We always hear the phrase "self-love", but what does it really mean?
Recently, I had the opportunity to do a brand collab that focused on the idea of self-love. This led me to want to dive into this topic this week, especially given how prevalent this has been within my own journey.
The concept of self-love has increasingly been brought up in recent years. It’s been drawn to society’s attention that in order to love others, we must love ourselves, first. While this is incredibly true, there’s a key point we must acknowledge before moving forward with this which is that we must do this authentically. We constantly see and hear self-love being talked about, but it’s almost as if we end up doing it for other people and their approval. While we’re taught to love ourselves, we’re also taught to show it off to the world rather than experience it for ourselves. So, if we begin to do the work to find love within ourselves FOR ourselves, then we will start to see a significant difference.
It’s here where it’s critical to point out that we are all finding ourselves one step at a time. There is no such thing as being too far ahead or too far behind in finding self-love because there’s beauty and value in every part of this complex process. Every single day, hour, minute, and second provides us with opportunities for growth. We are constantly growing even if it’s become subconscious to us. Even if we don’t recognize it or can acknowledge it quite yet, we are continuously growing, All. The. Time.
Similar to our growth, our self-identity is never set in stone. We are constantly strengthening our values, our opinions are developing and changing, and our overall state of being is a never-ending process of twists and turns, u-turns, and abrupt shifts.
To take a moment to be completely transparent, I know that I, for one, have experienced great difficulties with the aspect of genuine self-love. In my high school years, I often found myself wanting to grow for other people. In hopes of gaining recognition, reassurance, and affirmation, I would do the work, yet my head was constantly turned at others to see if they had noticed it. I was looking at the people around me hoping they would be looking right back. I eventually learned from this pattern that we are nearly incapable of growing if we’re off looking towards the side. We can’t grow if our focus and attention are faced outward. If we’re looking toward our surroundings, we can’t see what’s in front of us and what lies ahead. So, if we’re trying to move forward, if we’re trying to work on the love we have for ourselves, then we need to be looking ahead; focusing solely on ourselves and on our own individual growth.
Let me take a second to ask you this: what has looking at others ever gotten you?
Apart from gaining awareness of what others are doing and comparing ourselves to how we may differ from them, looking toward others doesn’t get us very far in the end.
We must begin shifting our focus toward ourselves in order to authentically grow. As noted in a recent blog post, our minds are powerful! Where our minds go, our actions follow. Therefore, by beginning to shift our focus and our attention toward the changes we wish to see, we are giving ourselves the power and ability to grow our self-love both efficiently and effectively. And, no, it’s not selfish, but rather it’s sustainable. We are doing a service for ourselves by doing the work to improve ourselves sooner rather than later. Ultimately, all of that being said, we must do the work internally in order for it to show externally.
"...we must do the work internally in order for it to show externally."Tips:
Now, I want to dive into some tips on how we can improve our self-love and discovery journeys.
The first tip to improve self-love is to do something for yourself and no one else. Do something nice for yourself that you, and only you, know about. It can be as small or as large as you want, but doing something for yourself that stays between you and you alone can help increase your “why” behind your “what”. Instead of posting your mani-pedi or your gym day or the Starbucks you bought yourself, treat yourself in some way, shape, or form, and while giving yourself space to acknowledge how that feels for you. Notice the thoughts, feelings, and overall experience of doing something for yourself, and maybe, just maybe, you’ll want to do that more often!
This second tip may seem a little interesting at first, but I encourage you to acknowledge one insecurity you have and love on it as much as you can throughout the week. So, for me, every time I may feel insecure about the appearance of my eyes, I'm going to challenge myself to tell myself things like, “I love my eyes, my eyes are beautiful”. And If it feels comfortable for you, I strongly encourage you to do the same. A small change in self-talk like this can dramatically change the dynamics of our days and how we view ourselves.
My third and final tip is to become comfortable with being uncomfortable. Growth does not feel comfortable because we have never experienced it before; hence we are GROWING into something. Just as we need to stretch to be able to work out or run, stepping out of our comfort zones leaves us no choice but to step into growth. In other words, we are stretching before we are growing into a new stage of our lives. So, I encourage you to find one thing this upcoming week that you know might make you uncomfortable but will provoke growth and be beneficial for you. Even if that’s tip #2, and you focus on an insecurity to love on, let’s step outside of comfort and step into growth, together.
REFLECT
After reading today's blog, where are you currently at within your self-love journey? How can you begin to implement these tips into your everyday life and what might be holding you back from doing so?
Links to Cleanlogic brand collab: