5 Things to Remember On Your Self Love Journey

Growing up, a lot of us were taught to always criticize ourselves and criticize other people.

We  never felt good enough or like we could do enough or have enough.

We felt bad for taking time for ourselves, we felt bad for wanting to play, we were taught to always look ahead instead of being present in the moment.

We were taught to shove down our emotions.

And, for a lot of us, this led to a lot of feelings of shame, guilt, just generally not feeling good about ourselves or even hating ourselves.

 

If it's true that we attract what we put into the world then if we don’t truly love ourselves, give ourselves grace, and just learn to be humans again, we won't attract the kind of positivity and growth we want to see in ourselves. 

And we won’t reach our goals, both in business and in life. 

 

So if you are on a journey of learning to truly love yourself again, here are 5 key things to keep in mind:

 

1. Your emotions are valid - no matter what you have been taught to believe about them.

 A lot of us were taught that our emotions are not important, or that they’re “too much,” and that we shouldn't express them, or even feel them. And if we do, there is something wrong with us.

This is just not true.

And keeping your emotions suppressed will not only keep you from growing, but also keep you from loving yourself.

I struggled with emotional eating at one point in my life, and for the longest time I just pretended it wasn’t there, that it wasn’t happening.

It wasn't until I actually acknowledged my feelings, let them flow through me, cried, journaled it out, worked through them and grieved about the things that I needed to grieve about and acknowledge that I was a human - that I was actually able to move on from those issues with eating.

When you can accept each emotion that you are feeling, and you can be present with them at the moment that you're experiencing them, you will be so much happier.

 

2. There is no such thing as “too much.”

You're not too emotional.

There’s no such thing as being too successful.

There's no such thing as working too much.

There's no such thing as eating too much.

Everything that you have done in the past was based on what you needed in that moment.

When we can come to the realization that all we have is the present and we get to nourish ourselves in whatever way truly fulfills us in that moment, we begin to move away from self judgement and into self love.

 

3. Loving yourself includes loving the parts of yourself that you feel shameful of.

We all have shame, and that’s ok.

But we can still love the parts of ourselves that we feel shame around.

When it comes to actually loving who we are and actually succeeding in our goals, whether it's health or business, showing up for ourselves becomes a lot easier when we aren’t packing a ton of shame onto ourselves.

If you wake up every single day and start shaming yourself, for where you are and how you didn't do this yet and how this hasn't been, how this hasn't worked and how you suck at this and all of these things - how do you think the rest of your days are gonna go?

What do you think you're going to attract throughout the day?

You get to be a human. You get to have parts of yourself that you want to change, or goals you haven’t reached yet, and still fiercely yourself anyways. 

 

4. Self love isn’t only for when we think we are doing a good job.

Your love for yourself, for your body, for your life, your love for just your existence is not contingent on how much money you make or how “successful” you are. \

We don't just get to love ourselves when we are at our best and our worst.

We get to love ourselves all the damn time.

You are worthy of love and success ALL THE TIME.

 

5. It’s okay if you are just learning to love yourself, no matter what age you are. 

Unconditional self love just isn't something that we are taught. We are taught that self love is contingent upon us succeeding.

But we get to rewrite that in our lives.

We get to change our thoughts and unlearn our conditioning. 

 

Thriving doesn't mean neglecting the shitty parts of yourself, or your “shadow” side, or the struggles that you have-  Thriving is when you can say, “Hey I can be struggling in these areas. And I still love myself. And as long as I have that self love, I will thrive in my life.”