11 days ago I issued the ‘One Day Self-Love Challenge’. I’ve never gotten so much feedback and so many responses as I have on that one day. I’m still getting emails from people telling me about their experience on that day and the subsequent days since. One of the things I knew would arise for most participants was emotional roadblocks. It happens every time we set our mind on change in our lives. All kinds of feelings of unworthiness and shame arise almost immediately after deciding to value and love ourselves. Steven Pressfield calls this ‘resistance’. One reader wrote, “It’s just so ironic how I’m supposed to be loving myself during a time when I feel so completely irrelevant”. But it’s precisely the recognition of these negative feelings that confirm that we are in fact on the right path. Resistance almost always shows up when we begin to make a change that might lead us from the comfortable into something that is new and healthy. And trust me, making major changes to the core of your belief system about yourself WILL be uncomfortable. The more you can be ok with the uncomfortable, the better quality of life you will have. Mastin Kipp says it this way… “The more you can learn to live with necessary risk, the higher quality of life you will have.”
Now, let’s get right to some grounded action steps that can really pack a punch. Self-loving mental and verbal affirmations and attitudes are necessary on your journey. But loving yourself through actions puts greater power behind your transformation. Using affirmations helps to change your belief system and can be a shock to your long held current paradigms. But self-loving actions actively tear down your old limiting belief system while simultaneously reinforcing your new beliefs.
What are self-loving actions? Anything you do that effectively cares for yourself. Going for a run. Eating a healthy meal. Not smoking. Walking away from self-destructive relationships. Engaging those people that always seem to lift you up. Writing. Painting. Reading. Anything that is good for you.
When your actions show you that you love yourself, it is one of the most powerful affirmations. It cannot be argued against. And you feel this. For many people it is extremely difficult to change their thought patterns because they run into their old beliefs like a brick wall built to keep them a prisoner. But actions bypass the thought patterns all together and can be like a wrecking ball to limiting-beliefs.
In the next 3 minutes, determine exactly what loving action you are going to do for yourself. DO NOT put this off. Decide right now and commit to it. One action of self-love today. Do it for the love of yourself. One final thought. Don’t let this exercise become a list of things you ‘should be’ doing or ‘shouldn’t be’ doing. That’s like waiving a white flag of surrender to shame. As soon as you begin to think about all the ‘shoulds’, simply let those thoughts flow on by like a toy boat on a mighty river.
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"Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you." - Thomas Jefferson
"Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often." - Mark Twain
"There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction." - John F. Kennedy
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