Self-Love and External Forces

Happy Self-Love Sunday worthy human. Today I hope you feel whole, full, worthy and accepted.

Let’s start with some affirmations (you can say these affirmations aloud, write them in your journal to return to them and/or choose one as today’s mantra and carry it with you throughout the day, repeating it to yourself in times of need):

I am worthy of love

I am worthy of acceptance

I am worthy of joy

I am worthy of happiness

Today I wanted to share a few thoughts surrounding self-love, particularly as it pertains to outside opinions, experiences that involve others and all other situations that aren’t 100% under our individual control.

Many wise individuals who have experienced personal growth through self-love and self-acceptance often ask us to start our journeys by beginning to talk to ourselves the way that we speak to those we love. Many of us grew into the habit of making mistakes and then beating ourselves up for those mistakes. We made habit out of becoming our greatest critic to the point of self-deprecation. We allowed negative self-talk to become the background soundtrack of our adolescence.

But ask yourself this, when your friend or family member comes to you visibly hurt and overwhelmed because of a mistake they made, do you approach the conversation with love and understanding?

The Bible asks us to love our neighbors as ourselves, this verse is my favorite to advocate for self-love within the context of the church. (Mark 12:31)

How can you be expected to love others the way you love yourself if you haven’t put in an effort to understand what loving yourself looks like?

Beating yourself up for mistakes and never allowing grace, patience and understanding to lead the conversations you have with yourself, you create a recipe for self-loathing and if you loath the only person you can’t escape, how can you love those who come to you in need of love and light?

Your relationship with yourself is practice for every other relationship in your life. It is your training ground. You can only give so much encouragement to others in public while speaking down to yourself in private; the two do not align.

Another aspect of self-love and it’s interaction with others that often encourages me is how often people see, love, accept and appreciate the aspects of us that we often despise. Have you ever had a conversation with someone and they say something along the lines of “Oh, I love xyz about you” and the very thing they love about you is something you don’t particularly like yourself.

The beautiful thing about this human experience is that, genuinely, we all look very different through different lenses. The quote, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” is a HUGE understatement. Every aspect of who you are and what you do is always filtered through the lens of the person watching you, their personal experiences and everything they believe about themselves.

For this reason, it is important to surround ourselves with people who emit light that helps bring out the light in us. We must surround ourselves with those who see our beauty and remind us of it often. But at the end of the day, before we worry about who we are around, we must take stock of who we are.

You are light

You are filled with love

You are exactly where you need to be

You are not afraid of growing, shedding and evolving & for this reason, you are whole all by yourself.

Do you agree with those statements?

Take stock of the ones you don’t, ask yourself why and what agreeing with them would look and feel like.

When we take stock of who we are, we can remember what we have to offer in this world and that connection between self-love and external forces is solidified.

Well, Happy Self-Love Sunday Worthy Individual.

I wrote this entire post on my porch in 90 degree weather in the middle of the South while listening to the sound of birds, other little creatures, and the soft hum of cars driving by. I feel full and grateful and I hope you feel the same, wherever you are, whatever you’re doing. You’re worthy of love and warmth.

Happy Self-Love Sunday