Updated on July 29th, 2020.
February is the time when all eyes are focused on love. Especially when Valentine’s day comes around.
And, by love I mean the superficial aspect of love: the hearts, the flowers, the dates.
All that pink and fluffy stuff.
However, there’s so much more to love and it’s quite reductive to restrict such a magnificent and powerful energy to its lighter (superficial and heavily commercialized) side.
So, since today is Valentine day and most people are focused on the topic of love, I wanted to take the opportunity to explore another side of love that not necessarily getting as much airplay: self-love.
Why you probably need more self-love (to be more fulfilled & find true love). Click To TweetWhy you need self-love
We live in society where we have been trained to seek eternal validations.
You know, we follow a path laid before us by our parents, schools, institutions, medias… It’s about the right schools, the right degrees, the right companies, the right neighborhood…
It’s always externally directed.
And, we are kept so busy that we never really have time (nor are we encouraged) to check with ourselves.
– Is the (supposedly) right school the right school for you?
– Is the ‘right’ neighborhood the right neighborhood for you?
– Is the ‘right’ career the right career for you?
We just get so caught trying to fit within certain standards, that very few of us really ask those questions.
And then, one day the whole thing collapses.
Not necessarily in a big and loud way.
It often looks like burnout, getting sick, being depressed or demotivated.
But when you start digging what comes up is the same.
Personally, in my work, what I see is people who build lives forgetting the one the person that matters the most: themselves!
Everything in their lives is obligations and assuaging someone else’s desires, needs or following someone else’s ideals.
Their needs, their ideals, their desires are nowhere in the picture.
And often even, they realize that their dreams and desires are not even theirs to begin with!
I keep mentioning this: we have such an epidemic of unhappy, successful people that we need to turn the tide and make sure that self-love is at the heart of everything we endeavor to do.
It’s not selfish, it’s not self-centered, it’s the necessary thing to do to create a life that really lights you up.
Romantic love also starts with self-love
Since, Valentine’s day brings so much focus on romantic relationship, I couldn’t write this post without touching upon self-love within the frame of romantic relationships.
In this realm again, self-love is taking the back seat.
Especially as women, we are so being trained to work on our looks and try to appeal to others, that many of us have forgotten to connect with ourselves and find the love we seek on the outside within us.
How many women hate the way they look? Criticize their appearance? Think they are to small, tall, dark, light, skinny, fat (insert your favorite deprecative qualifier here)?
As a result, we tweak ourselves and try to turn into someone we’re not.
So much so that we finally meet someone they are not really in love with the real us, they just fell for the mask.
And now, we are suck having to keep the lie together.
Often, the people we meet are stuck in their own version of the lie.
No wonder relationships are so hard these days.
I am a firm believer in finding love from the inside out, I even have created a program around this topic.
And in my experience one of the key to find truly, happy, lasting love is to cultivate self-love.
Self-love will allow you to show up authentically, to connect with people who love the real you, to set up the boundaries you need to avoid heartbreak and generally just allow yourself to claim the best in life.
Without self-love, true, happy and lasting relationships with others will be hard to maintain.
Final words
Today, I wanted to invite you to focus on self-love and think about:
– How you can cultivate it?
– How you can experience more of it?
– How you can bring yourself forward and center in every aspect of your life?
Synchronistically, today I was in a conversation with coach Gill Pinnington who’s an expert on self-love. So, I took the opportunity to ask her if there was something she could share with us to deepen our understanding of self-love.
She was sweet enough to share with me this beautiful poem.
I’ll give her the final words.
It starts like this:
“Self Love is gentle, kind, compassionate, courageous, bold, scary, enlightening, liberating.
Self Love is saying no, saying yes, saying nothing, saying everything, being heard, being seen, speaking your truth.”
You can read the entire post here.
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