ones we love were never aware of who we were in the first place. As children, our parents aren’t fully aware of our true identity, and they often get our identity confused with their own. This means that if their identity is perceived as negative, they may place those negative perceptions onto us. This then impacts how we perceive ourselves, and takes away from our ability to know who we truly are.

Identity is formed by becoming aware. Awareness is about noticing the thoughts, emotions, physical sensations, and patterns that arise within. When we build self-awareness as adults, we are able to release those negative perceptions that were passed down to us, and develop a more positive sense of self.

Becoming authentic is very important. Authentic presence offers others a chance to truly know who you are, which in turn allows them to feel safe. Safety begins the process of connection and connection is what we are all wanting to feel in life. Connection is everything.

Self-love gives us a way to love ourselves with our whole heart. Our heart is where our energy is stored, and we can use that energy for many good things. When we learn how to connect with the energy in our heart, we are able to feel compassion. Compassion for ourselves and others is the same, and offers rebirth. Rebirth in a sense that we can become who we truly are, recognizing that underneath it all, is a kind, compassionate heart. Some ways to reconnect with our heart is through loving-kindness meditations, being very open and curious, and going to therapy to become more self-aware, and beginning a mindfulness practice.

Self-Love is Becoming A Better Person

Self-love isn’t just about feeling good. It is about being good. We are very simple beings, who are only able to give what we receive. When we don’t receive love, it is impossible to spread loving-kindness outward without it causing inner anger and resentment. When we love ourselves, we can share how we feel with everyone who comes near us. Love knows no bounds, and it does not discriminate. Accessing the loving part within offers the world a way to live in harmony.

This doesn’t mean that we all need to get along all of the time. That is not what love is about. It is about offering love regardless of the other person’s race, colour, belief, gender, sexuality, and life direction. It is knowing that everything on the outside does not take away what is within. When we recognize this, we can let go of the need to be better than anyone else. It is only because of our own insecurities that we feel the need to put others down. To become more at peace with ourselves, means that we are able to be at peace with the world.

Self-Love is Having Enough

Having enough is a foreign concept for many people. This is because they did not have enough love growing up. When there is enough love growing up, we don’t need to keep trying to get more. When we don’t have enough, we will try to get it at no avail. No matter how much we spend, how much attention we try to get, how much visible materials we possess, or how much money we earn never gives us what we truly seek. It isn’t that we are spoiled or bad, it is that we seek what we do not know. Obtaining love is what we all need. Once we are aware of this, it is possible to find it within. Love is within us all, waiting to be expressed. When we love ourselves, we don’t need anything else. Love provides.

This may seem impossible, but it is not. Love is simply the ability to be at peace with our identity. It doesn’t require much money, and it isn’t something that some have and some don’t. It has the potential to change the world, and it is the simplest path we can follow. In order to follow this path, we must only allow ourselves to stay open to the possibility. Openness is the doorway to love. Openness creates space to feel our heart expand, and our mind to clear. It brings in curiosity, allowing us to get to know who we are meant to be. We don’t need to try hard. It is the absence of trying in which we experience what we have been seeking our whole life.

Self-Love is Becoming At Peace

We could all use more peace in our lives, couldn’t we? The amount of busyness required each day is astonishing. We have to be busy all of the time in order to get ahead in life, or so we are told. This belief is very toxic, because it creates guilt and shame when we try to slow down and listen to our bodies. It isn’t until we reach a place of disease or injury that we listen, because we don’t want to be seen as weak. It doesn’t mean that we are weak, it means that we have been at war with ourselves. Our bodies and minds are not meant to be separate. They are meant to be harmonious, ebbing and flowing together, dancing intuitively together in the song that we call life.

We don’t need to be busy. We need to be at peace.

Peacefulness allows our body to lead, and our brain to follow. That is the way we are meant to live. Somatics offers us help in becoming more aware of our bodily responses. When we learn to listen to our body, we are able to let go of the need to remember and know. This remembering and knowing is exhausting. It takes a lot of energy to power our brains, and this mental work drains our energy so that we often feel tired and frustrated with ourselves.

Letting our bodies lead gives us the ability to let go. Letting go feels so good, and we deserve to feel good in our bodies. If you are feeling pain and tension in your body, it means that you are not listening to what your body is trying to tell you. Your body is a powerful messenger. It has the answers to heal itself. Our body will tell us what it needs, just by simply beginning to slow down and sharing some alone time with it.

Somatic exercises such as yoga, tai-chi, qui-gong, or karate teach you how to listen to your body. It is important that we teach this skill to our children as well. By encouraging our children to listen to their bodies when they are full, when they need rest, and when they want to move, allows them to live peacefully. Living peacefully provide them with self-love.

Self-Love is Letting Go

There are so many things that we learn to hold onto. Money, attention, accolades, gym memberships, fancy clothes, our appearance, what we drive, where we live, what our story is, what personality traits we believe we are. These are all things that we can let go. When we learn to let go, we create more space for what truly matters – love. Love isn’t any of those things. It isn’t what we do, or what we have. It is what we are, and what we are isn’t our personality. Our personality is just the parts of us we had to develop in order to survive. When we let go of our personality, we begin to reconnect to our truth.

Self-love is letting go. Being able to let go is being able to be. Being requires nothing other than breathing. When we connect with our breath, we connect with being. This is one simple way to begin the process of trusting, and trust is necessary for us to be able to let go of the need for control. Control is what causes our need to hold on tightly to the things we have and the personality traits we think we are.

A desperate need for control is cause by a life in which we did not feel safe. Safety means that we can rest. In our busy world, rest is not prioritized. When we learn this and begin to prioritize rest, we slowly begin to build more safety in our lives, which in turn reduces the need to be in control. Control is a coping mechanism that helps us survive, and is not something that is required once we feel safe.

When We Learn How to Love Ourselves, We Learn to Love the World

Above are six ways to love ourselves. Which way do you feel most connected to? Whatever the answer is, that is where to begin your journey towards adding more love into your life. I hope that this blog post has allowed you to reflect on how much love you hold, and how much love the world holds around you.

When we are busy in our own homes, it is easy to forget that we are all connected. When we build more pathways towards self-love, we inherently build more pathways towards loving others. This is the pathway we can use to change the world.

Our simple message to you today is to show yourself love in any way you can. Want some help with developing self-love and compassion? Our team of therapists provide counselling to clients throughout Ontario, Canada.