What does it mean for our understanding and consciousness to love ourselves unconditionally? What does it mean for our emotional state? Loving yourself unconditionally means that you fully accept who you are while remaining open to growth and change, you trust yourself to make decisions and can make them quickly based on a healthy combination of intuition and logic, and you will know in advance how your decisions and actions will affect you as well as have a fairly accurate idea of how they might affect others. This awareness and trust in yourself can be developed no matter who you are or what your life looks like, and it begins with cultivating unconditional love for yourself, which will then allow you to unconditionally love others as well. It begins with you.
There are three major aspects to discovering your own love for yourself: knowing yourself, accepting yourself, and trusting yourself. We’ll cover each one in more detail, and keep in mind that this is an ongoing process of inner work. You may begin to think about these things immediately, or it might take a while before something reminds you of it, but I hope that you can gain some insight into this process here.
Know Yourself
As with anything or anyone else, you cannot love yourself if you don’t know yourself, and knowing yourself involves much more than listing off your job, city or town, and what your family circumstance is. These are all external things that do not define who you are, even though they are part of your life.
Who are you beneath the surface of the superficial life you live? Who are you deep down? What do you desire deep in your soul? What dreams remain unfulfilled? What creations have you put on the back burner? What adventures? And why? What are you inspired by? What fascinates you? Do you nurture that part of yourself?
Getting to know who you are deep down also involves getting beyond what your life has conditioned you to believe. Through repetition, things become integrated into our subconscious and then manifest themselves as unconscious behaviors. Sometimes these behaviors are wonderful, such as walking, driving, and breathing. The subconscious takes care of anything you do that is habitual and repetitive, and it does the same thing with informational feedback from your life experience. This feedback is presented in the form of everything the human body can pick up with its senses as well as everything the energetic aspects of our being can interpret. Whatever beliefs are instilled in us through repetition, especially before age seven, is integrated into our subconscious belief patterns. We had no say in the creation of our own belief systems, so it’s important to question what you believe, why you believe it, and whether that belief is serving you or not.
You can redefine your own beliefs. I’m not referring to simply saying affirmations or journaling about your daily tasks. Think about things that you imagine as truth, things that have likely been repetitive patterns within your life. For some, these behavioral patterns will be obvious; for others, not so much. Practice introspection to observe whether any beliefs you touch on give you anxiety or make you angry in any way. These emotionally triggered responses are signals from your body that something was programmed into your belief system that goes against who you are at your core.
Accept Yourself
Self-acceptance means accepting yourself on all levels, no matter what you may have done in the past or in any other plane of existence. This means that, no matter what you or any other version of you has ever done, you know that everything is okay in the bigger picture. Your only real task during this step is to accept yourself despite all mistakes, regrets, and so-called “bad” choices. Did you really make a decision you consider “bad,” or have others reprimanded you for decisions you had to make one way or another? Did you take this type of criticism personally on an unconscious level, allowing it to damage your inner sense of self-worth? This is more common than many of us may realize at first.
Forgive yourself for anything you might still be holding against yourself or carrying around with you. Was the mistake in question understandable on some level? Was there a reason, and you’re beating yourself up over it because you hurt someone inadvertently? Know that everything will be alright and let go of the negative feelings about it by allowing your body to express them in some way. You may need to do this several times before all of the layers of old emotions are purged, but you will feel lighter for it. You may end up crying, exercising (recommended for anger), writing, expressing yourself musically, or any other therapeutic activity that you enjoy.
Accepting yourself also means accepting your humanity as well as your divinity, as discussed in last month’s articles. While you are human and make mistakes, on another level you are an eternal being having a human experience… for the experience. All experiences are valid and important, even those we are outraged or disgusted by. They allow us to learn more about the spectrum on which we exist on so many levels. If everything were as black and white as we tend to act like it is, all humans would look only two ways. Instead, we have such a diverse human species that no two people have the exact same DNA, not even identical twins, as was once believed.*
Trust Yourself
Do you trust yourself? Your ability to figure things out? Your ability to make decisions and handle any and all circumstances that might come your way realistically? While many of us have a basic sense of being able to make decisions and handle life and all of its interesting moments, it often runs much deeper than that.
Do you ever feel worried? Anxious? Stressed out? Overwhelmed? In some cases, this can be an indicator that you don’t trust yourself at a level deep enough to make progress from where you are. So, how do you practice trusting yourself and build upon the trust that already exists?
Whenever you tell yourself you’re going to do something, do it. No excuses, even if you try to talk yourself out of it, even if the excuses start popping up in your head. One example of this is telling yourself, “I’m going to do yoga for 20 minutes and meditate for 20 minutes,” and then not doing anything at all. This is essentially your ego mind trying to keep you stuck in the status quo, so the more often you can keep your word to yourself on things that are good for you, especially things you have to do that you don’t necessarily want to, the stronger that level of trust becomes.
Self-care on a physical level is important for this aspect of unconditional self-love; showing yourself that you love yourself by making sure you are eating properly for your body type and lifestyle (good food should make you feel alert and energized, not tired and sluggish), caring for your body in whatever ways make you feel the best, and despite this seeming counter-intuitive, not beating up on yourself if you happen to make a mistake.
Most importantly for this step is to nurture yourself from within by being kind, compassionate, and loving toward yourself. If someone screaming at you drill-sergeant style doesn’t do it for you, then why would you allow your thoughts to speak to you in a similar way? They key isn’t to crash-diet yourself into a new way of life (and I don’t just mean food). The key is to love yourself into a new level of consciousness so that your new life can unfold with as little forced effort as possible. Are you more likely to be successful long-term if you work yourself into the ground to get there and reprimand yourself for every shortcoming? Or if you work from a place of inspiration and encourage yourself along the way?
When you build trust in yourself, you will find that others trust you more as well. The less you let yourself down, the more capable you will be of not letting others down; not to mention the clarity and insight you will gain along the way. Your life is only yours, and if you don’t show yourself the love, acceptance, and trust that you wish to experience, then why should others show you these things? This happens on an energetic level first, and many people can sense it if your words, actions, and energies aren’t aligned.
All of this mindfulness and inner work will lead you to stepping into your power and authenticity. What is authenticity? Knowing who you are, trusting yourself, and being confident enough in all of the aforementioned to be transparent and vulnerable when necessary. Begin with what is within your control: yourself.
For more information about the Mindfulness Movement or the International Mindfulness Federation, please visit:
http://executivecoachinguniversity.com/mindfulness-movement
*Identical Twins:
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/11/health/11real.html
