A Commitment to Self-Love; 9 incredible gifts to give yourself

For years of my life, I didn’t realize the value of Self-love.

It doesn’t have to take you as long as it took me, the gifts I am about to share with you can completely change the way you look at self love.

When I recognized what it meant to love myself, I made a commitment to embody those ways of being.

Hating myself was something I thought was natural, I didn’t know I could change it.

I didn’t even recognize that I was resistant to the thought of loving myself.

In reading this article you will receive a new understanding of self-love and I am even going to give you some tools to use to help keep you gifting these values to yourself.

You will see that feelings are fleeting and when you actually commit to loving yourself there is no effort involved.

It’s natural, rewarding and the best present you will ever give yourself.

Exploring Self Love for Peace

1.      Realness

On a hot winter day in Florida, the year of 2011, it was about to go down.

I was ready to be brutally honest with myself. I hated who I was.

Not because I wasn’t kind, loving, sweet and amazing to everyone I met.

Only because I wasn’t that way to myself.

I was a people-pleasing martyr, doing for everyone else to make them happy, just not myself. Then I became angry and bitter towards me; loving, caring, giving me.

Doing this put me in a state of emotional distress and mental suffering.

It was time to get real with myself. I was a liar.

I didn’t always want to do what they asked of me.

I lied to everyone, and when they ask me if I was ok, I said yes.

Lying, even more, I put on my fake smile and held the world at bay with the emotional brick wall I built.

When I began to see how the way I was being wasn’t an advantage to me, I began to set boundaries.

I literally started to perform the “Fuck yes” or “Hell no” test.

What is that you might ask?

This tool can be applied to anything in life.

First, you ask yourself if you want to do “XYZ.”

If the answer is without a doubt and unequivocally yes, then it’s a “Fuck Yes.”

When the answer is a maybe, I’ll think about it or no, that means it’s a “Hell No.”

You can always remove the foul words to your liking, that’s just the way I learned it years ago.

This tool truly taught me to create boundaries and that saying no is ok.

2.      Mindfulness

This is the playground where it all begins. Our mind is where we create, we all know that.

So, then I’m sure you know that this is where you create the meaning behind events in your life.

We charge events and give them a positive or negative meaning.

Then we think them so often they become beliefs.

After that, we perceive the world based on those beliefs.

Most of these beliefs we created from events that happened when we were too young to remember.

What does this have to do with Self-Love you ask?

When you begin to monitor your thoughts, you can see why certain situations tag you.

Your mind wants to be right. If you think “Why am I so dumb?”

Then your mind is always looking for ways to prove that you are dumb.

The reticular activating system (RAS) in our brain filters the information that we receive qualifying it by what we tell it is important.

We tell the RAS what’s important by the questions we ask ourselves.

Those questions originate from our beliefs about ourselves.

Our self-talk is energy in the formless, the majority of the time humans think that voice is who we are.

I suggest you create a self-care ritual.

One that includes monitoring your self-talk to see what lies you are looking for support of, referencing Don Miguel Ruiz in the book “The Mastery of Love.”

You might also want to include something I learned in the book “The Untethered Soul” by Michael Singer, he says to pretend the voice in your head is an external being, a friend you hang out with 24/7.

Then ask yourself, if this were true, “How long would you hang out with that person?”

If the answer is not long at all, it’s time to start ignoring the shitty committee in your head.

3.      Needlessness

To be without need is something we might not experience on this planet.

Since we need air, food, and water to survive.

Although, the practice of needlessness can be embodied and help you find your path to self-love.

There are so many things that we believe we need to survive; money, security, safety, love from others, material things.

I’m sure I could go on with that list.

What if there was a possibility for you to see that you don’t need anything?

What if you could do whatever it is that you are doing without looking for approval, monetary exchange, or things to go the way you planned.

You have absolutely no expectations of the outcome and you can just be with whatever life presents.

Wouldn’t that make life easy? This state of need or desperation is a muscle that you have built over time.

We make up stories about how circumstances will make us feel.

Then, we unintentionally harm ourselves because we can’t accept the feelings of disappoint that come from our attachment to the plan.

Suffering comes from our resistance to the feelings.

You can’t love yourself without accepting your emotions.

If we surrender and let it go more often then we could build up the “Let-go” muscle and diminish the “Need” muscle.

Peace and serenity in our lives ultimately come from needlessness, a perfect foundation for self-love.

Self-Love is the Freedom to be You

4.      Truthfulness

When we get caught up in the story that we tell regarding our circumstances, we forget how we are telling the story makes a huge difference.

There are many ways we can tell the story.

We believe we benefit from how we tell the story.

If we tell the story from a victim’s point of view, we receive attention and pity, which makes us feel loved, yet it keeps us paralyzed.

When we are accountable for our part in the story, we take ownership which empowers us and provides us with a sense of pride.

In both scenarios, we leave out the facts, which ultimately makes neither of these versions of the story true.

I invite you to ask yourself how you have been telling the story and to challenge yourself by telling it differently.

Is it working to tell the story the way that you have?

Are you truly getting what you need to be loved when others must guess at what you want?

In transformational work you understand that you must First Love Yourself (FLY) before you can be honest about what you need from others.

Why not ask for what you need rather than telling your story to hopefully get what you want from it.

When you ask it’s easier for others to know what you need to feel loved.

Then people understand when you need someone to listen, give you a hug or just be with you.

Believe me, when I tell you when you experience self love, you’ll know exactly what you need to feel love from others.

5.      Forgiveness

Ok, right now is a new moment. Each moment is new and gone as soon as it comes.

The more we live in the past, the less we focus on where we are.

In each new moment is a new opportunity to find love and the freedom of living in that moment.

We can’t change the past, only the way we tell the story.

Since you can’t change the past, why focus on it?

Usually, this is because in some parts of the story there is still a grudge being held.

You have not forgiven yourself for the mistakes you have made, or you have not forgiven others.

We are human, unfortunately making mistakes is in our DNA.

Learning from those mistakes is also part of being human.

Like I said earlier, each moment is new, and we get to find freedom there when we focus on being with what life presents to us in that moment.

Holding a grudge is like putting poison in a well, only those who drink from it are harmed.

In this case, you are the well, the grudge is the poison bringing about a lack of self-love which is causing you harm.

In every moment, decide what it would take to forgive yourself and when needed to forgive others.

Look for possibilities, not limitations to help you achieve forgiveness.

6.      Seriousness

Aren’t we lucky that life is so fun? We get to laugh, play, party and be joyful.

The challenge that I see is that we don’t set our intentions to do this.

We believe our circumstances cause us to have these experiences and we have no say in the way things occur.

I am here to help you discover the truth regarding this aspect of self-love.

You can choose to live intentionally.

Your seriousness about having a life with love and happiness starts with you.

Life’s circumstances can add to our abundance in these areas, it cannot create them.

Living intentionally is being aware of the conversations that you are.

How are you telling the story of your life?

Try this on for a minute, when you aren’t aware of the conversations that you are having about yourself, how can you be aware of what you are doing to keep that story alive.

If the story you are currently telling isn’t creating the life that you want, why aren’t you exploring other ways to see what works for you?

This is what living is about. Trying new things.

What if your life’s purpose is just to find the best way possible to live?

I’m sure you are doing great so far, and likely you want it to be even greater.

That takes practice and growth.

We consistently make choices in alignment with our level of consciousness.

When we don’t grow, we don’t change, and things don’t get better.

Connecting with Others to Accept Yourself with Love

7.      Likeness

We connect with other humans based on things we have in common.

When we don’t have similarities it’s hard for us to find common ground to build a relationship on.

Sometimes, we compare ourselves with others when there is a sameness and create a difference based on that thought of disconnection.

Don’t compare yourself to anyone, you are a unique individual with gifts that no one else has.

And, no one likes to admit when we judge others for our opposition.

Unfortunately, we do it all the time. Judgment doesn’t make us feel good.

What if in the way we see others it defines what we see in ourselves?

We can’t recognize the attributes of another without first seeing them in ourselves.

That makes every person I pass judgment on, whether good or bad, just like me.

We don’t want to accept that as a universal law, because that could mean some negative things about me.

Look honey, none of us are perfect.

We all have work to do, when you recognize the work someone else needs to do, let it reflect the work you need to do in yourself.

Self love is loving yourself where you are, you can’t do that without being accepting and seeing your likeness in others.

The less you judge others the closer you are to loving yourself where you are.

Remember, practice makes perfect.

8.      Friendliness

A long time ago I know when I was out in public, I would recognize others who had their walls up.

They didn’t want to be bothered with anyone else.

I recognized this because I was living life this way. I saw them in me.

I began to compliment the people I saw in public, I would smile at them and even ask about their day.

They were strangers with no known common ground.

When I decided to change my way of being, I had to learn to be my own best friend.

I had to coach myself by imagining what I would say to those people or even people I loved who were in similar situations.

My attitude towards them gave me a greater experience of myself.

I was friendly because I never wanted them to experience what I felt, I felt alone.

Initially, I was looking to create a connection with them, what I ended up doing was releasing the resistance to loving myself.

Our bodies and energies are already loving vessels.

Loving myself liberated me, enabling me to feel that.

With the release, I created a community of people who I began to see on a regular basis who also changed and became open to receiving love.

I now see these people when I walk or ride my bike through town, at work and even at the grocery store.

I’ve noticed as I have disseminated my love, the emotional walls in my community have also dissipated.

Your friendship is a gift, to yourself and others.

Don’t underestimate how you can change this world with your friendliness.

9.      Joyfulness

Have you ever gotten excited about something that you knew was coming?

Like a vacation, a date or an event you were going to attend?

Something that you have looked forward to.

I want you to know that you can have that each moment in life.

You can love what you do, even if it’s something you have previously hated doing.

We all want to do something we are good at; it gives us a sense of accomplishment.

My favorite thing to do is coach.

I get lost in it, time disappears, it’s not work at all.

It’s when life flows through me and I don’t try to control it.

When I first experienced life living me, I knew I had to have more and understand what was happening.

So, what did I do…I tried. I had to figure out how to do it.

This I began my spiritual journey, and I wanted to control everything.

I explored religion, different energy techniques and I even tried reprogramming my subconscious mind.

I was on a mission. In the end, trying to control everything made me feel like a failure.

I thought that if I could control what I was doing it would give me that sense of joy.

The epiphany that I had, which I hope helps you, was that I was creating a lot of work for myself.

I was attempting to orchestrate the perfect scenario, and when it didn’t meet my expectations, I was disappointed.

I recognized that I was attached to the outcome.

In my thoughts, I expected it to be a certain way and I was closed off to any other way it could turn out.

This stole my joy and made me completely unhappy with myself, not to mention I was mentally exhausted.

I decided to be open to whatever life presented. And, to try no not predict the future.

Maybe there was a bigger picture that I couldn’t see.

This is when I began to experience pure joy in everything, not only coaching.

I was literally letting each moment live me, I relinquished all control.

Surrendering to how I thought it should be.

My self- love has skyrocketed because I feel joy in each moment.

You can find your happy place that fast.

You may find self love in many ways.

Explore them all because you deserve to receive these gifts from yourself.

I can only tell you what has worked for me and hope that you find answers to your life’s questions.

Explore the value of self-love and how it applies to your personal situation.

Be real with yourself and start to monitor your thoughts.

When giving these gifts of love to yourself you may need to talk to someone who has experienced something similar.

Working with people on discovering their love for themselves is my specialty, please reach out to me for coaching.

You can also purchase my Phoenix Program Workbook to help you further your exploration of self-love.

Either way, I am here to help you achieve your greatness.