One Day Self-Love Challenge

Yes, I do believe that one of the single most effective and powerful things we can do to participate in the Divine’s transformation of our own lives is to learn to love ourselves more.  Time and time again, as I work with people, when we get to the core of the problem, be it limiting belief, addiction, etc., it is a lack of self-love.  The thing that’s behind the thing that’s behind the thing is that they have placed a very low value on their life and don’t believe they deserve to be happy.    It is the most messed up thing of all and most people are barely aware of it. I genuinely think people want to be happy.  Yet deep down in places they haven’t explored often, they don’t believe they deserve to be happy or are worth it.  It’s the most devious trick in humanity.  Somewhere in our life we were told that we aren’t worth it.  We either were treated that way by those who were supposed to love and protect us when we were young and vulnerable, or because of decisions we made in the past, mistakes, we buy into the lie that we don’t have value and we aren’t worth being loved.  And yet we can spend our whole lives trying to prove that we are worth being loved and go to incredible lengths to try to show everyone that we are of value.

But you don’t have to prove anything.  Let me say it again.  You have nothing to prove.  The fact that God created you is enough.  That oxygen flows in and out of your lungs, bringing life to your blood cells, is enough.  What if instead of constantly trying to prove ourselves to ourselves and everyone around us, we just acknowledged that because we are alive and loved by the Divine, that we are enough.

Tomorrow is the one day self-love challenge.  Now if you just read that sentence and rolled your eyes a little, I understand.  I used to respond in the same manner.  And then I realized that being a control freak and a perfectionist, and being harder on myself than anyone else hadn’t really gotten me the things in life I want… peace, happiness, self-control, etc.  Has the way you’ve been living your life taken you to the heights of your dreams?  So why not take one day and commit to loving yourself?  Why not take one day to be completely and utterly gracious with yourself?  Why not take one day and instead of criticizing yourself for making a mistake, simply affirm that you love yourself anyways, just the way you are?  Here are a few places to start...

1.  Make the commitment to love yourself for 1 day:  Make the commitment and choose love for yourself.  Do it now.  If love is the greatest gift we have to give, what could be possibly wrong with loving yourself for one day in all your thoughts and actions?  Go ahead and literally write it out right now or type it in an email to yourself or send it as a text to yourself.  "Tomorrow I will commit my entire day to practicing self love."

2.  Affirm yourself verbally throughout the day:  Think of the most loving thing you could say to yourself, and repeat regularly throughout the day.  Get up and repeat it OUT LOUD to yourself first thing.  Write it on a post it note and stick it on your bathroom mirror before you go to bed tonight.  If you are having trouble coming up with something loving to say to yourself, try starting here.

3.  Forgive yourself immediately after any intentional or unintentional mistake:  So you just screwed up and maybe no one else knows it, but you do.  Immediately forgive yourself.  If it helps, you can allow yourself to feel your remorse and then say... "I totally and completely forgive myself for ____________________ and I release myself of all my anger and all my disappointment."  Try it.  Forgiveness is incredibly powerful and it is the one of the most freeing things to experience.  In fact, maybe you want to start your day by forgiving yourself for everything you've done that you have yet to forgive yourself for.

4.  Give yourself a gift:  Choose one thing to do for yourself that you know brings you life and you know cares for your soul and heart.  Maybe you love going for a run but haven't had time lately.  Maybe there is a good book you just haven't allowed yourself to read lately because you haven't had time.  Read it.  Maybe there is a friend that always brings you life that you haven't spent time with or talk to lately.  Ask them to hang out or simply call them and just talk.

Taking the one day self-love challenge is a gift that you can give to yourself with no strings attached.  It's only one day.  How bad could it possibly be?  A better question and motivation is, how incredible might it be?  What if you discover some things about yourself?  Wouldn't it be worth it?

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to email me via the website and I will be glad to get back to you before you wake up tomorrow.  What do you say?  ARE YOU WORTH IT?

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“The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.”  - C.G. Jung

"Loving yourself…does not mean being self-absorbed or narcissistic, or disregarding others. Rather it means welcoming yourself as the most honored guest in your own heart, a guest worthy of respect, a lovable companion. "- Margo Anand

"Well-ordered self-love is right and natural." - Thomas Aquinas

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The Pleasure and the Pain

There is so much to be said and written about concerning having the courage to be honest with ourselves.  Navigating the path of being present with our own feelings and owning them.  There is so much more to be explored on the topic of staring fear and pain directly in the eye of our own soul and not flinching or closing off to it.  For some this is much easier than for others.  Some of us have been formed and trained from the time we were tiny babies to face reality and to be present with all emotions.  But most of us, if we are honest, would rather not face our fears and pain head on. We have learned over time to close ourselves off from pain and fear.  We text, we skype, we chat, we drink, we smoke, we enter relationships, we exit relationships, we shop, we consume, we eat, we facebook, we do anything we can do in order to stop feeling pain as soon as we recognize it in our life (yes I recognize a run-on sentence when I see one too).  This is what addiction is all about.  Avoiding pain and fear.  Unfortunately, when we minimize the pain in our lives we also minimize the joy and elation as well.  As researcher Brene Brown has so eloquently and poignantly expressed in ‘The Gift of Imperfection’, we cannot mitigate some emotions and stay open to others.  We are either suppressing all of our emotions/feelings or we are embracing all of emotions/feelings.

It is not possible to hide from pain and fear and yet at the same time embrace Joy and Love.  It cannot be done because it doesn’t work that way.  If we want to be filled with Joy and Love, we must be willing to go to our pain and to our fears.  We must beg for the courage to look our pains and fears directly in the eye and not blink.  We must be willing to sit with that pain and fear and grow comfortable with it.

This is not easy.  If you try this and you aren’t used to it, you will quickly feel overwhelmed and have the sensation of a hot white fire rising up deep from within your chest.  You will probably believe that you’re going to have a meltdown.  Maybe you should back off at that point… just for a little while.  Maybe you need to find a good friend or professional to help you through this process.  But we must return to those things that we have shut ourselves off from for so long or they will forever be embedded in us.  We’ll wonder why we do the things that we don’t want to do.  Why we hurt the people we don’t want to hurt.

Acknowledging our pain, sitting with it, and then working through and past the pain is the only way to move forward.  And if this thought makes you sick to your stomach or seems ridiculous to you… you probably have some pain to acknowledge.

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“We cannot selectively numb emotions, when we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive emotions.”

Brene Brown

"Owning our story can be hard, but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it.  Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy--the experiences that make us the most vulnerable.  Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.”

Brene Brown

Now is the time for this lesson

I have spent a good portion of my life trying to control the world around me in order for me to feel better about myself and safe and secure.  The problem with living my life that way is that I spent so much energy trying to control the ‘world’ around me that I didn’t have the energy to actually enjoy and live my life.  I had set the conditions of my life so that I could only be happy if certain things in my life were a certain way.  This meant I spent my energy trying to control friends, co-workers, strangers, housing, family, environment, food, etc. (like I said, pretty much anything in the world around me).  What I have recently learned is that if I let go of trying to control the comfort level of my life and trust that the Divine will provide what I need, I have a vast amount of energy because I’m not spending it trying to re-arrange the world!  As I look back, I believe God has been trying to teach this lesson of trust and letting go for many years now. As I recognize that the Divine has been trying to teach me this for years, it is easy for me to begin to feel shame and regret for not learning this lesson earlier.  I can easily get down on myself for not being smart enough or disciplined enough or aware enough or ______________ enough.  You fill in the blank, I’m sure you’re as adept at criticizing yourself as I am at myself.

But this is the beauty of lessons the Divine is trying to teach us and wants us to learn.  It doesn’t matter if this is the first time you’ve come across the lesson (the one the God has for you) or if you have come across it 1,000 times… now is the time to receive it.  It is here before you now so that you can learn from the lesson and grow.

Sometimes we learn these lessons only to realize that we already knew this, deep within ourselves.  We say, “oh yeah, I knew that.  I can’t believe I forgot such a valuable principle.”  It’s like finding an old toy in the attic and remembering how fond of it you were and its new all over again with that same sense of awe and fascination.  Or, we learn the lesson and it blows our mind and we wonder, how have I never been confronted with this truth before?  How has this never been revealed to me until now?

But whatever the circumstance, don’t play the shame game.  Don’t regret that you haven’t learned it before.  Just remember that the only truly important thing about the lesson is that regardless of how many times its been laid before you, now is the time to pick it up.  Now is the time to learn the lesson.

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What are the lessons before you these days?  What is the Divine bringing up within your heart?  What life experiences have brought you to this place at this time to learn this lesson?