Hello!
If you haven’t done so already, please do go back and read Part One of this post.
Today we are going to dive deeper into what you can expect to take place as you walk your self love journey, so that you can be really prepared for what this journey has to offer.
I want to help you conceptualize what this path is all about, so that you can find your own sense of peace and knowing that you’re on the right track with this work - even if it looks to others or even to yourself like it’s ‘not working.’
Most of the time, what we expect to happen as we learn to love ourselves and what ACTUALLY happens as we walk this path are two different things, which can be very discombobulating.
So let’s see if we can’t figure out the reality, so that we know what’s happening and why - giving you more freedom to walk this path with less confusion and fear.
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You Aren’t Going To Become Your ideal Self
The reality is, you are likely not going to become the person you idealize in your head when you first start out on your self love path.
In all likelihood, this person that you really believe you MUST become before you can be happy, before you can have the life you want, before you can have freedom, joy, love, approval or whatever else it is you feel you want or need right now is not actually the person you need to become in order to have any of these things.
You see, most of us have an idea in our heads of who we think we have to become in order to be good enough.
We have a vision of ourselves with a certain career, with certain personality traits, with a certain social life, with a certain relationship or relationships.
We have a vision of ourselves lacking traits that we have always been taught are ‘wrong’ and ‘bad’ about us.
A vision of ourselves being less loud, more productive, less anxious, more outgoing, less afraid, more agreeable, funnier, thinner, fitter, bigger, stronger, smarter, richer - you get the picture.
A vision of this person we have been trying to become likely for many years, using all of the self help, spirituality, personal growth and self improvement modalities available to us in the world today.
A version that we are certain we must become in order to be safe.
In order to be loved.
In order to be happy.
We have a vision of the life we want to live as this perfected version of ourselves who has no more triggers, who is easy going, who has no trauma, who is fully self assured, who knows what they want, where they’re going and who has the capacity to reach all of our goals or who has reached all of our goals - and we are fully convinced that this is who we are supposed to become.
We have been striving to be this person for a long time, we have many, many reasons why we know that we must become this person in order to be happy, we have all the evidence in the world to support the idea that it is our lack of being this person that is causing all of our pain, and we are deeply convinced that there is no other way that we will ever be able to be happy if not for becoming this person.
The reality?
We will likely never actually fully become this person.
We may never even come close to becoming this person.
Which is one of the hardest things to accept and to process on the true self love path.
Becoming Who You Actually ARE Is The Answer
You see, on the true self love path, what we are going to be doing is learning how to recognize reality - and part of this reality that we need to recognize is that we are likely holding a fictionalized version of ourselves in our minds as being THE THING we have to become that has been born of our conditioning, rather than having a true idea of who we actually are and what we actually need to feel good.
In real reality, becoming the ideal version of ourselves that has been conceptualized through our experiences of being rejected, abandoned, abused and conditioned throughout our lives via our caregivers and culture at large, isn’t actually going to lead to freedom because it’s not going to be leading to us becoming who WE actually ARE.
In real reality, the thing that’s actually going to make us the happiest we can possibly be, is figuring out what our true nature is, and learning to support that true nature.
Which may have little to nothing to do with the vision you have in your mind of yourself right now.
As hard as this can be to believe, if we really want to experience joy in this life, we are going to have to learn to let go of the ‘idealized’ version of ourselves that has been born of conditioning and we are going to have to go back to the drawing board.
We are going to have to allow ourselves to go through the process of deconstructing why we think we must become this ideal version of self, who that ideal version of self would impress, why we feel that that version of self would get us the love we think we want and need - and then we are going to have to allow ourselves to go through the process of figuring out who we actually are.
Letting go of any ideas, judgements or preconceived ideas of who we ‘should be’ - and learning to love, accept and embrace what’s actually there within us.
You see, when we are trying to become the ideal version of self, what we are actually doing is pouring a whole bunch of time, energy and resources into nourishing a ghost. We are investing in something that is a fiction, that doesn't’ exist, that is actually just hypothetical.
Because again, that ideal version of self was likely born of conditioning, childhood reasoning and other people’s opinions of what’s right and wrong, good and bad, lovable and not lovable.
The reality of you is what we actually want to discover and grow.
And this is hard.
It is hard to accept that we aren’t going to become the ideal version of self that is a fiction.
It’s hard to conceptualize being able to be who we actually are - when the reality is that who we actually are HAS been rejected, unloved, made to be unsafe, has been judged and shamed and criticized.
It’s hard to accept that we are actually going to be the happiest when we learn to embrace who we actually are - even if this version of self ISN’T at all what others want us to be - and that continuing to strive to be the fictitious version of self is only going to lead to more and more pain.
But this is the truth.
The self love path is about learning to discover who you actually are, what you actually need, and how to best support the you that actually exists.
Which means ‘becoming’ something you may have no idea about right now.
It means letting go of the idea that you can’t be happy until you become the ideal version of yourself, and realizing that whoever you become as you learn to embrace what ACTUALLY EXISTS within you IS the best way to be happy.
You are likely not going to become your ideal self, and you are likely going to have to grieve the fact that you won’t become who you have been trained to become in order to be loved. This is hard work.
And then you are going to have to learn how to accept all the parts of you that you have been trained to reject, deny and hate. How to nourish and love the you that actually exists.
THIS is what will make you happy eventually.
But it’s hard and challenging work.
This path is about discovering who you really are and letting go of the ideal version of you - because the ideal version of you will never make you happy so long as it’s not in alignment with the reality of you.
You will be happiest being the real version of you. As hard as this may be to accept in the beginning, I promise that if you stick with this work, you will discover this through your own experience.
Why Those BIG THINGS Are The LAST To Go (And Why You Can Still Be Happy Even If They Are Still There)
Finally, the last thing we have to learn to embrace on this self love path, is the reality that for most of us, getting rid of our self sabotaging behaviors, our coping mechanisms, the ways that we stimulate and numb ourselves - all the things we are usually using our self help/spirituality/personal growth tools to help us get rid of - are likely going to be the LAST things that really shift in our lives as we walk this path.
As we are doing the work to discover who we really are, what we really want, what our actual personality is, what our values are and what we actually care about through letting go of trying to become our ‘ideal’ self and learning to investigate into what actually exists within us - we are going to start to really see that all of these ‘bad habits’ have their roots in doing our best to survive.
We are going to start to see that all of our ‘bad habits’ are how we are currently meeting our own needs.
They are how we are coping with pain we don’t have any other way of processing or coping with.
They are how we are getting satisfaction for a part that we have had to bury, hide, or try to ‘not be’ due to our conditioning.
They are how we are expressing parts of self we know no other way to express.
They are how we are getting through the intensity of feeling triggered, lost, confused or like we don’t know what we’re doing.
They are how we are communicating when we know no other way to communicate.
They are how we are defending ourselves when we know no other way to defend ourselves.
They are how we are trying to create pleasure and avoid pain when we know no other way to do this.
We are going to start to see that we don’t have any of these ‘bad habits’ for no reason.
That none of them are there because we simply like to hurt ourselves or hurt others.
That we are not doing anything we’re doing for no reason.
This is the first step.
We are going to start to slow down enough to really get past our judgements, shame, blame and guilt around these habits. We are going to witness that while there may be negative consequences associated with these habits - that there are also positive benefits that don’t exist in our lives in any other context.
We are going to realize that we developed these ways of being for a reason.
Then, as we have compassion for that, we will slowly begin to discover what we are wanting, needing, not wanting, not needing, what we are coping with, what’s hurting, what we are desiring, what we are needing to say and express - and this will help us to deepen the compassion we have for the habits we have.
We will still have the habits. We will still have the coping. We will be aware of why on a deeper and deeper level, and chances are we are still not going to be able to shift the behaviors in any significant way.
Not yet anyway.
Because we are also going to be realizing that these ‘bad habits’ are very instinctual and automatic. We get triggered into them often times before we are even aware that the trigger is happening.
It’s going to take time for us to eventually come online enough in our observation of self and in our self compassion work to catch that we want to engage in our behavior, to be able to have compassion for that instead of shame, and to remember what it is we are wanting/trying to get/trying to get away from/the reason we are doing what we’re doing.
From there, we are going to have to slowly introduce new ways of getting our needs met that satisfy us in the same ways that the ‘bad habit’ does, with less of a negative consequence - while STILL having the ‘bad habit’ as an option to engage in.
We are going to have to slowly work our way towards REPLACING the old behavior with a new behavior, without shocking our nervous systems by taking the old behavior away prematurely.
We will do this dance of introducing the new habits, practicing them, still engaging in the old habits, allowing that to be ok - until eventually we have enough EXPERIENCE with the new habit working BETTER and feeling BETTER than the old habit that one day, we will simply not need the old habit anymore.
We will get to a place where we don’t have to fight so hard not to engage in the old habit, because we will understand why that habit was there in the first place, and we will be meeting the need that it was meeting SO WELL with something new, and our bodies will TRUST that new thing because of PRACTICE and TIME - that we will start to desire to do the new thing MORE than we desire to do the old thing.
This.takes.time.
This takes a LOT of self understanding.
This takes a LOT of patience, practice and self awareness.
Which is why getting rid of these ‘bad habits’ is usually far down the line on the path of self love.
And again, I promise you that you will be happier, healthier, freer and more joyful than you have ever been in your life as you do all of this work, even as you still have your ‘bad habits’.
You are going to see that on this path of self discovery, each step you take towards nourishing the you that actually exists, letting go of the baggage of trying to be your ‘ideal’ self, building those roots of self compassion and curiosity, that with each step you feel lighter, freer and better.
You don’t have to become any ultimate version of you or get rid of anything before you can feel free.
Each step will feel freer than the step before.
THIS is the process.
THIS is the path.
I hope these two articles help you feel more grounded as you walk this out.
<3
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