Self-love

Self-love: regard for one’s own well-being and happiness (chiefly considered as a desirable rather than narcissistic characteristic).

This word has been thrown around so much that I think its losing its meaning in our ego. We speak on self-love as if it’s just the new thing to do. It caught on like wildfire and everyone ran with it.

I had a dream of an art show and in the end the girl exuded all of these beautiful colors I told myself there it is, that’s the point to love yourself so much that you just exude light.

For months I spoke about self-love and it being my goal I had to do everything to get there. I realized shortly that while it wasn’t impossible I had one step to fulfill before I got there. I had to self-heal and forgive myself for the damage that I had done to myself. How could all of a sudden I love this person that I didn’t love before? It didn’t make sense to me.

So I started to write what I thought self-love was and here is what I came up for me:

Self-love looks like loving me so deeply and being so forgiving of my downfalls and myself. It looks understanding to myself, when I can forgive and understand the outside world. Also, it’s like attacking problems head on instead of wishing them away. Let’s face it, that’s been done a lot too.

In order for me to get there I automatically knew there were things in me that I had to heal. That it wasn’t as easy as me just saying the words. That’s what I did I started doing the inner work and forgiving myself, the more I forgave the more I could see who I truly was, and for once I thought she was beautiful.

How many times have we fallen victim to saying oh that couldn’t be me in that situation? Then all of sudden its us in that situation. I found that people judge themselves so much that they project their judgements on other people they lose sight that it’s been them all along.

Have you ever considered that you were the toxic friend that you continuously speak about? Don’t get me wrong people are toxic, but let’s consider for a moment that people are just mirroring the things that you hate about yourself. Would that perspective change your mind on how you viewed others? Would that make you look deeper into yourself? Would you start questioning why you keep attracting the same people over and over again? If you looked deeper would you stop playing victim?

I think it’s a fair assessment to say that we’ve all become a victim at one point in our lives some worse than others, but that doesn’t take away from your experience. My question is, how long do we continue in a victimized mindset? How long do we believe that people are just bad and out to get us? When do we believe in ourselves enough to forgive and realize everyone has their own demons. When do we realize that only we can truly save and love ourselves?

When do we take the mask off and truly start loving ourselves? When do we forgive ourselves so that we can learn to forgive others? How can we ask for forgiveness from others and we aren’t willing to do the same? When do we become tired of being bitter?

Self-love is truly a journey and not words just spoken, it’s not only the exterior aspects of ourselves. Yea your hair is nice your clothes are kept, but what are you masking on the inside? What truths aren’t you facing? I think collectively we are in a bind and can’t figure out how to get out of it. I think that we all have this problem with thinking that no one will understand what we go through or we’re afraid to let people know because of fear of judgement. People judge as if they’ve never been through the fire, but what I also realized is people judge because they see something in you that they wish to see in themselves.

With these questions I ask you are you really as self-loving as you portray? Is your understanding of self as really deep as you think? Or is it as deep as your ego will allow. Let’s face it we’ve all lived in survival mode, but when is it truly time to live?