Six Short Cuts to Self-Love

Loving ourselves is so vital for our health and well-being and for our happiness. If you don’t love yourself, life is a chore, life is a hardship. If you deeply love yourself, you can connect with the joy and beauty that surrounds you, you can take proper care of yourself, you can enjoy the ups and learn from the downs.

To me, self-love is a feeling state. My body feels relaxed and receptive. When I think of myself, I smile. My affection surrounds me and seeps into my body. I adore my lips, my eyes, my arms, my legs, my spine, my liver, my gums, my intestines. When I love myself it is the same feeling as watching a multi-colored sunset from a steaming hot bathtub on an island vacation.

When I am not feeling this ecstatic state of self-affection, I use easy visualizations to fall back in love. Feel free to try them and add your own…

1. Transfer the Feeling of Love to Yourself

Sometimes we can feel love for other people that we cannot feel for ourselves . Envision someone or something you love. A beloved pet, a child, a friend, or your favorite grandparent. Fill up with that love you feel for that person or thing and let it saturate your body. Feel it expand in your chest, radiating out of your heart to your fingertips and toes. Then in your mind’s eye, picture yourself where you pictured that other person or pet and envelop yourself with that fountain of love. Let it penetrate you. Let yourself be filled to overflowing with your feelings of love. See how amazing you are. How beautiful. How valuable. How loveable.

2. Send Love to a Picture of Yourself as a Child

This is a great way to fill up with self-loving. Sometimes people have shame and judgments about themselves as adults and create misbeliefs that they are unworthy of love. But if you look at a picture of yourself as a child: newborn, 2, 5, even 10 years old, you can see the innocence, the sweetness, the miracle of that life. You can bring compassion and forgiveness to the experiences that created you. You can see how adorable and valuable and worthy of love you are.

3. Put Your Attention On You

Energy healer David Elliott says, “Energy flows where awareness goes.” In the American culture, we are starved for attention and affection. We constantly look outside ourselves and compare ourselves unfavorably with others. We fill our heads with information and amass huge amounts of money to say, “Hey, look at me. Look how great I am. Love me.” But really all we need to do is turn our attention inward, reflecting on our breath, on our bodies or on our life. This positive attention from ourselves to ourselves naturally turns into blissful affection.

4. Self-Acknowledgement

Focus on what is great and amazing about you. Make a daily list. Repeat it to yourself often. Acknowledge yourself for what you have accomplished in this day, week, year or lifetime. Big or small. Anything good. I acknowledge myself for getting a degree in Psychology. I acknowledge myself for giving food to a homeless teenager. I acknowledge myself for exercising today. I acknowledge myself for speaking kindly to my co-workers today. I acknowledge myself for calling my mother. This exercises feels great, strengthens your positive qualities and increases your self-loving.

5. Three-Part Breath Meditation

Sometimes negative energy blocks our ability to feel LOVE in our bodies. This breath process clears the negative feelings of anger, sadness, disappointment, frustration, or annoyance and allows you to feel your naturally vibrating positive energy. It is simple and can be done laying in bed (the head in alignment with the neck). Relax your jaw and take a full breath through your mouth into your stomach, then (without exhaling) take a second breath into the chest expanding the area around the heart and then exhale out the mouth. (One breathe per second – three seconds total) Do it for at least 10 minutes or until you feel the feelings of love and warmth flood your body.

6. Do Something Loving For Yourself

This is a great way to feel your self-love and express it. Think of something you love to do, that fills you with joy, that you have been putting off because you don’t have time, then make the time to do it! Take yourself to the movies. Paint a canvas. Go for a walk in the park. Call a friend. Take a bath. Play with a pile of puppies. Whatever makes your heart sing. Do it today!

When you love yourself, you feel great and when you feel great, you enjoy every aspect of your life and most of the people in it too. When you fill up on self-love, it flows over to those around you. Why else did God make traffic if not to give us more time to fall deeply in love with ourselves? Happy loving! Love on!