Have you ever heard of the saying, ‘if you want to kill a weed, you have to pull it up by the roots’? This is exactly what we need to do with self-hate. We need to pull it up by the roots and replace it with self-love. When you replace self-hate with selflove, the weeds of your life disappear, and they are replaced by flowers. Every single external circumstance of your life improves. Self-love is the highest state of all. If you have it, you have happiness. If you begin to cultivate self-love, everything you have ever wanted for yourself and your life will come to be.
So how do you do this? In the field of selfhelp, there are a million and a half modalities and techniques that can help you live a better life. In fact, there are so many ideas and techniques we can use to improve our life that it can become overwhelming. But in truth, they could all be abandoned for one thing: learning to love yourself. That is why I often say that self-love is the great short-cut. If we learn to love ourselves genuinely, we will embrace the whole universe.
Commit to 365 days of self-love
Self-love needs to be the foundation that you lay first, and then the second step is to build the details of your life upon it. To make this commitment, get a calendar and mark the day you plan to begin. Then, mark the day you plan to end, 365 days later. Once you have done that, it is time to make the actual commitment. For exactly a year, every single day, you are going to commit to live your life according to this mantra: What would someone who loves themselves do? This sounds simple but it would benefit you to say it out loud right now: “What would someone who loves themselves do?” Get used to it, because you are going to be saying it all the time. You are going to ask yourself this question any time you have to make a decision, no matter how small or large.
Decide on happiness
Now you are ready to learn the most important part about loving yourself. But it is not knowledge that you will gain. Rather, it is a decision that you will make. It is the decision that anyone who wants to love themselves must make. All you need to do is decide to make how you feel the number one priority in your life – in other words, make the number one goal of your life happiness. If you want to love yourself, you have to care how you feel and make how you feel the most important thing in your life.
Show yourself love
If I were to ask you right now to list some ways that you could show love to someone else, you could most likely easily give me some examples. This is because we have become accustomed to the idea of giving to others. But now I want you to come up with a list of ways that you could show love to yourself. Scan your life and ask yourself, what are some ways that I can think of to show love to myself?
Write down your list or type it onto a document on your laptop. Record all the ways you can think of, and make this list as personal as possible. The more creative you get with this and the more ideas you come up with, the better. Here are some examples you might find on this list:
Honouring my feelings and responding to those feelings. Making my happiness and how I feel the number one priority of my life. Honouring myself and who I really am because no one knows what makes me happy but me. Recognising that the universe is literally made of love. Knowing that if I open myself to receive, like a flower opening to the sun, then everything is possible. Spending my day scavenger hunting my environment and people I’m with for things I enjoy about it or about them, and then focusing on what I’m grateful for. Writing a list of positive aspects about myself, which I really believe. Admitting to my desires and why I want them, and recognising that it’s my right to want the things that I want. This means letting myself go in the direction of my bliss no matter how crazy or risky it seems. Admitting to what scares me. Reading books that make me feel good about myself. Finding ways that I can make myself feel safe and making them a priority no matter what is going on or what is pressing or urgent, especially when I feel unsafe. Laughing, and seeking out things that make me laugh because laughter is fuel for my soul. Eating the foods that are in line with my highest good. Prioritising my own health and happiness above anything else. Knowing I can’t be of service to someone any other way than by teaching by example. The more that you learn about loving yourself, the more you can add to this list. You can go over the list on a monthly basis and ask yourself if you are still living in accordance with the things you have written down. If not, look for the ways you’re contradicting the things on your list by living your life the way you are. Then decide what one thing you can do, with what you have, from where you are, in order to live a life that better reflects self-love.
Teal Swan is an internationally recognised spiritual leader who teaches people how to surmount their suffering, heal their wounds and awaken to an empowered, authentic life. As a speaker and best-selling author, she inspires people towards truth, authenticity, freedom, and joy. Visit tealswan.com to find out more.
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Henrietta Norton
Discover how a few simple lifestyle changes can make all the difference
