Self love (and, by extension, self trust) is hard.
It’s hard to talk about, because we’ve been taught that it’s either airy fairy or it’s selfish.
It’s hard to do, because our culture barely talks about or openly practices it, so we don’t even know what it looks or feels like.
Often we think it’s some impossible thing that only enlightened beings feel—the kind who wear robes and meditate in caves. So we just imagine it’s another thing we’ll never achieve, and therefore yet another reason to feel shitty about ourselves.
“Oh, I suck at that self love thing. It’s stupid anyway. Let’s talk about something else.”
Right?
But no. Self love is not just for gurus. It’s for you and me. It’s your right.
You were born with it, but then you were conditioned into believing that you can’t “just love yourself”. You learned this from the adults (parents, relatives, teachers) in your life. They probably meant well; they were just teaching you what other adults taught them.
Some of the messages you may have received, either said directly or implied by their actions include the following:
“Forget about just being happy as yourself. You’ve got to be what I want you to be, then I’ll give you permission to love and feel good about yourself.
“First, you’ve got to fit in with our tribe whether you like it or not. Next, you’ve got to achieve things and make me proud, or at the very least don’t embarrass me.
“And whatever you do, don’t disappoint me, because then I will expect you to be filled with shame. That includes making mistakes. Don’t make any of those or I will criticize or ignore you. And don’t expect me to acknowledge your needs or feelings, because my needs and feelings come first, so you are only allowed to be happy if you have met my needs and feelings. In fact, you should never trust your own needs and feelings. If you do attempt to get me to recognize your needs and feelings, expect to be minimized, ignored or punished. I may also remind you that you should feel selfish and ashamed.
“Why, you ask? Well, my dear child, because I’m not consciously aware that I’m doing this. Just like you, I’m human and I have all kinds of issues of my own around fear, shame and self judgement that I’m just projecting out onto other people, including you. This is what I was taught during my childhood. Also, if I can just project all this onto you, then you can feel responsible for it, and I can pretend it’s all yours instead of mine, the same way adults did to me when I was small.”
The trickiest thing is that many of us don’t even remember these childhood experiences. We’ve been so well trained to minimize our own feelings. Almost all my clients begin by telling me that their childhood was wonderful, but as soon as we begin exploring there are always (ALWAYS) little incidences that reflected the above statements, creating damaging beliefs that need to be shifted.
It’s not because our parents, relatives or teachers were bad people. It’s because they are human and humans are operating at varying levels of higher consciousness and awareness—very few people are truly aware of what they do and why they do it (that’s where compassion can come in).
You can’t make other people become aware of themselves. But you can become aware of yourself, which includes teaching yourself the truth about your own existence.
Let’s begin with this:
There’s nothing wrong with you. It only feels like something is wrong with you because you have internalized some beliefs about life and yourself that are not true.
The reason why you feel like a fraud and a failure is because you’ve been trained to live up to others’ expectations of who you need to be, and you have forgotten how to trust your Self.
There is only one you. And you have unique ideas and experiences that can only be shared by you, because they’re yours. This is not just a nice idea meant to make you feel better about yourself–this is a scientific fact.
You are a one-off creation. And so your ideas, experiences and feelings are just as valid and important as anyone else’s.
And the only reason you believe otherwise is because you were trained to believe otherwise, and it’s time that you untrained yourself.
You don’t need to achieve anything to feel self love.
You don’t need to meet others’ needs to feel self love.
You don’t need to live up to others’ expectation to feel self love.
You don’t need to earn self love.
You are not responsible for other people’s feelings or behavior.
You are not responsible for their happiness or unhappiness.
You are allowed to feel what you feel, whatever that is.
You are allowed to be whoever you are right now, and it’s okay.
You are on a journey that has no finish line.
What matters on this journey is to pay attention to your experiences, learn from them and share what you learn when and if you feel ready.
Be kind to yourself.
Be ridiculously kind, because this shit is hard and you’re still here doing this thing. You didn’t check out the way thousands of others have, when they realized how hard this journey is.
Celebrate that.
And also celebrate that, just by being the ESSENCE that is YOU, you have helped people, probably without even knowing it. Friends. Family. Strangers. It’s the little things you do every day that create this world and its experiences.
If you had not lived, so many things in this world, so many people’s lives, would be less without you.
What you achieve, what titles you get, how much money you make, what others think of you—that’s all just icing on the cake. It’s for fun.
It does not define you or your worth.
So claim your right.
Decide today to love your self the way you are right now.
Everything begins with intention.
Next week, I’m going to give you cheat sheet on what self love looks like in practice!
Rise up and shine as your True Self,
Shawn xo
P. S. I’d love to read your thoughts or questions about this or any other post in the comments section below or on my Facebook page.
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