I love myself, just the way I am.

Love: a concept that has inspired music and art and theatre; a concept that has changed lives and broken hearts and moved mountains. Love is so bountiful, so endless, so abundant. There are so many different types of love: romantic love, love for your children, love for your parents, love for your friends, love of art, love of food, passionate love, life long love, love at first sight… the list goes on. And yet with all of this BIG love in our lives, why is self love so challenging? Why is unconditional self-love so unattainable?

February is the hallmark month for all things love, and since childhood we are conditioned to associate the month o February with love. Whether you reject the idea of Valentines Day, or dress up in pink and red every day, there is no denying that love is in the air this month. Let’s take this as an opportunity to reflect on self love, and how it shows up in our lives.

With all of it’s power and wonder, love is often only reserved for others. Why is loving yourself SO challenging? Why do we say “you’re your own worst critic” and not “you’re your own biggest fan”? How can we love our pets and our children and our parents and our siblings and our spouses so completely and unconditionally… and look in the mirror and see flaws?

My offering to our community this month is unconditional self love. Not “I’ll love myself when I lose 10lbs” or “I’ll love myself when I get that job” (or that car, that baby, that relationship). My offering is unconditional self love, just the way you are right now.

A self love practice will take, well…. practice. If your mental pattern is to criticize and judge yourself, this switch in mentality will take time to perfect. We are conditioned to think that the way we make it through life is to beat ourselves up and try to be better. This cycle is common, persistent and hard to change. Healing means breaking this cycle, and to do this we need to practice different words, phrases and beliefs and say them to ourselves daily. You might find yourself being resistant to this new way of thinking. Do it anyways. Tell yourself daily “I am good”, “I am worthy of love” and “ I am perfect, just as I am” and soon you might actually start to believe it.

Let’s love the heck out of ourselves this month!

Ways to live the mantra:

Practice self love when you look in the mirror, focus on the beauty and not on the flaws.
When you wake up in the morning, look at yourself in the mirror and repeat to yourself “I love myself, just the way I am”.
Listen to your favourite love song, and sing it to yourself.
When you catch yourselves in a cycle of negative self talk, change the dialogue.
Treat yourself to a pedicure, a latte, a yoga class. Take care of YOU.

Written by Prestonne Sehn.