Embracing all of you - the true essence of self love

Rather than being selfish, can we reframe self love as the ultimate in selflessness – the art of cultivating such inner wisdom and awareness, that we take full ownership of ourselves so others don’t have to

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Self love. What does that conjure up for you? Does it trigger you, bemuse you, interest you at all, pique your curiosity.

Self love for me is a range of things. But what it’s not is the idea of a hot salty bath on a Saturday night, treating ourselves to whatever we feel like because we’re worth it.

This perception, this notion, this energy around feeling we’re worth it because we love ourselves for me can smack a bit of scarcity mentality, that we may not intrinsically feel that great about ourselves, so we treat ourselves with the external stuff, and there can be that energy around it of entitlement even -  that we might have such a poor sense of self and self love, that we have to evidence externally this self love, and that can be quite a disparate kind of focus there on self love.

For myself, self love is more about self knowledge, knowing ourselves so intimately knowing our needs, knowing our desires, wishes, dreams and pursuing those quietly. Looking after ourselves, getting the basics right - so when we’re tired, resting; when we need to be sociable, getting out there socialising; when we’re hungry, thirsty - paying attention to those signs and signals.

So we have this deep self awareness, so that we take full responsibility of ourselves and meet our own needs, so that we’re not bleeding emotionally out there, so we’re not putting the onus of responsibility on others and expecting others to meet our needs.

This idea of self love for me is having that intimate self awareness, self understanding, self knowledge, so that then we do take responsibility for ourselves and go into the world with that quiet, confident, inner knowing and meeting our needs along the way -  short term, medium term, long term aims, ideals, plans, ambitions so that we become ultimately the weaver of our own dreams rather than the dreamer of our dreams.

Finally I feel that self love is having a self discipline to make sure that all happens, so that we don’t get lost along the way. And I feel this idea around self love is the ultimate. People may think self love is selfish. However for me the ultimate act of selflessness is to have a self love of self, where as I say we take full ownership of ourselves our needs, wishes, wants, aims, ideals, and we don’t place that external from ourselves. So we show up in the world contented, getting on with our lives and for me that is self love.