My evolution of self care to self love
The inner work of self love has been a consistent exploration for me the last few years. As I have been putting in the work to heal from chronic illness, this healing process has shined a bright light on self love, or the lack thereof. When I first started looking deeper, I saw self love and self care interchangeably. I recognized that I wasn’t taking care of myself in the way that my body required to feel at its best. I saw self love as establishing self care in my life to better take care of myself. I also saw it as slowing down, learning how to rest, and listening to the whispers before they were shouts. As someone who operated with a go go go mentality for years, self care for me looked like prioritizing a balance of being versus doing. I had always related success and feeling like I was good enough to how much I could accomplish and get done. But this pattern of always doing had taken its toll on me and my body started to show me something needed to change.
I started to incorporate forms of self care that resonated with me. For me, this looked like taking baths, establishing a yoga and meditation practice, being in nature more, going for walks, breathwork, putting on music and dancing just for fun, prioritizing sleep, getting a massage, sitting and soaking up sunshine, practicing gratitude, positive affirmations, taking naps, more gentle movement, infrared sauna, hydration, dry brushing, and drinking less alcohol. In theory, I also felt like it included things like putting my own needs first, but as a recovering people pleaser, this has always been more challenging.
For me, the introduction of self care was more about taking care of myself from a physical perspective and getting healthy. I still believe taking care of our health in this way is incredibly important, and prioritizing some of these rituals can have a great impact on our well being. However, the deeper I explore this inner work, I feel like I was ignoring the concept of self love being the relationship we have with ourselves. The way we see ourselves and treat ourselves, the inner dialogue, and the am I good enough question. When I began to distinguish this “self love” from the above “self care” I described, I realized I had a lot of work to do.
As I reflected on my own inner dialogue, a common theme for me was being enough. I will be good enough when I have achieved this goal. I will be good enough when others see me as successful. I will be good enough when I make this amount of money. I will be good enough when I am healed. I will be good enough once I can get pregnant. I will be good enough when…
I was looking for validation from the outside. I wanted to be seen a certain way and then I would be worthy of love. For some reason I had put everyone in my life on a pedestal, like their opinion of me was more important than my own. I was a chronic people pleaser, desperately wanting to be needed and being needed would make me feel worthy. I found myself always giving and saying yes to everyone and everything in order to receive the validation I was looking for. I allowed everyone else’s approval and praise to make me feel whole, worthy and successful, but then as soon as that outward validation goes away, so does my sense of self.
It wasn’t until I finally gave myself permission to set boundaries that I began to notice a shift. I learned about my unique human design and I started to use what human design refers to as my strategy and authority to make decisions differently. Instead of using my mind to make decisions, I started to trust my gut and only say yes to things that felt like a 100% yes in my gut. Everything else was a no. This was a big change for me as someone who used to say yes to everything. This became a shift from spending all of my time trying to prove myself, and doing the things I thought I “should” do, to spending my time doing things that my gut felt energized by. Human design gave me the language and tools to understand how to begin to build these healthier boundaries. These boundaries have allowed me to see that the more we give to ourselves, the more energized and satisfied we become, the more we then have to give to others. I am learning that making decisions in this way is actually not selfish. Everyone around me benefits when I am more satisfied and I am no longer putting the expectation on others to fulfill me in a way that I needed to do myself. I am learning to trust my gut for guidance instead of caring what other people think. Slowly, the more I allow myself to make decisions in this way, the more I recognize an ease and flow that was unfamiliar prior to this. This has helped me to see there was nothing I needed to achieve or prove on the outside to be worthy of love, but that I am enough exactly how I am today and every day. This inner work is improving my experience with the outside world as opposed to things on the outside being responsible for improving how I feel about myself.
I am beginning to see my own success not in how much I get done or what I can achieve. It is an incredibly difficult mind shift, but I am starting to see loving myself each and every day no matter what happens on the outside as the success I am working towards. Finding ways to take care of myself in this way is helping me find more inner peace.
I am just beginning to notice the shift of what loving myself in this way feels like. It is easy to slip back into my old conditioned way of thinking and acting, and it takes daily reminders to recondition myself in this way. As I have learned with all healing, there is not really a destination to achieve. It is continuing to show up and practice loving myself in all these ways each and every day. It is speaking to myself the way I would speak to my best friend. It is not needing to ever prove myself to anyone. It is setting healthy boundaries. It is loving my strengths and weaknesses equally and recognizing this is all part of me. It is accepting my imperfections and flaws. It is also recognizing that some days are going to be easier than others. It is much easier to love myself when things are going well in my life. The challenge will be to practice this self love throughout all of my life experiences, and not just when it comes easy and naturally. This is the ongoing practice.
My hope is that we may all find the beauty within us, the differences that make us unique and special, and love ourselves fiercely.
Some things to reflect on…
What does self love mean to you? What kind of relationship do you have with yourself? Does setting boundaries come naturally to you? What is your inner voice saying? Do you feel like you have something to prove?
