The two wings of Self-Love
Most people dream of love as the ultimate experience in life, and we will go to great lengths in our quest for the one and only or finding our soul mate. The paradox of the ultimate love story, is that we must first cultivate love in ourselves, before we can expect it from others and before we are able to love another person unconditionally. We have to become the perfect partner to ourselves, before we can open our heart to receive the love we long for.
Self-love is a balance.
The best thing about self-love, is that can be practiced in anything that adds value to you life, from your food to your habits, rituals and most important of all, the way you carry yourself in life. Self-love is a powerful key that will open the door to the experience of empowerment and liberation - and yes- love from other people.
But first we have to come to a place of complete acceptance of our life situation and a deep reverence for ourselves. We need to come to a place of peace and a place of balance: Balance between work and play, action and patience, spending and saving, leaving and staying. When we fail to achieve balance in our life, we become either complacent or burned out and turn away from our birthright to experience joy, love and abundance in life.
Finding balance is all about trial an error. We might stumble, fall or get lost in the process, but when we come back to loving ourselves, we will see how life begins to love us back as an immediate reward.
Self-love as a two-winged creature of Trust and Dare.
Look at love like a Butterfly: In its cocoon stage is dependent on its surroundings. Metaphorically speaking, when we are in our first stages of life, when we are children, we are dependent on others giving us shelter and food to survive. But we need to step out of the cocoon at some point. When we have been there long enough, when we can feel our wings ready, we must transform our concept of Love to match a new stage of Life.
The first wing is the wing of Trust. We must trust that life will support us, take us where we need to be and provide everything we need on our journey. This calls for unconditional love towards ourselves. Our holy hearts. Because the truth is, we will not love ourselves more, when we have bigger bank accounts, lose or gain weight or undergo cosmetic procedures. We might feel more confident in the world, yes, but the problem is it will not satisfy our souls.
True self-love is when you appreciate where you are in life in this very moment and trust who you are, regardless of any transformation it will take you through. (Take this piece of advice from a woman who learned to love herself as a bald, scarred cancer patient fighting for her life.) The minute we learn to love ourselves exactly like we are, we cultivate compassion for our holy selves. The soul of who we are, our essence, can step forward, and then something magical happens: We free up energy and space to allow a bigger love to enter our lives, just because we trust that we are worthy exactly like we are.
The second wing is the wing of the Dare. Dare asks us to grow into our bigger selves with focus is on taking action towards improving ourselves and our lives. Improving yourself and your life is an act of self-love because it means you recognize that you deserve more in life. More peace. More love. More abundance. More of all the good things that are your very birthright.
Daring to step up, learn something new or simply dreaming for a better tomorrow is the self-love we need to fuel our journey. It also teaches us not to settle for situations and people that don’t encourage our dreams or allow us to grow, which will result in healthy boundaries. As we have emerged from the cocoon into a beautiful butterfly creature, it is of utmost importance to set our own boundaries in order to protect our space and our beautiful bodies against harm.
This is why bravery is also one of the greatest gifts we can give our kids. The bravery of self-love doubles as an act of self protection. The art of learning to have our best interests at heart while working to be able to access all the bounty and beauty life has to offer, is a life-long journey.
If you have any tips on how you practice self-love, please share in the comments below.
Lots of (Self-) love
SEMINE