Queen,
Welcome to this month’s theme of Love Yourself.
Before you read on, I need to check in with you on something. Have you done the previous work covered in the monthly themes? I’m talking about Choosing Yourself, Affirming Yourself, Helping Yourself, and Accepting Yourself. If you haven’t, stop right now and go back to the previous blogs, and do the work😉. The previous blogs and trainings will provide you with a very solid foundation for you to Love Yourself. Without that, trying to get a grip on Loving Yourself, wholeheartedly, can become daunting.
Ok, now that that’s out of the way, let’s get on with it.
What is Self Love? Good question, I’m glad you asked 😆 Self Love is a lot of things. It’s wanting what’s best for yourself, truly understanding that you deserve your own care, accepting even with your flaws that you are a brilliant human, and taking stock of what you’ve achieved and the lessons you have learned along life’s journey. It’s trusting yourself, and knowing that if (and when, because it happens to us all) you encounter failure you can overcome the situation and move on. It’s understanding the tools that you have acquired in life and using them to better yourself at every opportunity. It’s wanting to make yourself, above everyone else, proud. It’s knowing your truth and living your truth. It’s embracing yourself fully because you are very specifically and uniquely you, and nobody else. It’s measuring yourself by your own achievements, goals, and aspirations, instead of comparing yourself to others. It’s acknowledging that you are a unique treasure and there is only one, and will only ever be one of you. The Epitome of a Limited Edition!
It’s Love, that you turn towards yourself. Love without condition, and without limitation.
Yep, it’s a whole bunch of things rolled into one big feeling of “I’m pretty awesome and there’s no one else I would rather be!”
Now, love is certainly a feeling that you have, but it’s also expressed. The work we’re going to do will be on both parts, feeling the love, and expressing the love.
Ok, let’s talk quickly about what Self-Love is not.
It isn’t a constant state. Think of it more as something you do for yourself rather than as an emotion that you have all the time. I’m saying this because some minutes, hours, or days we get caught up in ‘life’ and we set aside feelings of Self-Love or our Self-Love practices. This is perfectly normal, it’s bound to happen, it happens to us all. The key thing though, Queen, is to catch yourself before you slip and fall into old habits that move your from your positive state to your negative state for too long. When you catch yourself, it’s good to be able to pull some tools out of your tool box that will help you get back on track. I’ll be equipping you with different tools via the weekly blogs, and the mini courses in The Academy. The first will be shared with you a bit later on.
It is not fatalism. Fatalism leads us to settle for less than. Forget that. We’re about getting better, emotionally stronger, navigating fear and overcoming obstacles to achieve what we have set out to achieve. We’re not here because we’re learning to give up on dreams. We’re here because we’re working towards daring to make those dreams a reality. Which reminds me, you might already be at that stage where you are ready to deep dive into a life transformation. You’ve completed the Courage Module, so you may be ready to Feel the fear and do it anyway and if you are, don’t hesitate to apply for my Signature Feel the fear 1:1 Coaching & Training Programme that will get you taking massive action and redesigning your life with more courage, more clarity and more confidence.
It’s also not egocentrism. I cannot emphasise this enough. Self-love can be experienced through your kindness and generosity to others, particularly those who need your help. I’m a huge believer of living a life of contribution. I live for supporting my community and Queens. Being vulnerable and sharing my story with others, and creating space for them to experience the strength of vulnerability by feeling their feelings. Day by day, you, my Queen, teach me more about myself, about life, about compassion, and so much more than I could put in writing. The opportunity to share with you, increases my self-love.
It’s definitely not an excuse to behave poorly, or to turn against yourself. You may have seen this – someone doesn’t get what they feel they deserve and they lash out or plunge into a deep depression. Negative emotions arise more often than not from a need to protect yourself, specifically from feelings of fragility. If you find yourself feeling fragile, address the fragility to be able to deal with experiences from a place of strength. That’s not to say that disappointment and a few tears aren’t sometimes the appropriate reaction. But negativity is counterproductive to Self Love. So get a handle on that. Full Stop!
1. Accept love from others. Yeah, you heard me. If you’re not able to receive love, you won’t be able to give it. Not to you, and certainly not to anybody else. So practice accepting love. I’m not proposing anything outlandish or over the top here, I just want you to accept a hug from someone you know who loves you, or take a compliment with a “Thank you for the compliment, it’s nice to hear that!” Obviously feel free to adapt as necessary.
2. Make time for self-care. Take my 14 day Self-Love & Self-Care Challenge, and when you’re done, do it over again. Why not? If there are some parts of the Challenge that you particularly enjoyed, find a way to structure these into your routine. If you have some other forms of self-care that make you feel good about yourself, do those.
3. Take time to develop a new skill, pick up a new hobby, do something new, or hone a skill you already have. This is where I encourage you to take positive action in your life and build forward momentum because it’s time! Commit to growing as a wholehearted person. Whether it be a new book, learning the guitar, picking up a new sport, taking an accounting course, whatever it is, dedicate this month to gaining knowledge. There is little that can nurture and nourish self-love, more than creativity.
4. Give yourself a ‘PEP’ talk once a day in the mirror, even if it’s for a few minutes. Remind yourself of how far you’ve come, your uniqueness, your strength, and your determination. Rev yourself up, be your own cheerleader!
5. Queen, treat yo’ self! Take yourself on a date. Give yourself something nice, buy tickets to a concert you’ve been longing to see, put your gladrags on and go for a fancy meal, get yourself a slice of cake. Make this a monthly practice, set a date and time that you stick to, no matter what and call it your ‘ME’ time. Well, that’s what I call mine anyway! People want to book a meeting with me and I look in my diary and say, sorry, I’ve got ‘ME’ time scheduled then, I’m not available. True story!
If you find yourself distracted by counterproductive emotions or thoughts, remember that you can always go back to the previous trainings to deal with them. For my Academy members, I’ve dropped a new training on How to Feel Your Feelings, which will teach you the FACT and LAUGH methods to feel, process, and deal with these types of emotions. This will help you to unpack emotions so you can be free to love yourself.
We’re getting to the really good part here Queen. Take the time to turn the love inwards, and really savor that time. You deserve it!
Remember, you got this. And I got you. 💜
Fix your crown.
