How Important is Self-Love?

Why, when love is our birthright, do most of us live our lives separate from its healing presence? One of the main reasons is that the way we have been trained to regard ourselves is the exact opposite of love. Love is accepting and honoring. It is allowing and understanding. It sees what is there without any need to change it, and its power to heal is phenomenal. Rather than dividing, it unites, bringing things together in harmony, whether it is our families, the world, or parts of ourselves. 

In childhood, we are taught to read and write, ride a bicycle and do our chores, but we are not taught how to be okay with ourselves as we are. So, we become ongoing projects to ourselves, focusing on what needs to be different rather than accepting ourselves in our hearts. There is nothing wrong with wanting to improve aspects of ourselves. But for most of us it becomes our primary mode of existence, causing us to miss the enoughness that we are right now!  

It also makes our lives very challenging. Without knowing how to meet ourselves with understanding and mercy, we wound ourselves, and eventually, the wounds weave a layer of scar tissue around our hearts.  This urge to want to be different is always there as a subtle unease deep within, keeping us caught in a vicious circle of trying and failing. The more we expect ourselves to be different than we are, the more we judge how we are doing. The more we judge, the thicker the scar tissue becomes around our hearts. And the more disconnected we become from understanding and mercy, the more we expect ourselves to be different from what we are. 

As self-judgment runs rampant through our minds and hearts, it can solidify into shame. Self-judgment says, “I did it wrong.” Shame says, “I am wrong.” To live a shame-based life is a rejection of ourselves by ourselves. To be filled with shame is to wake up every morning to a person we don’t like, and that person is ourselves!  

The key to healing the core of our shame is self-compassion. It brings the understanding that the most unacceptable parts of ourselves are the most wounded. It also reveals that there is not one part of ourselves that is not deserving of being met in a compassionate and loving way.  

It is possible to open our hearts again, learning how to meet ourselves in understanding and mercy. This is one of the core treasures that our self-judgment, self-punishment and numbing behaviors bring. They won’t let go until we see that it is acceptance that heals. The doorway back into an abiding and ease-filled connection with ourselves and with life is through accepting ourselves as we are. Acceptance is so powerful that it can heal bodies, heal relationships, and even heal nations.  

If you are interested in reading more about this, please click on this link to the chapter “The Power of Inclusion” from my book Belonging to Life: The Journey of Awakening. 

Also, we are excited to share that my new interactive online course, Falling in Love with You, begins March 30th. This course explores how you became disconnected from your own heart and the pathway back to meeting yourself with compassion and kindness, so you can know the joy of being authentically you. Enrollment coming soon!