How To Love Yourself

Self-love it’s important for you but it’s important for humanity.
How to love yourself

(For your free self love meditation – scroll to the bottom of the post)

We talk about self-love a lot in recovery. But what is self love? What is it really? Is it fluffy robes and manicures and facials and working out?

I mean, sort of, but not really.

Self-love is not really grabbing on or ACTING – it’s actually the opposite. It’s letting go. Letting go of “I should,” letting go “I have to” letting go of “I am supposed to…” and letting go of all the beliefs that there is something wrong with you.

A disordered relationship with food and belief that you have to change or shrink your body is, like everything else, something that we believe that we have to fix about ourselves. But you know what? You are not broken. You don’t have to be fixed. You don’t have to be anything but who you are right now. Not your future better self. Your current beautiful and perfect self.

Does this mean that you are giving up on yourself? No, it just means that you’re not hating yourself into loving yourself. You can’t do that anyway. You can only love yourself or accept yourself or BECOME yourself into loving yourself.

And there is only one way to do that. And that is to let go. Let go of all the ideas about “I’ll be better when…” and let your present self, your right now, lead you to self love.

How?

Put your hand on your heart. Close your eyes. Feel your heart beating. This helps your body and mind to connect. Take a few moments to feel your heartbeat. If you can’t feel your heartbeat, put your hand on your wrist or neck and feel your pulse. Take a few loving breaths. Tell yourself, “it’s okay for me to be okay right now. And if I’m not, that’s okay too. It’s all okay. I’m okay…”

We have all experienced the enormous fear of letting go. Even letting go of the things that we hate, like a low-self esteem, a dysfunctional relationship with food and our bodies. It’s normal. Our obsessive dieting and bingeing has served a purpose. We believe that we are promised a future happiness by continuing to set goals for “I’ll be better when… I’m… (skinnier, smarter, have more money… etc… ) We believe that something outside of us will make us better.

Loving yourself doesn’t mean that you have to LOVE your body. In fact, it’s impossible to love your body if you don’t love your SELF first. And your self, your soul, who you are, has nothing to do with the size of your body, the shape of your body, the shade of your body, the way your parts come together, your hair, your acne, your wrinkles, or whatever anyone else thinks of you.

Your self is where you start. Body love falls into place only after you agree to love yourself.

I got a lot of “but how Leora? How do I love myself when I hate myself so much? When I’m so broken?”

Look. I’m here to tell you – YOU ARE NOT BROKEN! And you don’t need to be fixed. And the irony is that once you love yourself, you realize that you have no fixing to do. And the parts that you think are broken right now, they magically “get fixed”.

Like maybe when you start to love yourself you learn how to say no more often and you have more time to do things that you want to do, like spend time with your kids or do volunteer work, or take care of your home. Maybe you quit that job that treats you poorly and find a job that is worthy of you. Maybe you quit doing that restrictive diet and exercise that is hurting you and your body naturally comes to the weight it wants to be. Maybe you stop spending time with people who make you feel like crap. The answer, the ONLY answer is self love.

And by healing yourself, you heal everyone around you. I know that sounds crazy, but it’s true. I’ve made this short meditation for you to help you.

By letting go of fixing, we see the truth and the beauty that we are right now and always have been. And at the same time, the part of us that won’t, doesn’t want to, is SCARED to let go, well, we have to love that part of ourselves too. That part needs the most kindness and compassion and have faith. Who you are is and always has been perfect, whole and complete. You are beautiful and nothing will ever change that. This is about letting yourself settle into yourself.

Be patient with yourself. Patience. Patience is love. It sounds so simple. Because it is. You don’t have to gain anything. You just have to let go and all the love is waiting there for you.

I want everyone in the world to love themselves for real. To love their souls. Because people who love themselves are not mean to other people. When everyone loves themselves the world will be a kinder, gentler place. People won’t be trying so hard to prove themselves to everyone else. There won’t be so much fighting and conflict and trying to prove one another right. When you love yourself, you don’t care about what anyone else does or says or what their opinion of you is. Imagine if everyone could have self love?

Please try this meditation out and send it to everyone you know. My only goal with this is to make the world a kinder and gentler place.

CLICK HERE FOR YOUR FREE SELF LOVE MEDITATION!

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