What are the Practical Steps to Loving Yourself?

This quote by Anias Nin got me thinking.

‘My mission, should I choose to accept it, is to find peace with exactly who and what I am. To take pride in my thoughts, my appearance, my talents, my flaws, and to stop this incessant worrying that I can’t be loved as I am.’

The question I am confronted with fairly often by clients in response to statements about self love is “How?”

“How do I love myself?”

How do you learn to love yourself if you have never felt that love or that acceptance from another with enough consistency to matter?

How do you learn to love yourself if self love, self worth or self regard was not shown to you by another in their actions, in their relationship with themselves.

How do you learn to love yourself if you were not just allowed to be yourself and not be judged against an idea of who you are told you need to be, or who or what you believe you need or are expected to be – be that by the family, the community, or the society or culture that you grow within.

How do you learn to love yourself when you made choices that were less than ideal and they or you were judged wrong, or bad, or worse still evil – rather than just what they were, bad choices that could be corrected. That they were mistakes to be learnt from rather than conditions that became labels to wear along with any incumbent sense of guilt or shame that went with them.

It is worth mentioning that it is not always others that are responsible for the acts or events that can cause us to think less of ourselves, but our own private assumptions.

There are so many variations to this too. The image we form of ourselves and the resultant relationship we have to that image can be the result of everything from a persistent chipping away at our sense of well being, or the result of a sudden event or crisis – one moment that shifts perspective so violently, so completely, that the world just does not look the same again afterwards.

We are, in no insignificant way, shaped by the events of our lives. We know this to be true. But, by the same token, our futures are not defined by them, not in reality. It might feel like sometimes – and yes, some choices will certainly give shape to our destiny, but how we choose to go forward from this moment – none of us know all of the variables, all of the possibilities or potentials. In this regard, trajectories in life can change.

What gets fixed can be our conscious or unconscious attachment to a version of who or what we think we need to be.

This can show up in all manner of ways.

It can be as simple as thinking that you needs to be pretty in order to be loved. Or strong, or successful.

Part of the problem is that these things can be true too. We know we can, and/or some, or maybe many others are, attracted by looks and status. This are facts driven by genetic components to promote the choice of mate and the continuation of the species.

This is true. It is just that this is not the complete truth.

So how do you learn to love yourself?

How do you learn self acceptance, self worth and self esteem in the face of such things that can seem so real, so pressing?

The fact is there are numerous paths to self love.

To be loved by another in a way that shows you your worth and then realise that you can love yourself in that way to because you come to believe it. This is one way.

To find yourself loving, caring, and valuing another’s life – or the life of the world in any form, and then realising that you can afford yourself the same regard.

In both these cases it can be a simple question of realising something that you hadn’t realised before.

It is just as true that while a crisis or a trauma can be slow or sudden so can healing. Well being flows both ways. Only there is perhaps a distinct difference.

Once you learn to love yourself in an authentic way, once you take responsibility for yourself, once you claim – or perhaps the better term is feel the power that comes with that responsibility – once you realise that it is you, then the version of you that is wholler, the more complete version of you, the version of you that accepts those parts that were once considered separate or broken, the you that can be in the moment with any feeling, that is no longer steered by the thoughts of past events or any attachment to a version of yourself that is either not realisable or sustainable – then you can let go and just be who and what you are – and more over, allow yourself to become what you have the potential to be – by choosing it, from moment to moment going forward.

As a starting place you can choose honesty. Be honest about what you feel and think about yourself. What are the assumptions that you have made – what is the version of yourself you have imagined being – or more to the point attached yourself too? Remember, it is not about not having dreams of goals, it is about attaching to them, identifying with them. It is the difference between saying ‘I am a filmmaker/doctor/rock god’ and I want to make a film, help heal others, or play music to an audience.

There can be all sorts of thoughts an emotions that get tangled in this process and to disentangle these things where they have become knotted, this is part of the process to healing.

This can take time – or, it might take no time at all. It is not always essential to drag trough the past to disentangle all of our identifications. It can be as simple as letting as much of that old stuff go and learning to be present with what is in the moment; To be with what arrises without attachment to the versions of yourself that have populated your past.

Yes, they are all parts of your story, they are all valid aspects of your history, that are the events that preceded this moment and, in no insignificant way, made you the person you are, but they are not you now, and they are not the totality of the factors that will influence what you can become going forward.

Just be as present to what is as you can and move forward with what is.

Which leads me to another point.

Do you feel safe to do so? If not, how do you get to that place of feeling safe?

It can happen suddenly. You can just realise you are safe, that the past is gone. That the events that once caused you to flinch are no longer there. That your imaginings of awful things are just that, imaginings – unfounded ones at that.

Be in the moment and be with what is actually happening.

Act from this place.

Again, if you feel unsafe how might you resolve that out. How do you get to a place where you do?

You have a mechanism for prediction, and you want it. It is there to serve you. You know that the flame will burn us if you hold our hand in it for too long. So why does imagination run away with us on occasion? Why might we end up predicting events that will, in all likelihood never happen to us? Or might never happen to us again?

While it is not beyond reason to be cautious it is more than a pain in the arse to imprisoned by unfounded or irrational fears.

As mentioned above, these are usually the result of an assumption, or an identification with the ways we want things to be rather than the way they are – or a distorted perception of the real dangers or threats.

The process of balancing these perceptions or distortions out can sometimes be accelerated with the help of another. This is a large part of my own practice.

The answer is invariably come back to the moment and learning to attend to what is. Reside in your experience of being. What are the facts of this moment.

In addition to this – part of the facts of the moment if you will is this – that there are things outside of yourself that you will never know, and aspects of yourself that you will never know too. I often refer to this as the mystery within and the mystery without.

So while being present with yourself is about being present with what you do know, at some level is will be about accepting that there are facts that you do not. Your relationship to life is also about your relation ship to this truth too.

With regard to developing this presence a meditational practice can be helpful. To be with yourself. In regard to this I want to add that meditation – at least the practice of sitting and remaining present – is not about the act of sitting in and of itself. This is why I refer to it as the practice of meditation. For me the practice of sitting is about the practice of getting used to being present with what is arising. the more familiar you get with the practice, the more awareness you can bring to every area of your life.

This practice of awareness, of being conscious of what is going on in the present can help you to identify and then strip away the associations and attachments to ideas, or version of who or what you thought or felt you needed to be, until what is left is what is. Which is whatever you are in that moment, and the choices that you then make from that place – because, as I have mentioned above, it is not about not having goals or desires, but rather just being aware that that is all they are – that you do not have to identify with them in order to act towards them.

Loving yourself, in this light, can be considered loving the experience of being you as it unfolds from one moment to the next.

Loving yourself is not then loving an idea of who or what you think you are or who or what you think you need to be, rather just loving the experience you are having of being. Which begins with being in honest with yourself about what your experience actually is, and then accepting it.

In someways it can be said to be intimacy; the willingness to be with all that is there in relationship, be it with yourself, another, or the world. It is not uncommon for one to influence the other.

For those who are curious to go deeper and would appreciate some guidance or support, this is part of what I do and you can book in with me for a private session here.

For those who would like to explore their own process through a unique practice, I have a set of free set of exercises here.

You’ll also get an invite to the paid coaching program of the same name when you sign up. It’s not essential, just there for those who want to go that bit deeper, further, or faster.

As a final note, loving yourself then is not so much creating a version of yourself that you will love, but rather, loving the experience of being you as you are, and then living life from that place.

In the first version you need to imagine a version of yourself that can be loved and then act towards it, in the latter, you start by loving who you are now, with all of your perceived flaws and failing of your past, but you love the experience of you now, and the love and care you show to yourself, is there, and informs the choices you make that follow.

Book a consultation with Clive