“Dare to love yourself as if you were a rainbow with gold at both ends.”― Aberjhani.

I know that Self Love talk is out there and it’s a really popular mindset, most of us are still not really aware of what it means to have a practice of Self Love in our lives. I am very proud of you, if you are reading this, you have now taken the first step to create this for yourself.

My journey

When I started my journey of Self Love, I had no idea what this really means. I have always been overachieving in my studies and professional life, running from one certification to another, delivering high quality results at work and being involved in different kind of activities, but that didn’t bring me closer to love.

I love to challenge myself, because I believe, that we grow through challenges, however my current challenges are very different from than it used to be. Once I have realized that endless achievements and success at a corporate job did not bring me happiness or fulfillment, I didn’t have a choice but to be tender and loving to myself. And it has been the biggest challenge since 🙂 Maybe this resonates with you?

The journey that is waiting ahead of you if you dare to take the first step

This is a delightful journey and once you start it, you’ll never be satisfied with anything less than real Self Love in your life, you will start to understand that the more you love yourself, the more fulfillment and joy you bring not only to yourself but to those around you and your career will become more inspiring than ever, because you will not settle for anything that is lower than you self-worth, self-care and full self-acceptance.

The first steps

Start by accepting unlovable parts of yourself, changing beliefs by daily affirmations and creating a harmony in your activities. Our belief system forms our life, therefore before we start doing any self-love practices, we shall look and evaluate where we do not love ourselves enough. I would invite you to spend some time and look at different areas of your life and feel for yourself, where you need self-love the most.

How much do you value yourself in different areas of your life: career, finance, health, relationship, home, family, fun, self-development?

Try to answer some of these questions:
  • How do you feel Monday morning? Are you happy to start a new working week?
  • What about your finance? Can you afford living in comfort?
  • Are you spending enough time for keeping your body healthy? Do you eat healthy and balanced food, do you feel energetic in the morning? Do you spend enough time to relax and fully be yourself?
  • Do you spend enough time with your beloved? Do you enjoy passionate relationships?
  • And if you are single, are your friends supportive, inspiring and positive?
  • Do you love your home? Can you rest there?
  • Are you satisfied in relationship with your children/parents/husband/wife?
  • Do you spend enough time having fun? When was the last time you had a good laugh? Do your spare time activities bring you joy, increased energy and inner satisfaction?
  • Have you ever invested in self-development? Have you looked at and assessed your beliefs? Have you ever thought that slowing down is actually speeding up? Are you in touch with your intuition? Do you listen that your inner voice is telling you when you make decisions?
  • And if you are not satisfied with some of the areas of your life, what are your next steps, so you can level up your life?
The power of affirmations:

The power of affirmations is one of the methods to change how we feel and reprogram our subconscious mind. Once we take a mindful look at where we do not love ourselves fully (as we did in the exercise above), we can bring our subconscious patterns into surface and change them to positive ones.

By repeating new affirmations in our mind or loud (I’d recommend to do it alone, if you do it loud ☺), we gradually change our beliefs and start feeling what we intend to invite in our life. Once we start feeling it, we attract positive experiences in our life which match with how we feel. It is important that we open up to believing in affirmations, because only then, our core beliefs will gradually change. Some examples are listed below, but you can always create your own and try to do it for a month or two and see how it changes the way you feel:

  • “I am enough”,
  • “I accept myself fully”,
  • “I am loved and respected for who I am”,
  • “I am attractive even when I cry”,
  • “I accept anger as a part of me, I embrace and transform it fully to a passionate action”,
  • “I am perfect in my imperfections”,
  • “I forgive myself fully”.

It is easy to love ourselves, when we are loving, happy, smiling, helpful, but how to love ourselves when our expectations fail, when we get angry, when we get sad and vulnerable? However, it is crucial to love yourself exactly at a minute of difficult situations. We shall remember that we are humans and we make mistakes, we keep getting in co-dependent relationships and situations. By accepting it, you can transform it, learn from it, grow out of it and move to better feeling space and what is that we all want: to feel good. Experiment with affirmations and see how you feel.

Balance: find time to take a break

There is another pattern of professional and highly achieving people, what I have seen in my life as well as in my clients’ life. We forget to create a balance between passive and active energies in us. People, who want to have great things in life and love to challenge themselves, usually stay in the active energy, which means, massive action, control, logic, planning, achieving, structuring and making strategies.

There is nothing wrong with that, but we must have times when we are passive, even, and especially in terms of achieving goals in our career, we must learn to let go. We all have great intuition and I could not emphasize more how important it is to listen to that inner need to have a break and ask ourselves if we are in alignment with our true desires, if we are fully expressing our feelings, needs and emotions. Do we allow ourselves just be and let go of control not only in our yoga and meditation class, but also in our personal and professional life and allow as good or even better results to come? Or do we wait imbalances in our body to force us to take a break? Choice is always ours.

Let your journey start now!

There it is! Enjoy loving yourselves – you deserve this in your life. You deserve the best! You deserve to live a life that’s truly fulfilling! The next time you are about to make any kind of decision, ask yourself: “What would a person who loves herself/himself do in this situation?” and you will always get an intuitive answer. Dare to Love Yourself. Dare to choose.