Have you ever found yourself thinking any of the following thoughts?
“I feel like I’m doing my self love path WRONG.”
“I wasn’t able to show up with compassion for myself today, so I failed.”
“I spiraled into my coping mechanisms today, which means I suck at this self love thing.”
“I got stuck in shame and blame - why can’t I ever get this compassion thing right?”
“I’m not able to be on my own side consistently, I suck at self love.”
In other words, I often hear from people that they believe they are ‘bad’ at self love, that they are failing at their self love path, or otherwise like they are doing their self love path wrong.
These kinds of thoughts are actually incredibly common - and for good reason.
These thoughts are born from our culture that tells us that everything we do is something we can do ‘right’ or ‘wrong.’
A culture that externalizes all things - making every wellness practice, every support practice, every spiritual practice and every self love practice into something that we can use to measure our success or failure.
A culture that takes everything out of how it FEELS and turns it into another method of trying to augment how we ‘look’ or ‘act’ in the outer world.
You see, our culture doesn’t make much room for an actual spiritual/healing path. Because a spiritual and healing path have little to do with externalities and what results we’re getting on the OUTSIDE. Rather a true spiritual path is mostly INTERNAL, it’s mostly about how we FEEL - which of course is going to have an impact on how we show up in the world and how we behave - but that’s not the POINT of the path.
The point of the self love path isn’t to look or be different - it’s to learn how to support ourselves in a way where we can FEEL differently. Where we can move through our lives with less guilt, shame and blame - and turning the path into a new ‘pass or fail’ means that we are departing from this intention.
We Are Where We Are For A Good Reason
In real reality, the absolute truth is you can’t do your self love path ‘wrong.’
Because at the end of the day, the path isn’t about achieving anything.
It’s not about changing yourself, becoming some ‘better’ version of you, learning to not be what you are or trying to accomplish something in the sense that you can show the world that you’ve become different or changed in some way.
This path isn’t about fixing yourself or about getting anything ‘right.’
Rather, this path is purely about learning how to support yourself as you are, where you are, right here, right now.
This path is purely FOR you. It’s about finding tools that you can put in your tool-box to help you navigate this world in a way that feels better for you.
This path is about learning how to deconstruct all the messages that tell you that you’re wrong, bad, shameful or otherwise not good enough so that you can start to FEEL the reality that who and what you are right now is valuable, lovable, worthy and good.
Simply put, this path isn’t about getting anywhere. This path is really just about giving you more space and time in your day to day life where you can feel GOOD.
Good about who you are, what you are, where you are and how you are.
This path is about gathering capacity to help yourself feel safer, more connected to what you value and more able to orient yourself to what matters to you.
This path is ABOUT you and FOR you.
You can’t do it wrong, you can’t get it wrong and you can’t be wrong.
Rather, we are going to learn on this path of self love that at the end of the day, we are where we are.
We have the conditioning we have, the patterns we have, the thought loops we have, the coping mechanisms we have, the beliefs we have and the ways of being that we have not because we ‘chose’ to be mean to ourselves but rather because we are doing the best we can with what we have been given.
We have our ways of hating ourselves, shaming ourselves, blaming ourselves and trying to fix ourselves because at the end of the day we just want to be LOVED. We are doing what we’re doing because on some level we learned that how we are currently behaving is the one way to achieve safety - no matter how chaotic, painful or seemingly nonsensical how we are living may be on the surface.
We are always doing the best we can with what we KNOW and what we have experienced - and much of our behavior is based on nervous system programs vs. conscious choices we are actively making - as are many of our thoughts and behavior patterns.
You see, we live in a world that teaches us right from the very beginning of our lives that the way to happiness is to shame, blame and guilt ourselves.
We learn deep in our bodies as children that when our caregivers are harming us, pulling away from us, rejecting us, abandoning us or otherwise not helping us to escape our pain that this means that WE are doing something wrong. Many of us were openly TOLD that there was something wrong with us, that we were bad, wrong and shameful and needed to fix ourselves, and many of us learned to believe these things about ourselves because we had no other way of understanding why our caregivers weren’t showing up for us in the ways that we needed them to.
Then we step out into a greater world that continues to reinforce this shame.
We live in a world that is constantly telling us that we don’t have enough, that we aren’t doing enough, that we aren’t acceptable and lovable, that who and what we are needs to be changed, altered and optimized. We live in a world where nothing is ever enough - which leads us to a state of constantly striving and never arriving.
We live in a world where again, our sense of self is almost totally externalized. Where we learn to either love or reject ourselves based on how OTHERS are perceiving us, treating us or responding to us.
We live in a world where we’re driven away from connecting with our true emotions, our true values, our true feelings and our true desires in exchange for fitting in and going along with what others deem worthy and valuable - and this is constantly changing meaning we can never actually ‘arrive’ or get it right.
We don’t live in a world that supports the self love path at all - and we don’t live in a world that supports the foundational thinking of the self love path.
We aren’t trained to center our feelings, values and our actual lived experience - but rather what we think our actions and behaviors ‘mean’ about us in terms of what CULTURE would say about them.
Which is the exact opposite of what the self love path is all about - and it’s a complete distraction from ever getting to a place where we can feel good in our lives.
We don’t choose this, and most of the time we’re not even aware of it - because it’s the water we’re swimming in. We don’t SEE that the very FOUNDATIONS of our perceptions are faulty and lending to pain, so when we try to get onto the self love path those same faulty foundations come with us - distracting us from the purpose of the path.
Which means that change isn’t going to be easy.
Change isn’t going to be quick.
Rather we are going to have to SLOWLY learn to adjust our way of viewing ourselves and the world around us - starting with how we perceive our self love path.
Our Culture Tricks Us Into Turning Self Care Into A New Measuring Stick
As mentioned above - our culture is all about externalizing everything.
It’s all about training us to see our practices, our self care, our thought patterns, our capacity to feel good, to be ‘regulated’, to establish healthy relationships and to have healthy boundaries and habits as things we are either ‘doing right’ or ‘doing wrong’ based on how it LOOKS to the outside world.
We’re not trained to look at how things FEEL for US.
We’re not trained to prioritize our own lived experience.
We’re not trained to consider the actual outcomes we’re looking for.
We’re not trained to understand that everything doesn’t have to be about winning approval or even showing the world what we’re doing.
We’re not trained to see that living our lives for how it looks and for what others think is the best way to make sure that we never feel satisfied, good enough or safe, and it’s the best way to make sure we never actually get the benefits of our practices.
The reality is, the self love path isn’t about how it looks.
It’s not about having the perfect morning routine we can post to instagram.
It’s not about making sure that we are ‘perfecting’ being nice to ourselves and monitoring our thoughts.
It’s not about achieving some state of enlightened perspective where we never want or need anyone ever again.
It’s not about making sure we never have another negative thought or that we never go into shame, blame or guilt ever again.
It’s not about trying to love ourselves enough that we never lash out, people-please, get caught up in drama or otherwise lose our footing.
It’s not about trying to love ourselves enough that we ‘get over’ all of our coping mechanisms and have perfect self awareness at all times forever.
It’s not about perfection.
It’s not about changing all of our habits.
This path is about learning how to show up for who we are, in this moment, as we are - and learning to simply provide for ourselves what we NEED in THIS moment.
Meaning when we are in our coping mechanisms, how can we show ourselves compassion and empathy? How can we inquire into what we are feeling, wanting and needing? How can we check in about what triggered us? How can we hold space for ourselves to cope in the moments where nothing else feels available?
Meaning when we go into a guilt/shame spiral we don’t use that as a new reason to guilt and shame ourselves - but we recognize that this is NORMAL, and the way to handle it is to recognize this, to have compassion for ourselves and to lean into what we are really feeling, wanting and needing in the moment. It’s about being able to recognize those guilt and shame spirals and then working on our ability to shift into compassion.
Meaning when we notice that we are people-pleasing or living for the approval of others, we make room for that. We notice. We ask ourselves what we’re feeling and what we’re needing.
Meaning when we are lonely, feeling like we need support or otherwise feel lost that we don’t try to force ourselves to feel differently, but we allow for these feelings and give ourselves space to process them.
Meaning when we notice that we are in self help and trying to fix ourselves, that we don’t make this ‘wrong’ but again, just recognize that it’s a part of culture and may be something we get caught up in for the rest of our lives. We recognize that this is ok, and as long as we are able to see it and shift at some point, that’s it, we’re doing it.
Meaning we learn to see that the benefits of the path aren’t ‘over there’ when we have ‘perfected’ the path. But rather the benefits lie in every single moment we are able to just be nice to ourselves. That we don’t have to accomplish anything because the point of the path is to be able to EXPERIENCE those moments of RELIEF.
The point of the path is every moment we are able to be a safe space for ourselves.
The point of the path is understanding that the more we practice this, the more of those moments we collect, the easier it gets.
The point of the path is how it makes us feel when we are able to practice the tools.
Right here, right now.
This moment.
There’s no where to ‘get.’
We just practice the tools, benefiting every time we do.
Over and over.
Centering how things FEEL vs. how they LOOK and understanding that progress is likely going to be slow - because this path is literally contradictory to the entire culture that we live in.
It’s all about right here, right now.
Because the more we show up for the right here, right now, the more we are going to be able to determine what we actually want and need, and in THAT we are going to be able to incrementally build lives for ourselves that feel better overall.
Each small moment of being kind counts.
That’s the point.
And it all adds up to long term change.
So remember, it’s not about getting it right or perfecting the path.
It’s just about being here for the you that exists right here, right now - over and over again.
Each moment you do it, you’ve done it.
That’s it.
<3
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