“Who looks outside, dreams, who looks inside, awakes” as quoted by psychologist Carl Jung. Although, we don’t just need to look inside, we also need to love everything we find, demons and all. Only through healthy self love can you grow and become resilient because you’ll accept your flaws for what they are and know how to move beyond them.

What does self love feel like? What actions do we take to have it? Where do we start? Until recently I never even saw the point. Surely it’s about stiff upper lip and a closed heart. Well, apparently that just makes us suffer more in the long run because we are not truly being human. Closing off to our emotions cuts out such a large part of our human experience. And how can we expect anyone to love us and treat us respectfully if we can’t even do it with ourselves?  

What Motivates Us

The other day someone said to me that people volunteer for dogs to make themselves feel good. Essentially we are feeding our ego. Whilst that might be true, it got me thinking to why I work with animals. Why have I always longed to be with animals? As a child of a narcissist, could I also have narcissistic traits? Or perhaps I’m just filling the void of lack of unconditional love. If I’m honest, it’s probably a bit of both but with self love I can be motivated by self-care and by my values. Hopefully, I won’t be driven by my ego as my values are definitely not the traits you would see on a narcissistic personality list. 

So Where to we Start with Self Love?

I never experienced unconditional love from my parents when I was growing up. There was always the small print. I had to be perfect for them to love me. We never talked about our emotions and we were not allowed to be upset or to cry. If I never experienced unconditional love then how can I be expected to love myself? I will never be perfect enough nor will I ever follow their way of life therefore I’m bad. Those types of beliefs stayed with me for decades until I started looking inside.

So what is self love? What does self love feel like? The dogs I care for look at me with those eyes that tell me I can do no wrong. They are always loving, always supportive even when I make mistakes with them, which of course I do. If that’s what love feels like, can I do it with myself? 

1- Accepting your humanity

And that no one is perfect. In fact, if you think about it, wouldn’t life be exceedingly boring if everyone was perfect? That thought conjures conjuring up images of stepford wives which makes me laugh at how ridiculous my inbuilt belief is. That can also be a relief and it’s helping me rephrase my story of the world and to look for beauty in imperfection.

Of course, deep-seated beliefs don’t just disappear overnight because you tell yourself to forget them. One exercise that worked well for me were the self-esteem journal prompts that I worked on for 6 months. They helped me see myself as human and to appreciate the little things I do in life whilst accepting that my mistakes are what make me human.

2- Understanding your strengths

It’s much easier to find your place in the world whilst being happy that you’re contributing something if you both know and use your strengths. That’s how you can feel good about yourself and that you belong to something greater than yourself. As a coach, I see too many people drifting through with unrealised strengths who then wonder why they feel unfulfilled.

The Strengths Book made a huge impact in my life as I discovered my core strengths. I’m not talking about things like commercial or financial acumen. Instead, I mean things such as, in my case, curiosity, drive, amongst others. The best part about the book is each strength is defined along with the ideal type of jobs that go with it.

Once you have an idea of your strengths, I challenge you to make a point of using at least one of them every day. This Strengths Use Plan is a useful framework to get you started.

3- Being aware of your inner critic

It is important to start work on changing that critical voice to a compassionate one. Mindfulness is key for this and I particularly like Magda’s blog about this. The idea is to get to know how negative your inner voice is and how self-absorbed it is. Only by getting to know what that voice is telling us can we hope to change the narrative. Again, journaling is a useful tool to practice noticing your inner voice and then challenging it. Is everyone really against you? Are you that bad of a person? We are our word enemies at times and often, that inner voice amplifies our suffering.

Your Next Steps

You need self love if you want to ride out the lows that life throws at you. Otherwise, you can wallow in self-pity or fall into a whirlwind of negativity. First, practice journaling to accept your flaws and then get into the habit of leveraging your strengths. Only by knowing yourself and then offering the world your strengths can you even begin to love yourself. Then, the road of happiness will crack open its door for you.