Self love pathway - Series pt.1

Self-love is a full acceptance of the self. Meeting and embracing both our light & dark within, with compassion. Once you arrive at a higher understanding of yourself, there will be a greater acceptance of who you are.

It is unrealistic to say we are good, whole people 100% of the time. There’s a light & darkness we all have that is witnessed depending on the situation, environment and the people we surround ourselves with. We experience the warm and fuzzy feelings about ourselves and others, but there’s also that voice that can be overly critical or judgemental. Hey, we’re all human. 

Have you ever called yourself out on your own behaviours? 

Recognised a painful reaction or pattern within yourself and said, no more!? 

Are you honest about your own faults, these behaviours and patterns – without experiencing guilt or shame? 

Probably not, or not that often. 

What you may have learned about self-love is that we need it not just for ourselves, but in order to be loved by others. To get it; we have to be able to balance things like meditation, rest, exercise, our social and work-life, finances - all the while telling ourselves to “just think differently and be positive” even about the shitty experiences that pop up in life. 

I’ve learnt through personal experience and years of study hat Self-Love starts by accepting that there are thoughts, situations, people and things that no longer belong in your life, or in your space (energetic & physical). It includes giving yourself permission to set boundaries around where you place your own energy and with whom. The journey back to self-love takes courage to face the things you don’t like about yourself, feel the emotions you don’t want to feel (the ones you avoid) and setting the limiting beliefs you have about yourself free, to live a life authentically as YOU. Unconditional self-love involves unlearning the years of conditioning you have experienced throughout your life and re-writing the stories you’ve consciously or unconsciously developed.  

Through the process of learning to love yourself (again) you learn to face, feel and free the emotions, behaviours and patterns that blocked you from loving yourself fully. 

You create space to understand why these patterns exist and come face to face with the shadow or dark parts of yourself. This will bring up emotions that you have been supressing – but in order to truly heal, we need to feel our way through them. A very powerful experience.

My personal experience has been a messy one. I was afraid to feel unpleasant emotions – conditioned by parents, teachers, friends & colleagues to “just be positive”, “change my thoughts” which was only perpetuating my feelings of shame and blame, because I just couldn’t “get it right”. I will always remember the day I surrendered to the core belief I’d had about myself for most of my life. It was December 7th, 2019 when I said out loud, admitting to the feeling of I AM NOT GOOD ENOUGH. In order for me to change that belief and shift the heavy emotions, I had to allow myself to FEEL it to its extremity first, releasing the power it held over me.

I started the work on myself not knowing that although there are many different experiences, we ALL go through similar emotions. I found in most cases, we do not know how to navigate these, let alone use them to our advantage or as an opportunity to learn. We are human and we experience ALL human emotions every day. It’s one beautiful thing we have in common and for me, helps provide comfort knowing we are not alone.

My whole existence since that seemingly dark day in December has been for me to return to unconditional self-love. The commitment from myself required has been to remain open and trust the process, give myself full permission to be brutally honest, all the while being gentle and compassionate with myself during this truly rewarding process. The next 5 entries i am sharing the pathway I carved for myself - and the pathways I return to anytime I feel like I am “losing myself” in different periods of my life.

The 5 parts are: Awareness, Forgiveness, Acceptance, Care & Trust.

Coming in pt.2: Self Awareness