What Is Self-Love?

What do you think of when you think of Self-Love? Some people might say, Self-Love is taking time for a hot cup of tea, a bubble bath, or a great vacation. It is more than these ideas. Self-Love is a feeling, a consciousness, a practice, an adventure, a discovery, a sacred journey. It is the most important path you can take during your lifetime. It is an organic experience ever-changing; receding, and expanding. Here are examples of what I believe Self-Love is.

Self-Love is Your Relationship with your Self and Spirit:

* Caring for yourself and your body

* Putting yourself and your relationship with God first

* Making healthy choices

* Making conscious choices about how you "hold" your past, how you respond to the present, and how you create your future.

Self-Love is Your Relationship with Others:

* Being in integrity with your beliefs, speech, and the way you walk in the world

* Surrounding yourself with caring loving people

* Being kind to others and expecting the same in return

* Having boundaries and not allowing others (or yourself) to step over them

Self-Love is Expressed through Your Career and Finances:

* Doing what you have a passion for

* Getting paid what you are worth

* Honoring your truth and giving it a voice

* Feeling deserving of success

Self-Love is Allowing and Creating the Time to Step on this Path:

* Working on yourself

* Uncovering your authentic Self (and knowing who that is)

* Getting to the core of your patterns, blocks, and perceived limitations

* Tackling your core beliefs about yourself

* Nurturing your divinity

* Listening to your intuition, the language of your heart

* Coming from a place of strength (and knowing what that means)

* Forgiving yourself for your failures, illness, and for limiting your choices

Self-Love is Change:

* Identifying what you really want

* Creating a life with no regrets

* Having the courage to make choices and take action about all of the above

Self-Love is saying no (loving yourself enough to say no to another). Self-Love is saying YES!

I do believe that the single most important thing I could ever, ever share with you regarding maximizing the health, harmony, and happiness in your life, not to mention expediting the manifestation of your heart's fondest desires, can be summed up in just two words: Love yourself. ~ Mike Dooley, TUT - The Universe

From Selfish to Sacred

The notion of Self-Love is not selfish. I have to say that first because numerous people I talk to and work with immediately tell me that they were told growing up that working on their self is indulgent, egotistical, and narcissistic. There are even best-selling religious books about finding your purpose in life which dissuades the reader from doing any work on themselves calling it self-centered and selfish.

Love others as well as you love yourself. – Jesus, Mark 12:31

Most people will focus on the first part of Jesus' command, love others, without regard for the second part, love yourself. I find it difficult to believe that this master teacher wanted us to pay attention to only one half of his greatest commandment. If loving yourself was not part of the equation, his command would have just stated, "love others." Loving yourself and loving others is a reciprocal relationship. Loving yourself is equally as important and necessary. You cannot have one without the other. It is impossible to love others, if you do not love yourself first.

Women in our society, especially, are taught to care for and focus on everybody else and not think about themselves. In general, men do not take the time to look at themselves; they make work and productivity their priorities. Our Society, as well, with its constant barrage of technical distractions, does not naturally lead inward to self reflection and Self-Love. Loving yourself, working on yourself, clearing your issues is the most unselfish, sacred thing we can do in a lifetime. It will allow you the freedom to create a life with no regrets. It is imperative that we shift from believing that our personal work is selfish to knowing our personal work is sacred.

The Sacred Journey

Take a moment of reflection and imagine this: What if you looked at your life as a journey, a quest for love, joy and peace? What if every person you met on this journey was a piece of the grand design, the puzzle that is your life? Each of them held a clue to solving the mystery of your experience. What if everything that happened to you, the good and the bad, was part of that journey? The bad things happen so you can uncover for yourself the strength you possess. It also shows you who in your life you can count on and trust for support. The good things happen so you can feel the heights of joy, love, and laughter. Everything, absolutely everything, happens for a reason. It is your job on this journey to fit all the pieces together and understand for yourselfWHY,andtogivemeaningtothejourney.Yourjobisnottounderstand why other people do what they do, even if they do it to you. Your job is to not even take it personally, but to forgive, and discover what it means, to you. This is the journey of Self-Love. This is your quest for love, joy, and peace. This is the sacred journey.

Why is the Path to Self-Love Important?

So much of our lives are spent in the past. People stew and brew over past events and hurts. Wounds from childhood and adolescence continue to impact the decisions we make today. These early wounds limit us. They limit our ability to move forward, to take risks, to create the life we know, deep down, we deserve. And these are just the wounds that we know about! There are a whole slew of wounds operating in our subconscious that we...