It’s interesting when you spend a majority of your life intellectualizing things in order to feel safe. I kept hearing people say “if you love yourself, you will stop requiring the outside world to give you want you need”, but the concept of loving myself seemed so foreign. Yes, you can repeat the mantra ‘I love myself’ over and over but that isn’t going to cultivate anything more than an internal resistance to repetitive statements. Recently, I had a deep conversation with a close friend. I told him that I was not sure how to love myself. I couldn’t “conceptualize” loving myself, it seemed too big and overwhelming. I realized that I am constantly looking for something outside of myself to reflect back to me that I’m lovable. Whether it be through a relationship (look, I’m lovable because someone wants me!), or through friends, or even the comparison of my life to others, I always needed the external to confirm that I was enough (or on the flip side, not enough).

I asked Hide (pronounced “He-Day”) how he loves himself. He responded that it isn’t a big event that he needs in order to feel love, it’s making the choice to tell yourself “hold on” when you’re in a negative state and then make the decision to take care of yourself by creating a state change. Maybe you go outside for a breath of fresh air, or maybe you stop and read a book, or you sit still for prayer. All of these events create space for you to step into a new pattern of being. It’s the baby steps of self love.

I realized that it’s the awareness that you need to make a new decision and then execute that decision that is the definition of self love. I knew that I was feeling empty and unlovable, but I was unsure how to “love myself”. It seemed like everyone had it “all figured out”, but I realized that we are all on the journey of understanding what self love looks like for ourselves. The surprising thing about this conversation is that everything he said resonated with me as truth. He used the example of real estate. He said that my face lights up and I exhibit passion when I talk about real estate. He said I’m congruent and in love and that is the state of love/bliss. By being in this state, I am sending out positive energy/vibrations to those around me. He said loving myself is that state and that I need to find multiple areas to nurture that state for myself. So simple, yet I never realized that by making small changes I would be able to connect more deeply with myself. Instead of viewing my life through a lens of lack/scarcity, I can practice gratitude through creating space to love myself. Loving myself means coming back into the present moment and realizing that I posses everything I need. When I feel less than because of a thought about something and the subsequent expectation that someone or something will “fix it”, I now have the awareness that self love is just making a new decision. I can decide to give myself what I’m needing.

I believe all relationships (between friends, partners, nature, the universe, etc) have infinity symbols that circulate from one partner to another. It’s the unseen energy that bonds all partnerships (even ones in passing). I also know that if one person feels less than or unworthy they tend to take the energy from the other person and circulate it in themselves. That is okay if you are needing to do some healing work. This problem that could arise, is that the energy circulates back outwardly to the other partner more slowly, so the other partner keeps sending energy, but does not receive it back in the same infinity flow. When we practice self love we are able to more freely give and receive the energetic infinity symbol without requiring others to fill it for us. It’s almost like cultivating an infinity loop that circulates inside of ourselves.

When we look outside of ourselves to complete the internal infinity loop, we will constantly be using people, places, or events to fill ourselves up. What happens when these external events fade away or change? We must cultivate that internal loop of love for ourselves. How do you cultivate love? How does self love help others?