Well hello there!!! I am so glad you are taking a moment to read today’s blog. As I was thinking about what to write and share with you today, I have decided to write about something that I hold very close to my heart and that is Self-Love. Let’s get started!!!
What is Self-love?
Before a person is able to practice Self-love, we first need to understand what Self-love is.
Self-love is taking care of your own needs and not sacrificing your well-being to please others.
Self-love is not settling for less than you deserve.
Self-love is the fuel that allows you to reach your full potential, and is filled with compassion, grace and gentleness.
Self-love is the glue that will hold you together in the low moments. Self-love is the glue that pulls you back together on life’s path. Self-love is what keeps us in check with our authentic selves.
Self-love is an unconditional belief that you are worthy of your own love without conditions or achievements or acceptance of others. I will give you an example here….my specific coaching passion is coaching women on Self-love while they are losing weight. So many women will say “I will love myself once I lose the weight”. What they find out is once the weight is gone, the still don’t love themselves.
SELF-LOVE IS THE FOUNDATION OF YOUR LIFE!!!
You are with yourself 100% of the time. Day or night, awake or asleep. You are with you.
What does self-love look like?
Some people think self-love is taking bubble baths, retail therapy (shopping) or selfish.
Self-love is NOT selfish. I will repeat this. Self-love is NOT selfish. Self-love is the act of taking care of ourselves and this is our job--always-- to take care of ourselves.
Self-love could be bubble baths and shopping but it is so much more and dives much deeper into the soul.
Self-love is listening to your thoughts.
Self-love is hearing how you speak to yourself.
Self-love is prioritizing yourself.
Self-love is trusting and believing in yourself.
Self-love is setting boundaries.
Self love is forgiving yourself.
Self-love is staying true to who you are.
Self-love is embracing ALL of you.
Self-love is treating yourself with kindness and respect while nurturing your growth and wellbeing.
How To Practice UNCONDITIONAL Self-love
Become more mindful of what you are thinking and saying to yourself
Listen for your assessments and your judgments about yourself. A lot of times they show up as the little whispers in your mind: “Ugh, I should have done this better.”……”I am a bad parent”…….”Why did I do that?”…….”I’m ugly”…..”I don’t like the way my eyebrows are”……”I could never do that”……”I am fatter than her”……..”I’m not smart enough to figure that out”. Have you ever caught yourself saying stuff like this to yourself???
Just the other day I was putting on my makeup and I heard the thought “I wish my neck wasn’t so thick”. That is not a nurturing, self-loving, gentle thought I choose to keep in my life. Self beat down thoughts often include the following words:
Should
Can’t
Wish
Don’t
As you become more mindful of what you are thinking and saying to yourself the easier it will be to catch them. It just takes intentional practice of listening to your thoughts. Being the scientist of your brain is such a beautiful gift that you can give yourself!!!
Explore what you are not fully accepting in yourself
Practicing unconditional Self-love also requires exploring what parts of yourself you are not fully accepting. This goes hand in hand with becoming more mindful about what you are thinking about yourself. Remember unconditional Self-love is accepting ALL of you, just as you are today. When you love yourself unconditionally, you accept all parts of yourself just as you are…there is nothing good or bad about you. There just may be things you would like to change and YOU get to decide if you want to change any of it. You don’t change because you “have” too…..you change simply because you choose too.
You cannot work on what you do not know or ignore. So many times what we do as humans is ignore what we don’t like, especially stuff about us….or we judge…..or we continue the self beat down thoughts and just settle for this negative self talk.
You are your #1 confidant, best friend and cheerleader in this life. When you begin exploring parts of yourself that you are not fully accepting in yourself……do this with intention and without judgement.
Work on your relationship with YOU.
Now that you have become more aware of your thoughts and have explored what you are not fully accepting in your life, it is time to go to bat for yourself. The best way to change your personal relationship is to start with the conversation you are having with yourself. This is called Thought Work.
Example….the thought I had about my neck the other morning…..when I caught the self beat down thought I intentionally changed the thought to “I have a neck.” This neutralizes the thought. My self-love gift to myself is to redirect my brain to a different thought. Now I will tell you my thought about having a “thick neck” WILL come up again. This is how our brains work. Some people might be ok with the thought about having a thick neck, but I know it takes me down “Shit Thought Lane” and I start to nitpick my whole body. I don’t want to treat myself that way. It has a negative energy that carries into other areas of my life and holds me back from living the life I choose to live.
The easiest way to go to bat for yourself is to make a slight change to a thought you have that you want to change. Do not try to go from 0 to 100 in one big swift move….that doesn’t work. Remember slow and steady wins the race. So when working on your thoughts and yourself, take one thought and change it just a bit until it feels just a tiny bit better in your soul. At times you might find a thought that no matter how small your thought change is, it still feels like yuck……my suggestion to you is to just keep going. The goal is to start showing your brain that it has other options. So often we have a thought that feels so true in our lives. YOU are in charge of YOUR thoughts.....and you can think ANYTHING you want. As you start showing your brain that there is indeed other ways to think about things, the shift will happen.
Phases of Change
I feel it is important right off the bat to share as well the phases of change with you because so many times we work on ourselves and the change we are looking for does not stick—we don’t understand why—and that takes us down a whole other path of frustration with opportunity to eventually say screw this and give up on ourselves. I don’t want that for me or for you. So I am giving you a bonus today of the Phases of Change.
20/80
40/60
60/40
80/20
In the beginning, you will see the new thought—the new action—the new way you want to be showing up in your life only 20% of the time…..the other 80% of the time the old thought—action will be present still.
Eventually you get to 80/20. And I say this to ALL the perfectionists out there, notice I did not say 100%. There will be times when the old thought, the old pattern will show up in your life. THIS IS NORMAL!
Until next time……keep working on you! You are your responsibility! If love is the greatest gift of all….just imagine what self-love gifted to yourself can do for YOU in YOUR life.
It can move mountains!!!
With much love and many hugs,
Coach Kammy XXOO
Very insightful