I’ve started to see self-love differently.
A few years back my intuition was telling me to share information about self-love, so I ran a 14 day challenge.
I remember when I put that challenge together I wondered – how will I ever fill 14 days!
Fast forward 4 months later I saw a post from a friend that said something like ‘do you ever have those days when you just want to cry?’ And I thought, enough – I need to do more.
Of course we all have those days, and that’s ok, but we need to take time out for ourselves before we get to those days – so we have the tools to support us on those days.
So I committed to sharing 30 days of self-love (yes 30 days scared the pants off me), but I put a post up on Facebook and people said they were keen to be part of it.
30 days turned into 500 days – yes 500! The content just kept on flowing, so I kept on sharing and people would stop me in the street or at netball and say ‘thank you’ and tell me how much they enjoyed my posts – even if they hadn’t commented or liked them, ever!
The posts were all about taking time out for yourself, managing your mind and allowing life to happen around you.
All well intended and we all need these reminders.
What I’ve come to see lately is that self-love comes in so many different shades.
Some days it might be a massage, and other days it might be takeaway dinner, and other days it might be doing the washing.
I’ve known for a long time that we can do self-love whilst in the messy middle of life.
It was a client that brought this to my attention. When sharing what we did for self-love, they talked about all the things they did by themselves, like taking a bath or going for a walk. When I shared, I talked about playing with Teddy or taking time to sit with Chris.
This is one of many evolutions of self-love and often when we start on our journey, we’re doing it alone.
We need to create space by ourself to create clarity of mind and to figure out where we want to be and what we want to do.
It’s an experiment of sorts and we can only invite people in when we know we won’t lose the habit.
Once we have the self-love habit in place, we can then connect with others and this requires us to being in flexibility – because our timeframes may not work for others, and we know that no matter what we’ll turn up for ourselves because we’ve been doing it for a while now.
We can be present whilst cooking dinner, not running off with our to do lists or helping kids with homework at the same time.
Then we realise that we can be breathing deeply, whilst listening to our husband or child share a story – we don’t have separate the two.
We can actually be happy in the messy middle – and in doing so, we give ourselves a break, we have fun, and we’re relaxed.
This is the place we start to show up for ourselves when we don’t meal plan, we don’t eat food that’s good for us instead choosing that takeaway that makes us feel rewarded and excited.
This is the place when we walk and don’t run, when we have wine with the girls because we’re celebrating and we take a second shower for the day.
It’s in this space of self-love that we cultivate compassion for ourselves, and, if we choose, we start to experiment with other ways we want to turn up for ourselves, with love and understanding.
So the next time you don’t get up for your morning routine or you miss that gym work out or you forget to journal or you don’t eat to plan or you gossip about someone or you don’t go to your local fruit and veg market or you don’t meal prep – smile to yourself, ask yourself ‘do I feel ok about this?’ And choose to love yourself regardless of the answer.
The results of this one simple exercise will blow your mind – so keep blowing your mind over and over, and in doing so I find, I’m more empowered to make the shifts I really want to make xo
