Page 15 - Sonoma County Gazette 3-19

What’s Self-Love All About?
By Gail Raborn
You may be skilled at loving your pets, your family, your friends, and
nature. But are you skilled at loving yourself?
What is self-love? It’s the same thing as self-esteem. It’s the ability to accept all of who you are, even the scary parts, so you become truly authentic and no longer hide your fears and vulnerability behind a mask of strength and feigned confidence. It means understanding and forgiving yourself. It means being willing to learn from mistakes rather than trashing yourself, so you own your power.
Self-love means giving yourself acknowledgment not just for your achievements, but just because you ARE!
Without unconditional love of self you’ll be limited, lacking power, unable to manifest your full potential, or feel inner peace and contentment. You’ll have difficulty feeling deep compassion for others without becoming self- sacrificing, a co-dependent. You’ll suffer crippling self-doubt and perhaps feel a fraud. Never feeling good enough, it’ll be hard to give back to your community, much less to family and friends.
If you find your Self-Love Meter in the negative, evaluate where you’re lacking, then consider implementing these ideas:
Heal Your Emotional Wounds: Change your negative self-talk. Start by recognizing the Negative Critic within you that shames and puts you down. Patterned after a childhood critic, perhaps a parent, it can morph into a Constructive Critic. Write dialogues with it, and insist that it become less harsh.
Ask the Loving Voice within you to change your self-talk from attack, to praise and encouragement. This will help your Inner Child heal.
Identify and change the false beliefs that that have been programmed into your subconscious that say there’s something wrong with you, you’re not worth loving, etc. Until these false ideas change into the truth - that you do deserve love and a happy life, no matter your mistakes - you’ll feel unhappy and unfulfilled in life.
Forgive yourself: Reframe mistakes as powerful life lessons that you can use to improve your life. Then act on them!
To stop feeling a fraud, list your positive attributes and reflect on them daily. Your embarrassment will disappear as you own your value.
Create a plan to deal with set-backs. Use self-hypnosis or meditation to shift from self-blame to evaluating what went wrong and how to heal the situation. Then do it.
If you’re stuck and need help, reach out: Hypnotherapy, Psychotherapy, Regression therapy, Parts Work, and Tapping all can help you heal, grow, and
develop self-love.
Love Your Body: Take good care of it through eating wisely, daily exercise, getting regular dental care and getting plenty of rest. Practice preventative medicine; and see a medical or natural healer promptly if you have a health challenge. A healthy immune system depends on your self-love.
Love your body through massage, saunas, or energy work.
Expand Your Social Network/Community and Activities: Get involved with your community! Volunteering will help build a better world and increase your sense of worth.
Lean on inspiring friendships. These folks are jewels, for they see your true self. They’re not afraid of your passions, nor envy you. They can encourage you when you’re down, and affirm a potential new path.
Reward yourself by discovering what makes you feel good! Take time to play and laugh. Join others to try the zoo, camping, bird watching, foreign films, cooking new cuisines, whatever piques your interest.
Grow Spiritually: Follow a spiritual path. Connecting with a Higher Power, whatever the theology, will help you feel totally loved, accepted and fine just the way you are, a part of Spirit. Thus more able to love yourself.
Gratitude is central to self-love. Think of at least three things per day you are grateful for. Include yourself.
Listen to your Inner Guidance. Whether you call it your Higher Self, Inner Advisor or Inner Healer, this wise, loving and supportive part of you will answer questions and guide you to increased self-love. Listen to it through imagery, journaling, meditations, and self-hypnosis.
As your self-love grows, you’ll find your life transforming in wonderful ways you can’t imagine. The Desideratata says, “You are a child of the Universe, no less than the trees and the stars.” Remember: You are lovable. And loved.
3/19 - www.sonomacountygazette.com - 15