This is the second post in a series dedicated to helping you navigate your relationship with yourself in order to better identify and care for your needs, as well as discover what limiting beliefs, fears/emotions, rules, or conditioning are affecting your ability to love and accept yourself. This series will define what self-love really means, smash the idea that “you cannot love others until…”, clarify the far-reaching benefits of self-love, and provide simple actions you can take to nurture your relationship with Y-O-U. The series will end with a 10-day ‘self-love’ challenge…where I challenge you to join me for super-easy guided self-love action that begins and ends with a simple self-evaluation…I hope you will join me and invite your friends! What better time than right now is there to love yourself?!
I have both personal and professional experience on this topic of self-love. I personally experienced much of my teen and early adult life lacking self-worth, not accepting myself, and teetering on the edge of self-loathing. I have applied my professional training to myself in order to successfully shift my level of self-love, self-worth, and self-acceptance to a level of thriving; additionally, I have guided many clients along their journey to improve self-relationship. I hope you’ll join me for the series and ask questions along the way…and, please, invite a friend or loved one along for the journey, too! If you need help releasing the emotional energy holding you in a pattern of self-relationship that is limiting, uncomfortable, or making you feel stuck in some way…or if you need guidance/coaching to facilitate more self-love…you can schedule now or book a free 20 minute call to discover what is right for you.
*Oh, if you prefer watching video to reading blogs…scroll down to the end of this post*
Why is improving self-relationship important with regard to our relationships with others?
It is common for those who do not love themselves to feel unworthy or undeserving of love, which creates a subconscious pattern of denying themselves love…and relationships with other people (romantic, parental, etc) often involve reciprocation of love. When you believe you are unworthy of love, you may unintentionally deny yourself love that is extended to you.
Self-love allows you to fully receive love from those you love.
It enables you to allow that love to enter your heart and fill up your spaces. It allows you to embody and engage in love fully.
It allows you to FEEL connection that is already there, because LOVE is present…but when love is one-sided, meaning that you love but have a hard time BEING LOVED, it is difficult to impossible to perceive and receive the reciprocated love. When you love but have (subconscious) limitations or blocks to receiving it, it can leave you feeling depleted, insecure, uncertain, or any number of emotions that are not conducive with growing love or connection.
I remember feeling like no one loved me, or even liked me…this was a projection of my feelings and beliefs about myself. I believed I was unlovable, that I was unworthy of love…so when those whom I loved showed me love, I dismissed it or felt a level of mistrust…
Sometimes this looked like staying in relationships with people who put me down, hold me back, make me feel small, or were unsupportive [ranging to abusive] because I subconsciously believed this was what I deserved.
Sometimes this looked like self-sabotaging relationships by starting fights about things that I projected onto my partners, such as mistrust or jealousy that stemmed from the subconscious belief that no one could truly love me.
Sometimes it looked like holding on too tightly and making too many rules/conditions in an attempt to feel safe from rejection because my subconscious beliefs that fueled the flames of fear.
Sometimes this looked like avoidance and disconnection…which often felt like it came from outside of me/from others, but it really came from the deep void of self-love inside myself. This even manifested in my relationships with friends and my own child early on before I recognized it…it’s tough to admit that, but it is true…I did my motherly duties, but kept a safe distance from connecting with my child because my subconscious beliefs told me I was unlovable even by my child.
When self-love is lacking, it is often due to an early childhood experience, a trauma, or a series of events/emotions that create a subconscious belief. It can also stem from modeling, conditioning, and other outside influences, such as culture, family, religion, or other environmental factors.
The take-away from improving your self-relationship is that you will be better able to BE LOVED by those who love you…that sounds nice, doesn’t it?
You deserve it. You didn’t consciously choose not to love yourself, your self-relationship took time and pain to get in the state it is in…but you can change it, you can create more of what you need, so that you can BE LOVED in reciprocation to the LOVE YOU GIVE…a cycle that is meant to flow through you, so you are always full up on love and rarely, if ever, depleted.
Other benefits include:
- Developing self-trust and self-advocacy
- Feeling happier/more joyful for no reason…just because you are here!
- Increased self-awareness and overall conscious awareness
- Able to identify feelings, needs, and boundaries
- Able to better respond and tend to your needs
- Able to show up in your body, for others, and in the world more effectively and COMFORTABLY
- Reduce procrastination, avoidance, and other unhelpful/limiting coping mechanisms from your past because you are better able to process and recover from stress and uncomfortable emotions
- Helps you disrupt past patterns
- Feel more fulfilled and satisfied with life overall…because who knows you better than YOU?! Even if you feel like a stranger to yourself right now, nurturing self-relationship will help you reconnect with Y-O-U and fill yourself up from the inside
- You’ll eliminate or shrink the expectation gap
- If you’ve ever contemplated lowering, raising, or eliminating your expectations of others…especially in relationships…improving self-love can shrink or close the gap of expectations which result in disappointment, disatisfaction, or despair
- How? Simple. Because you won’t be looking to others to fill you up or meet your needs as much.
- Independence boosted, codependence lessened
- Pouring from a full cup…when you prioritize yourSELF… it is SELFLESS, not selfISH
- Self-love and prioritizing your needs makes you better equipped to show up for those you care about
- And it takes the pressure off your partners to perform
- And you’ll be putting more love out there, which comes back ten-fold!
- You’ll begin to consciously create more of what you want
- We teach others how to treat us…when we don’t love ourselves or prioritize ourselves, we model to others that we are not a priority. This isn’t our fault, there is no blame on either party…it simply is what it is. And it makes us feel stuck and can even reiterate/prove our limiting, subconscious beliefs which make us feel even worse!
- When we love ourselves enough to prioritize our needs, we are communicating our needs to others more clearly and in better alignment with our authentic selves…which creates more satisfying, authentic relationships…it also weeds out the people who do not truly value us
That is the gift that you can give yourself…it just takes time and practice, commitment to the process of rebuilding – which is going to take time, just like it took time to get you where you are now…you deserve the love only YOU can give yourself.
In the next video, I’m going to talk about some of the challenges of improving self-love and what it takes to shift into self-love.
I hope you will join me, make sure you subscribe or follow me on Facebook so you don’t miss any posts! You’ll definitely want to join the 10-day Self-Love Challenge right here on FB starting Feb 17 to wrap up this series on Self-Love…but there will be several more posts/videos before then, so tune in and be sure to share with your friends and loved ones!
If you are looking for the video version of this post, Self Love #: Benefits to Loving Yourself, you can watch it here:
Leave a Reply