SELF LOVE 101

Imagine waking up in the morning and looking at yourself in the mirror. While you look at yourself you tare yourself down before you can even finish brushing your teeth. As you continue to do your hair and pick out your outfit you pick at the love handles that might flow over your jeans, You persecute the top you choose to wear oversized to hide the handles you condemn as unlovable. As your day goes on you continue to catch yourself in the mirror and criticize yourself mercifully as if you deserve to be so unloved.

I can admit this was me in so many avenues of my life before I learned the profound healing of loving myself. Let’s start from the beginning of what self love 101 means. It isn’t just candles and rose peddled soaked baths with affirmations of love and light.

It is first staring at yourself in the mirror and asking why I am so mean to myself. It involves a lot of tears and sadness and forgiving yourself for forgetting that you matter. Some have coined the beginning of this awareness and breaking “Dark Night of the Soul.” I choose to believe in my beginning stages that I was facing the ego that had done her damndest to protect me from the world and others around me. I knew I would never be able to accept the love I truly deserve and desire if it did not start with me. If this is you I am with you my friend and here are my tips and tricks to beginning to love yourself every day whether you are dressed like a goddess or dressed in your oversized stay at home wardrobe with no makeup and no hair brush.

First of all let's talk about the forgiveness portion, it's easier than you think but it does come with awareness and tears, at least for me. It starts with small affirmations and post-its all over my mirrors, tucked in all of my cabinets and most importantly in the room I find myself going to have my breakdowns. My place is my laundry room and my bathroom. My bathroom has a plethora of affirmations to choose from as I brush my teeth or style myself for my epic day. Everyone wakes up in a different mood so I sway between “I Choose Joy '' and “I am grateful for health, abundance and happiness before my feet even hit the ground." My laundry room holds my vision boards and positive notes I’ve been gifted along the way with my artistic stamp of personal affirmations and concert tickets as a reminder of my favorite healing modality, Music.

I’ve found if you want to learn self love and compassion for others you will be tested more than usual when you go out into the world and put your new neural pathways into practice so I often repeat “I am a peaceful soul, I have a peaceful mind."

My favorite when my ego steps in to take me back to who I was is “I am asserting the mastery of my real self.”

Now before you go off and try these for yourself I need you to understand repetition is vital for taking on this new mental practice. If you’ve heard “21 times to form a habit” that means you are creating a new neurological pathway in your brain and it does take time, give yourself much grace and power through the low-vibe days with extra self care. That is where the candles, epsom salt baths, face masks and for me yoga, journaling and music come in to save me. You must starve the old pathways and trudge through the challenges in building the new ones. Being a human is hard so I find comfort in ones I’ve learned from others such as “ If it doesn’t evolve me, it doesn’t involve me” ,” I release all energies that do not serve me'' and ``I release any worry from my body and my home.”

As you continue to wake up as your new self, look in the mirror and say “I Love You, You Are Worthy.” As you come up on a challenging emotion repeat “I am the love I deserve and desire” and if the day is just too much or worries pile on too thick repeat “Just for today I will not worry'' or "Just for today_________ ( and insert what is needed).

Affirmations are a powerful tool to reprogram not only your conscious actions but your subconscious mind so the more you do it the more it will become a part of you. The more you face your fears and much of the past selves you thought you could leave behind the lighter you will feel. I’ve noticed I can live in more of a state of compassion for humanities suffering.

As I am not perfect I can admit I “ fail” often, although that is a part of the process ( cue giving yourself some grace) while putting my new found peace into play. It took me a while to tame the hurricane inside of me, that came with much introspection and many healing modalities I’ve experienced to accelerate my journey into who I know I’ve always wanted to be.

Self Love is the key to finding all parts of yourself in my opinion. Most believe that being love and light all the time is the goal but I have found uniting the darkness and the light in union through these practices and studying many great examples of unconditional love out in the world is my truth. We all have a side we hide away called our “ Shadow Side” if you find yourself unable to love that side of yourself sit down and realize darkness and negativity are only void of love but as The Beatles once wrote “ All You Need Is Love.” So today take some time to honor who you once were and love yourself more than anyone else can. We all have a past version of ourselves that is so incredibly proud of our current version.

Keep your future self ahead of you and remember to stay in the present moment by adopting mindfulness into your everyday life.

One step at a time you can build a better, brighter and lovable you.

Cheyenne Moore Safespacewithcheyenne@gmail.com