I have been on a journey lately to understand self-love and I have had my eyes and my heart opened to what self-love is and also to what it is not. I’ll just cut right to the chase and share some of what I have learned with you…

Self-love does not have one thing to do with feelings of superiority or smugness and most of all, self-love is not conceit.

Self-love has everything to do with seeing yourself as worthy of love and accepting yourself, right now, just as you are. That means not waiting until you “fix” or change all the things you wish were different about you before you love yourself. It means loving you now. After all, you don’t wait to offer love to others in your life until they fully line up with your expectations, have the perfect body, never let you down and always get things right. Right? Let’s take a look:

Would you really withhold your love from your spouse or partner until they lost those unwanted pounds or got that promotion and raise? What kind of love would that be?

Would you really withhold your love from your child until they got perfect grades, won the approval of their peers and were tightly ensconced in the “in crowd”? What kind of love would that be?  

Do those questions offend you or seem a little harsh? I am betting that you are saying something like, “Of course I would not withhold my love from my spouse/partner/child that way! That would make me an awful person! And furthermore, that is not the way I love! I love unconditionally!” Did I get your reaction right?

But you do withhold your love from yourself at times, right? You give yourself a swift kick when you step on those scales or make that faux pas during the meeting, right? That’s not unconditional is it? Now before you begin to argue that they way you love others has nothing to do with the way you love yourself, I would ask that you pause and open up to the possibility that it does. And then consider this:

We cannot give something that we do not have. Stated another way, we gain the ability to fully accept and love others by first understanding that we are fully acceptable and loveable just as we are…then by actually fully accepting and loving ourselves just as we are.

If the life you want has unconditional love in it, you must start the flow of that kind of love from within. Then get ready because you will be amazed by how much more you can truly receive and really feel the love that is coming to you from others the very instant you begin to love yourself. It’s like putting a magnifying glass on the love that is in your heart. It gets bigger and bigger, you receive more love and you have more love to give!

We can fight or resist loving ourselves until we see ourselves as worthy, but we will never be more worthy than we are right now. There is nothing to wait for – there will not be a better time.

We are creating our lives…one decision at a time.

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