The reality of self love is often a lot less sparkly than we want it to be.
A lot of the time, the idea of self love is sold to us as a magical path that will take us out of any feelings of doubt, struggle, self hate, self rejection, insecurity, lack of boundaries and confusion around what’s right and wrong for us into this state of pure self confidence, self awareness and the ability to step into and live our ‘purpose.’
We are given this idea that learning to love ourselves will mean a radical transformation to our lives essentially overnight - and that it will solve all of our problems and help us discover our purpose, who we really are and the life that is going to feel best for us.
And to a degree this is true.
Over the long term, it is very likely that we will see some radical shifts take place in our lives.
If we are consistent with this work, it is likely that we will discover what we need to feel good in life in ways that were once totally unknown to us.
It’s likely that we will learn how to set healthy boundaries, and that we will find ourselves creating healthier and more functional relationships with others.
It’s likely that we will discover our HUMANITY on a level that allows us to feel like our life matters, that what we do matters, that our experiences matter - even if we can’t monetize them. We will likely come into an expanded perspective about what it means to live a life of ‘purpose’ - coming out of the conditioning that says purpose = a vocation so that we can understand that purpose is actually the sum total of all of our experiences - those we can share with others and those we can’t.
It’s likely that over the long term, we will learn about all the ways we were conditioned to reject and deny our true selves, and how this has hindered our capacity to express ourselves in meaningful ways - and we will learn to slowly come out of that conditioning so that we can express ourselves.
All of this is likely going to make us feel really, really amazing.
Over the long term.
All that being said - in the short term, and especially when we are just starting out with this work - it’s likely that the self love path is just going to feel…hard.
It’s likely that this path will be confusing, that it will feel so incredibly contradictory to what we are used to that we won’t be able to fully trust it, it will feel like we ‘forget’ the revelations and insights we have over and over again only to have to ‘re-remember’ - and it may even feel like we don’t really know what to ‘do’ in terms of making this path practical.
Because at the end of the day, this path is one where we must learn to settle into a few very basic seeming but ultimately profound ways of being that will feel very subtle at first - but will generally lead to all of those amazing outcomes if we are willing to stick to them.
The Self Love Path Goes Against Culture
The fact that the self love path calls us out of the big, bold, flashy world of self help and wellness and into the slow, steady, practical work of actual transformation is the first thing that often makes it so confusing.
We are generally sold the idea that in order to transform, we must be doing something RADICAL.
We have to be going on plant medicine retreats.
We have to be investing in those ‘life changing’ inner child healing weekend healing circles.
We have to be doing the long fasts or the super deep soul searching.
We’re sold the idea that healing and transformation comes from doing what is most uncomfortable, extreme and intense - and that anything LESS than this is selling ourselves short or missing the boat.
We’re sold the idea that healing and transformation are a result of mentally understanding something - hearing someone tell us about what it means to love ourselves, understanding the concept of the nervous system and how it works, mentally tracking with the idea that we have had adverse experiences that have conditioned us to see ourselves and reality in a way that isn’t actually true.
All of this actually serves to distract us from what is actually required to heal and transform.
As hard as this is to accept, the truth about the self love path - and the reason it’s so powerful - is because it actually slows us WWAAAYYY down, and it moves us out of primarily focusing in on our minds, so that we can focus in on our WHOLE being.
We’re going to be encouraged to stop over consuming self help, spirituality and wellness materials, so that we can learn to actually feel our feelings, process our feelings, validate ourselves and work to discover who we actually are and what we need slowly, over time, paying lots of attention to the fact that our nervous systems and bodies are going to move MUCH slower than our minds are capable of moving in terms of growth and transformation.
We’re going to learn that there’s actually no ‘quick’ way to implement this work - that it is going to take a lot of trial and error to get to a place where we can consistently show up for ourselves in this new, more compassionate way - and we are going to make room for that.
This path is going to help us get off of the ‘always striving never arriving’ merry-go-round by helping us see that there’s really no where to ‘get’ with this work - we are slowly going to release the conditioning that tells us that there is this ‘ideal us’ that we must become before we can feel how we want to feel, so that we can see that it is learning to feel how we want to feel NOW that actually frees us up to figure out what we want to do/become.
We’re going to put the horse in front of the cart for the first time - and this is often going to look and feel totally wrong because it’s so different from what the wellness world tells us healing is ‘supposed’ to look like.
We’re going to realize that progress is going to be slow, that it’s going to be one step forward, two steps back, that it’s not going to be a radical transformation right away and it’s not going to look like understanding something mentally and then just being able to ‘live’ that.
It’s going to mean accepting that we aren’t going to be able to ‘show the world’ our massive ‘before and after’ transformations - because a lot of the work happens INSIDE ourselves. A lot of the transformation we are going to experience is going to be one of shifting how we FEEL vs. how life LOOKS on the surface - and again this is going to be really special for us as humans, but the world is likely not going to shower praise and recognition on us.
We’re going to find that this path takes us away from culture in some pretty significant ways, which at times can leave us feeling isolated, lost, lonely and confused - and wondering if we are really doing the right thing.
This is all very difficult and challenging - and again it’s actually PART of what makes this path so transformational - it teaches us how to live for the internal experience we are having, how to validate our own experience even if no one else understands and how to value our own lives even if no one else can validate or acknowledge what’s happening to and for us.
It will shift our ways of being, and that may not equate to us becoming a ‘success’ by the world's standards or in the ways we thought we had to in order to be happy - and that can be a tough pill to swallow at first - until we start to FEEL the effects and appreciate how deeply we are being supported by this work.
What Does Self Love Actually Look Like?
So with all of that, what does it mean to actually ‘do this work?’
Simply, we are going to start with two simple tools that we will eventually learn to build on over time.
The first tool is learning to show up for ourselves with COMPASSION.
Meaning, when we notice that we are beating ourselves up, when we notice that we are repeating our ‘negative’ habits, when we notice that we are getting pulled into spirals of self hate, when we notice that we are feeling like we aren’t good enough, like we aren’t worthy of love, that we aren’t good enough, that we must become this or that in order to be worthy, when we notice that we are feeling hurt by others and wondering what’s ‘wrong’ with us that we aren’t being loved - we simply take the step internally to say:
“I am so sorry that you are going through this. I see you. This isn’t your fault, and you are still worthy of love.”
Now, this tool may seem simple, and it may seem like it should be SUPER easy to implement.
It may also feel like it couldn’t possibly lead anywhere, because how could saying something so simple to yourself have such a huge effect?
The reality is, this practice of showing ourselves compassion when we are hurting, when we are struggling, when we are feeling lost and feeling like we need to fix ourselves is the first major reprogramming that happens on this self love path.
It’s the first major pattern interrupt that takes us out of fixing mode and into actual HEALING mode.
When we approach ourselves with this kind of compassion, what we are actually doing is shifting ourselves from a state of FEAR and shut down into a state of LOVE and expansion.
We are moving ourselves from a state of self blame, shame and guilt - which will set our systems into a state of feeling threatened into a state of feeling safe.
This has massive downstream effects if we practice it over and over again.
In the beginning, there is likely going to be resistance to doing this.
In the beginning being kind to ourselves is likely going to feel like a threat - as much as this contradicts what we would logically think.
For most of us, we’ve been deeply conditioned that NOT trying to fix ourselves, not trying to change ourselves, not beating ourselves up and not looking for how we are wrong, bad and shameful will = being harmed and hurt.
So learning to be kind to ourselves, at first, is going to feel like it’s leaving us open to deep vulnerability and possible danger.
We’re going to have to SLOWLY show our systems, over time with lots of repetition, that being kind to ourselves when we are hurting, that being gentle on ourselves when we are in pain, that showing up with compassion doesn’t lead to us being abandoned, abused and neglected.
In fact, it means we FINALLY get that love and connection we have been going for.
You see, the reason that rejection makes us feel so unsafe, is because we learned deep in our bodies as children that when we are rejected by our caregivers - the people we are fully dependent upon for meeting all of our needs - that this is going to mean being UNSAFE. Unprovided for. Uncared for.
We learned that being rejected by others = pain and we learned to reject OURSELVES in order to try to figure out how to change who and what we were to be what those around us wanted, so that they would then approve of us and provide for us.
We learned that rejection = threat.
We learned that pain = I am doing something wrong and must fix myself so that others will love me and provide safety for me.
This is why this compassion step can feel so scary. It can feel like if we love who we are right now, if we don’t try to fix ourselves, if we don’t try to change ourselves that this means that no one will ever love us, and thus we won’t be safe. We won’t get our needs met. We won’t be able to have what is important for us to be ok.
But if we are willing to practice this over time, we are going to start to EXPERIENCE our own love in a way that we may never have experienced before.
We’re going to start to notice just how freeing it is to stop shaming ourselves when we are hurting, and to finally give ourselves the love and compassion we always wanted from others when we were hurting.
We start to become our own secure connection - and this again is going to slowly, over time, shift our nervous systems into a state of perceiving safety, which leads us to step two.
In step two, we are going to practice curiosity.
We are going to start to say ‘ok, if I am in pain right now, and it’s NOT because I am shameful, guilty or to blame - what am I ACTUALLY feeling? What am I ACTUALLY experiencing? What’s hurting and WHY? What do I need? What am I perceiving is happening and is that true? What do I believe about my current situation, and is that true?’
Curiosity is where we will start to make all those big and small discoveries about who we actually are, what we actually feel, what we actually need, what is and isn’t working for us and what our healing path requires.
Curiosity is the step we must take in order to discover what is actually going to move the needle for us RIGHT NOW in terms of creating a better life.
When we shift out of shame, blame and guilt, and into a state of self validation, when we approach our pain from a place of genuine curiosity vs. assuming that it’s because we are shitty and need to be fixed - this is where we are going to start to be able to assess what we actually need in THIS moment, what feels most supportive, and how we can simply take whatever steps are in front of us right now to take.
We’re going to come out of trying to ‘fix’ our whole lives - and into a state of just being available for the US that exists at this moment.
We are going to be asking ourselves what we NEED to feel SUPPORTED vs. asking ourselves what’s WRONG with us that needs to change.
THIS, when practiced over time, over and over again, will lead to radical transformation.
But not through big, life altering steps - most of the time anyways.
Rather through small, subtle, just what I need right now self support.
Compassion - ‘I am not broken, I see me, I love me, I validate me.’
Curiosity “What is most supportive for me right now? How can I show up for what I am feeling, thinking, wanting, experiencing and needing, validate that, and then learn how to get my needs met in a compassionate way?’
These two steps are what we repeat over and over and over again.
And they will look and feel different each time.
Over the years, these two steps will lead to lots of other different steps - because what we need to feel supported at each moment of our lives will be different - and it will grow with us as we grow.
But these are the ACTIONS we take.
This is what makes the path real.
So are you willing to start practicing compassion for yourself when you are in pain?
Are you willing to validate your feelings and perspective vs. trying to fix yourself or make yourself feel different?
Are you willing to investigate into what you want and need, what would be supportive for you right now?
THIS is the radical path of transformation.
<3
Want more tools like this?
Check out The Mystery School Here
