Self-Love 365

We're on Day 3 of our Self-Love Reset process, and it's time to bring it to the present. How are you feeling about Self-Love--and your practice of it--right now? If you had to define Self-Love--in your own way--what would you say? It's very helpful, actually, to have a working definition of Self-Love, not just for the reset process, but also so that you have it to weight your own feelings and behaviors against during times of stress, transition, or just when you're feeling like checking in. Throughout our journey, we're staying in constant conversation with ourselves, so this is one more conversation you can have when you're looking for something to talk about! 

During a Self-Love Reset (like the one we're doing this week!), it's important to take stock of how far we've come. Give yourself credit, as the authoress Alison Rachel says. Because we're so intent on building a healthy Self-Love practice, sometimes we can get too mired in the "process" of it all. Am I doing this right? What can I do better/more/intentionally/differently? That dedication will only be elevated by reminding ourselves of the hard work we've done, of the progress we've made, and of the changes we've enacted. Think of how good it feels to give or receive praise for a "job well done." Or how good it feels to be noticed when we do something selfless. Well, we want to experience those feelings within our Self-Love practice as well! Notice yourself today. Pat yourself on the back. Give yourself credit. YOU ARE MORE THAN ENOUGH. YOU'RE AWESOME! Celebrate!!!

Getting overwhelmed? Stressed in your daily or work life? Feeling anxious about the state of the world? The last thing in the world you should do is to take a Self-Love BREAK. Instead, give yourself a Self-Love Breather and work through the feelings. In fact, if you feel you need a break from Self-Love, then it's likely you need to give yourself time off from all the other things in your life that are making you feel stressed, overwhelmed, tired, and anxious. Self-Love is the cure for those feelings, not the cause! Because life can (and will) get hectic, it's actually wise to schedule in Self-Love Resets as part of your healthy Self-Love practice. Start by taking a breather--meaning, take a day or a week to notice how you're feeling and how you're behaving and whether those feelings and behaviors track with what you know to be true about a healthy Self-Love practice. If not, adjustments can be made without losing steam or focus. Breathe. Check-in. Pause. But don't take a break from Self-Love!! Continue to love yourself, no matter what.

If you have ever been at a point in your life when you were running the other direction from love, that's a challenge to consider when building a healthy self-love practice. If we weren't brought up to seek out loving relationships, then we may still be enacting this pattern unconsciously. Be very intentional about who you surround yourself with. Take a look at your relationships: are they loving? do they support your own self-love relationship? If not, evaluate what to do so that you can practice self-love within a community of love. Self-Love is independent but it doesn't happen in isolation. Also, Self-Love doesn't stop. It's constant, consistent, and is practiced on a continuum. Days where you "forget" to love yourself are signals that you're facing the challenge of a lack of love, or a penchant towards a lack of love, and it's time to reevaluate!  

Today's challenge is the Very Big Topic of Addiction + Abuse, or bad habits that border on becoming addiction or abuse. Like many of our other challenges this week, addiction, abuse, and even bad habits, can mask other feelings, make us act out of character, cause us to prioritize wants over needs, and just leave us out of balance in general. This leads to a spiral downward that is very tough to get out of, and very had to "love" yourself out of. For that reason, this challenge is vitally important to have strategies in place for--because this type of challenge isn't typically a "one off." Most addictions hang around for a long, long time...if not forever. Don't hope that it's not going to show up again! Have a strategy in place that you can rely on in the event that it does come back around. One strategy is to put a support network into place, and to make sure people in that network can identify (not just sympathize) with what you're going through. For this strategy to work, we must practice honesty, vulnerability, and self-compassion. Remember: self-love is a practice! Not a single act of becoming perfect. :)

Today's challenge is depression--either situational or a general feeling of sadness--and isolation, which typically results from overwhelming feelings of sadness. Depression gets in the way of our self-love practice because, while feeling depressed, we tend to focus on only that one feeling. All other feelings get shoved aside, including hope and happiness--two very important feelings that engender authentic loving acts. To put it another way, rather than focusing on our need for self-love, which can be met in a variety of ways, we focus on just the sadness. This means we can't "see a way out" back to loving ourselves. In my experience, I've found that setting up a support person for various specific situations I find myself in during a bout of depression is the strategy that works best against this challenge. Importantly, this strategy requires pre-planning and communicating to the support person what their role is--all done while we are NOT feeling sad! 

Disclaimer! I'm not a medical professional nor am I licensed to give any type of medical advice. The challenge and strategy talked about in this episode are framed from my own perspective and born out of my own experiences. Please, if you are feeling like your depression is not manageable on your own or with that trusted support person, reach out to your therapist or doctor. 

Overconfident/hubris - strategy is authenticity & growth

Self-Love is not a spring; it's a marathon! We practice healthy self-love in order to build up lifelong habits and a perpetual mindset of showing love towards ourselves. If you're paying particular attention to your self-love practice, you may want to add it to your "to-do" list as an intention or goal--or you may want to add daily tasks of self-love in order to build the habit--but self-love isn't negotiable based on mood or other tasks that need to get done.  It can't be carried over from week to week--something you'll get to when you have time. No matter what, self-love must remain a priority. As you focus on this practice, set a "Self-Love reminder" in your phone or calendar to go off at the same time every day. This will both remind you of your priorities and serve as a way to cheer yourself on in your self-love marathon!

Do you have anxiety, or are you often worried? Are you often uncertain, which leads to anxiety and/or worry? While this is totally normal given the unprecedented times we live in, being anxious, worried, and uncertain don't lead to a healthy self-love practice. When we're in these states of mind, we are expending all our mental energy on THEM...not on loving ourselves. The strategy for this challenge is to ground ourselves in reality, to remind ourselves of what is true. One way you can do this is by checking in, non-judgmentally, with your sense: what can you see, smell, hear, taste, and touch? Those things are true. Thoughts are not always true! When you're anxious, practice a strategy that brings your mind back to reality. And show yourself even more love, patience, compassion, and understanding until the anxiety/worry/uncertainty has gone away.

We live in a world that expects us to go-go-go, and do more-more-more. In reality, though, there are only so many hours in the day--and some are needed for downtime. If we start to feel pressed for time, we start to feel stressed. Then, we start rushing. But rushing or working harder/faster doesn't bring more hours to our day. In fact, it makes time pass by more quickly! And we certainly don't enjoy those hours. If you start feeling stressed and overworked in your daily life, then it's going to affect your self-love practice. You may feel like you don't have time to love yourself. (In fact, taking breaks is an integral part of a healthy self-love practice.) So remember that time is finite, there's no benefit to rushing, and you're only one person. For your mantra today, remind yourself: I deserve to take a break. Move slowly today, and see how it feels.