Question of the day: do you love yourself? We have all had moments when we feel out of balance, disconnected with ourselves, and lacking in self-love.
Self-love is more than just self-care. It’s about accepting yourself on every level and every layer: the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. By really digging deep and doing this work, you can build a stronger and more loving relationship with yourself and move toward deeper self-love and acceptance.
By doing so, it will reflect on your entire life, because everything in your life is a reflection of your relationship with yourself. So how do you build a healthy, strong, and loving relationship with yourself?
On the physical level, it is all about taking good care of yourself and connecting with your body. Learn to listen to your body and its signals. Your body is always communicating with you through feelings and sensations, but most of the time you may tend to ignore it. Whether your body is telling you to rest and sleep, to give it more nourishing and healthy foods, or that a situation or person doesn’t feel “quite right,” listen to your intuition, acknowledge your feelings, and if possible, act on that.
Here, you choose to take care of yourself physically by allowing yourself to:
• Get enough sleep
• Eat a healthy diet and nourish your body
• Exercise
• Be mindful of who and what you spend time on
• Allow yourself to have a healthy amount of rest and play
Try to practice tuning into your body, listening to its signals, and doing your best to act accordingly. Your body is a vessel, and if you treat it with respect and take good care of it, it will give that back to you by giving you the energy you need and allowing you to be healthy and thriving.
On the emotional level, the important work here is to:
• Accept pain, darkness, failures, mistakes, and moments of doubt that you experience. There is a reason why we go through things in life—it is our job to find the lesson. Sometimes our challenges make us stronger.
• Get really honest with yourself about how you feel, whatever the feelings, without judging or labeling them as good or bad.
• Forgive yourself for your past.
• Embrace all emotions and know that they come and go and that they are all temporary.
It is completely OK for you to go through difficult times and feel painful emotions, which we usually label as “negative.” It is part of the human experience and the duality that goes with it. You can’t be happy all the time. There will be ups and downs, highs and lows. It is healthier for you and for your growth to face what’s going on inside. Be with what you are feeling, sit with it for a while, and let it process in healthy ways (journaling, creating, movement, taking a bath, etc.). We don’t want to brush it off, push it under the rug, and pretend everything is OK.
On the mental level, the core work for you is to:
• Observe your thoughts and know you are not them.
• Know that your mind is a tool and that you can choose your thoughts to be more loving and supportive.
• Train your mind to stop judging yourself, to stop focusing on what you think is wrong with you or lacking, to stop the need to always fix yourself, and to stop comparing yourself to others.
• Instead, be grateful for your blessings, what you have, and your unique qualities.
• Start meditating (even for just 5-10 minutes a day). Meditation is a powerful tool that can allow you to witness your thoughts without judging them.
When you move into the spiritual level, you will want to:
• Connect to your heart, to your true self and your intuition, and to start living from that space.
• Connect to a higher source, whether you call it gratitude, god, the universe, life, love—it doesn’t matter, but learn to trust in it and surrender to it.
• Understand that your soul has chosen to come into your body exactly as it is and has chosen most of your life circumstances for you to learn and to grow. Seek the lesson in your experiences.
In my book, The Rewired Life, I stress that self-love and self-care are the foundation of a healthy life and how important it is to honor and take care of ourselves. When we can balance all our layers, we will feel empowered, and that is when you can really start loving and accepting all the parts of yourself.
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Erica Spiegelman is a wellness specialist, recovery counselor, and author of the new book The Rewired Life (2018) as well as Rewired: A Bold New Approach to Addiction & Recovery(2015), the Rewired Workbook (2017), the Rewired Coloring Book (2017), all published by Hatherleigh Press. Erica holds a bachelor’s degree in literature from the University of Arizona and is a California State Certified Drug and Alcohol Counselor (CADAC)-II from UCLA. For more information, visit Erica’s website or follow @Erica Spiegelman on Instagram.
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