Ingredients for Self-Love

In order to healthfully love others, you need to love yourself first.

This is something I wish we were taught at a young age. Instead, we are usually told that loving yourself is selfish, pompous, and arrogant. This leads us to feel guilt and shame around the idea of self-love. So we look to find love on the exterior.

Looking for love creates a need to find someone else to do the loving for us. Someone else to find us beautiful. Someone else to find us funny. Someone else to honor our power. Someone else to praise us. Someone else to please us. Someone else to find us sexy. Someone else to know what we want. Someone else to buy us flowers. And the demands go on and on!

If we don’t find love in ourselves first, we will constantly be looking for love on the outside and always fall disappointed.

And as we ignore ourselves, we pour that energy into someone else only to be left disappointed when the exact same energy isn’t reciprocated. We are now unfulfilled and wanting more which is exhausting and it depletes us- deeply.

We will jump from relationship to relationship, divorce to marriage, or struggle finding someone good enough to love us.

We will want to blame our situation on others like “they didn’t love me enough” or “they didn’t respect me” or “they didn’t think I was pretty enough” or “they didn’t appreciate me” when the real question is: do you truly believe that of yourself?

Once we learn to love ourselves unconditionally, we are not dependent on what others do, think, or say outside of us.

Loving ourselves unconditionally raises our vibration which is attractive and you will attract those who want to love you for all the beautiful reasons you love yourself!

We are very much responsible for the energy we put out into the world and the energy we receive. And the first place to start is to shift that energy within ourselves!

Now, what does this energy shifting self-love look like?

Well, when was the last time you smiled at yourself in the mirror? When was the last time you told yourself “good job!”? When was the last time you told yourself how beautiful your are?

One of the most famous authors of our time, Louise Hay, famously said, “Love is never outside of ourselves, love is within us.”

If you don’t know Louise Hay, I highly recommend reading ANY of her incredible books. She is an inspirational teacher who used daily affirmations to shift and change the quality of her life- starting with looking at herself in the mirror every morning, smiling and saying, “I love you”.

When we say, “I love you” to ourselves, it shifts and vibrates every cell in our body. The more often we do this, the higher our vibration becomes and the more love we attract!

“I find that when we really love and accept and approve of ourselves exactly where we are, then everything in life works” -Louise Hay

Now after you smile and say, “I love you” in the mirror today, here are some other ways to incorporate self-loving practices into your everyday.

Please use these ingredients as often as you can throughout your day and throughout your week. And if you feel guilty about doing any of these things, remember:

In order to love others well we need to love ourselves first.