Self-Love: How to Love Yourself Better

What is it about self-love that is so difficult for so many of us?

In this article, we’re going to talk about self-love, what it is, why it’s so hard, and how we can do it better. This will support women longing to be the best of who they are, to realize their potential, and to live more holistically empowered. 

What is Self-Love?

First of all, love has many different definitions. We have one word for love in English, while there are often many words for different types of love in other languages. 

There are many different types of love: We love our pets in a certain way. We love our parents and our children in a certain way. We love our spouses. We love our life. We love our job. We love the food that we’re eating. We love the activity that we’re doing. They all have their nuances in terms of different types of love.

Self-love is something that, in many ways, we have to define for ourselves. 

We might begin to think about how we feel when we love someone or something.

What are the things that you love? Why do you love them? What is it that you love about them? 

When I think of how much I love my puppy, I think of the sheer innocence, the sweetness, the warmth of heart, the kindness, the cuddliness and the joy. For me, so much of that is goodness and beauty and truth, like there are no holds barred. She’s going to let me know what she needs and when she needs it, and what she wants and when she wants it. 

This idea of truth, beauty, and goodness can be a really powerful way of looking at what it means to love.

What are the things that feel beautiful about you? 

What are the things that feel good about you? 

What are the things you know to be true about you? 

What is it that makes you feel love for something?

Where are those things within yourself that you have perhaps been ignoring or not paying attention to? 

Maybe these are some things that you haven’t even been willing to admit, or that you haven’t even been willing to honor within yourself. 

Looking at the definition of self-love begins with you. You are defining it for yourself.

Before you say, “I don’t have any of those things. I don’t love myself. 

I don’t see the good in me,”  I want to tell you that I don’t believe it.

We all have love inherently within us. We all have goodness and truth and beauty within us.

Why is it So Hard to Love Ourselves?

We are a culture that has been programmed with the idea that it’s not okay to love ourselves. 

We have a patriarchal dominance culture that through education, politics, religion, healthcare, medicine, and more has constantly told us that there’s something wrong with us, that we’re sinners, that we’re unworthy, that we need to be fearful, that we need to work harder, and we must not be good enough if we aren’t in this preconceived idea of success. 

We’ve been so programmed and conditioned to believe that it’s not okay to love ourselves, or to have our version of what is right and what we need to do for ourselves for our own definition of success, or even to show up with our voice.

Maybe as a child, you were told you were too much or you were told you were not enough. Either way, on some level you were seen as not lovable, as not worthy, as not able to be who you are.

The good news is that as adults, we get to re-parent ourselves. We have the freedom, and the ability to look deeper and create change. 

You need to know that it’s not your fault. It’s the culture. 

We can also argue that it’s not your parents, teachers, whomever you know who said a thing that stuck with you and held you back, or had you thinking negative things about yourself. It’s the culture. It’s in our DNA.

I come from Celtic Irish heritage, and the Celts were persecuted in their history, just as other cultures have been persecuted because they were dubbed unworthy, seen as invalid, or their beliefs were not considered acceptable.

As women, we’ve been told to be empowered, to tune into our intuition, to have our ideas and our thoughts. Yet women were burned at the stake for these very things. 

We have a traumatic history, and it’s been proven scientifically that those traumas live in the DNA from generation to generation. No wonder it can feel so difficult for us to step into our empowerment! 

Some of us are striving to clear old patterns, and we can’t clear them unless we’re willing to fully see them. 

We need to know it’s not our fault that these stories and patterns exist within us, and that we have the power to re-parent ourselves and change the patterns.

It’s hard to love ourselves because we have all of this programming that we need to shift, but it’s possible. 

How Can We Love Ourselves More?

It takes a lot of work to love yourself more. You must be committed to the journey. It takes practice.

 

When we’ve been programmed to think a certain way day after day, we’re used to believing and telling ourselves that we’re not enough and that we’re not worthy.

A big part of loving ourselves is practice and commitment, and it begins with silencing the inner critic, the inner saboteur, the part of you that keeps saying you’re not enough, the part of you that keeps telling you, “Oh, that’s a dumb idea.”

We can practice grounding and presencing ourselves in a space where we can say, “Thank you very much. I hear that negative voice. I’m going to push that parrot off my shoulder, and I’m going to just be with the ideas that are flowing through me. I’m going to allow myself to acknowledge my gifts and celebrate who I am without that inner critic. And if that inner critic shows up, I’m just going to brush them off.

Allow yourself to keep practicing, and pretty soon things will start to shift.

In a way, you have to cultivate a love affair with yourself. We’re not talking about a narcissistic love affair. We’re not talking about excessive selfishness or arrogance or self-righteousness or any of that. 

Sometimes there can be worthiness if you allow yourself to push that edge a little bit. 

What would it look like or be like to be a little arrogant?

To be a little bit selfish?

To be a little bit self-righteous and speak your truth, or act your truth, or be your truth?

A lot of us think it’s selfish, or we think it’s going to be arrogant, and yet we are so far from doing that. Even if we think we’re being on that side, we’re probably just learning to be more of our True Selves, to love ourselves more, and to believe in ourselves more.

We need to cultivate this love affair with ourselves in which we encourage ourselves, cheer ourselves on, and cheer each other on to do it.

Find yourself a group of people that want to be better, that want to play bigger, that want to connect in this way of being fully empowered, and then acknowledge, help, and cheer each other on. Be willing to say “I did that well.

Another thing you can do is to practice through having a conversation with yourself. You can look yourself in the eyes in the mirror, and talk to yourself or the parts of yourself that are not being very loving. It’s often really hard, so take it slow. 

Do not think that this is easy because it’s not. 

I did this as part of my journey to love myself more, to accept myself, to believe in myself, and it’s an ongoing journey. I keep finding little pieces in my life where there is again that voice that keeps telling me I’m not enough, or that self-doubt that creeps in and has me not believing in myself. We keep running into it and we always will. That’s part of the journey. 

The question is, do we have the tools to work through the challenge?  That’s what this article is about. 

Look at the conversations you have with yourself. Can you look yourself in the eye and say, “You’re beautiful. I love you. That thing you did the other day, that thing you said, that was brilliant. That was amazing! Well done!” 

Can you celebrate yourself? 

Sadly, because of the culture we’re in, it’s difficult to find a close friend who will let you have that celebratory space for yourself where you could say, “Damn, I’m good. I did a great job,” without them thinking, “Aren’t you full of yourself right now!” 

This is why we’re telling ourselves we can’t celebrate. That’s ridiculous! We need to celebrate ourselves. We need to have these conversations with ourselves, and it might need to be only with ourselves for a while. That’s one of the ways we can learn to love ourselves more.

Acknowledge the truth, the beauty, and the goodness we see in yourself. Have that celebration with yourself to reward yourself with a nice warm bath or a lovely meal that you make for yourself, or spend some time in Nature. 

Over time, you’re going to start seeing that you’ll find other people that will resonate with self-love. They’ll start to acknowledge and say, “Good job. You should be celebrating yourself. You should be acknowledging yourself.” They’ll want you to thrive, and you’ll want them to thrive. 

Sadly, in the patriarchal dominance culture we’re in, where it’s all about competition, we don’t think we can collaborate, all have abundance, and mutually thrive. We think there’s not enough for everyone, and so we cut each other down, or we end up jealous or competing. That is not the reality.

We have to start remembering the abundance and beauty of life. We can begin by celebrating the truth of what we know about ourselves, and ignoring the outer negative voices. 

I hope these are helpful thoughts on what self-love is, why it’s so challenging, and some things we can begin to do to cultivate more of it within ourselves. 

When we love ourselves more, we become truly free. 

When you start to love yourself, you will have more freedom. Freedom in itself is the “law of love.” That’s literally what the origin of the word freedom means. 

When we can live our lives with more love for ourselves and others, receiving more love and circulating more love, we will be free.

For a video version of Self Love: How to Love Yourself Better, watch here:

Sharing is caring

Leave a Reply