Self-Love is an intentional journey.

We need insights, tools, and support to unlearn the self-destructive habit and re-learning the self-loving ones.  

Through what we see, hear, experience in our childhood, most of us learn the opposite of Self-Love.

When you see your mother criticise herself, you learn how to criticise yourself. When you see your parents argue, your child's mind would blame you, thinking that it’s because you’re unlovable. 

When someone mistreats you, you make it means that there is something wrong with you. When you keep doing this for decades, it becomes a habit, and you aren't even aware of it anymore. 

Before I concretely tell you what to do, here are 2 mindsets that will help along the way: 

1/ The self-love journey is imperfect.  

I love this teaching by contemporary Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa: "The problem is that ego can convert anything to its own use, even spirituality."

Please watch out when trying to love yourself starts making you hate yourself. "I'm not loving myself enough! How can I be so bad at Self-Love?!" When this happens, you are trying too hard. Back off and relax. Self-Love is a practice. Like learning to ride a bicycle, expect to fall. 

"All change is hard at first, messy in the middle, and so gorgeous at the end." - Robin Sharma 

2/ Self-Love is a choice, not a rule. 

Self-love will bring magic into your life. Your happiness, confidence, creativity, fulfillment, and meaningful connections come from Self-Love. 

But you don't have to love yourself. I repeat: you don't have to love yourself. 

Whether you practice Self-Love or not, you're still a worthy person. Your worth is given, infinite, untouchable. 

You have the freedom to hate yourself as much as you want. If you choose it, hate yourself while being conscious that you hate yourself.

I recommend you (I beg you!) not to turn these practices into rules. 

The moment we turn something into a rule, it becomes the source of frustration, self-punishment, shame, and self-rebel. You'll start hating yourself for hating yourself. 

When you embrace yourself with love, you create the ideal environment for self-growth.

The 7 Self-Love Practices

Below are the 7 Self-Love Practices, though they are not the complete guide, but they are an excellent place for you to begin.  

1/ Embrace everything you are, now 

Your weakness, imperfections, and rough edges are not something to be ashamed of and eliminated. They need your understanding and love. 

This doesn't mean you will stop growing and improve. Love is the most powerful force in all of creation. 

When you embrace something with love, you create the ideal environment for that thing to transform on its own. 

When you embrace anger, you'll discover your boundary. When you embrace sadness, you'll find joy. When you embrace jealousy, you'll recognize your hidden desires. 

To embrace something, you'll need to give it 3 things: attention, non-judgment, and compassion. 

When you notice that you're not embracing yourself, embrace the fact that you're not embracing yet. 

2/ Befriend your inner critic

If you're a normal human being like me, you have an inner critic. This character lives inside your mind. This is how it sounds: 

"You are stupid. You're useless. Nobody loves you. You will fail. You can't do it. Who do you think you are? How dare you to even want/do/say/think that? They'll find out how much of a phony you are. You don't deserve this. Something is wrong with your life. Something is wrong with you."

The voice of the inner critic is like the incessant hum of the refrigerator in the background. You don't know that it exists until you pay attention. But it's there, continually feeding you with anxiety and insecurity. 

The inner critic is a part of your psyche that you have. But it's not you. Just like you have a nose, but you're not a nose. But if you hate your nose, you hate a part of yourself. 

So learn to become friendly with your inner critic. 

Treat it just like a passenger on the bus that you cannot kick it out. On the road of life, you're the driver. Let your inner critic sit in your bus, don't fight with it, but don't let it take the steering wheel and don't let what it says affect where you choose to go. 

3/ The loving gaze

Stand in front of the mirror, close enough so you can see deeply into your eyes. Take 10 deep belly breaths while maintaining a soft gaze into your eyes. Whisper to yourself:

"I am willing to learn how to love you now. I am ready to love you now. I may be imperfect in the way I love you, but I promise to keep on trying." 

If you feel emotional during this exercise, it's normal. For some of you, this may be the first time you actually tell yourself these things. Just let yourself feel the emotions and keep gazing into your own eyes. 

Try this for 1 week or more. 

It's not your job to make others happy. And the only one you can save is the one you see in the mirror. 

4/ Date yourself

How do you want to spend time with the one you love? 

Read a book together. Take a walk. Go to the exhibition. Have a candle-lit dinner. Or eat ice cream and go to the cinema. Travel. A slow walk on the beach.  

I once spent 3 weeks in Rome, one of the most romantic cities for couples in the world, entirely on my own. I fell deeply in love with myself then. 

But you don't have to go too far or spend too much. A night in bed sipping cinnamon tea while reading poetry on Instagram is equally loving. 

5/ Practice self-soothing when you're in emotional pain

When you experience painful emotions (sadness, disappointment, anxiety, heartbreak, overwhelm…) don't shut down your feelings or check your Facebook. In situations like this, the best thing to do is to attend to those emotions with compassion and care. 

You can give yourself a massage, pour a warm bath, or wrap your arms around your body, pat yourself gently, caress your body with your hands. I love placing my hands on my chest, feeling the warmth of my palm against the rising and falling of each breath. 

Physical touch is a powerful way to self-soothe. Soothe yourself how you soothe a crying child who's hurt and afraid. You wouldn't scold the child, tell her to shut up, rationalize with her, or lock her away in a separate room while putting on your headphone, would you? 

You would hold her, sing to her and caress her little back until she is calm and smiles again. When you are hurt, you are that child. Treat yourself the same way.  

6/ Stop compulsive self-fixing   

There's such a thing as compulsive self-improvement.

When I was deep in self-loathing, I always read books, joined seminars, attended courses to improve myself. I did so because I was convinced that there was something wrong with me, like a ceiling fan with a wing chopped off. 

The truth is: you are not a broken appliance. You don't need to send yourself back to your maker for warranty. 

You are an acorn, inherently enough, shimmering with the potential to become an oak tree. 

You need nourishment to grow into a mighty oak. So tend to your needs how a gentle gardener tends her garden. 

Before you join a workshop, attend a seminar, sign up for a course or buy a book, ask yourself:

"Am I doing this because I want to give myself nourishment or because I'm trying to compensate for feeling inadequate?" 

Do it only if it brings you joy, satisfy your curiosity, and make you feel alive and expansive. Not because you have to do it to be enough. 

You are not broken..

7/ Let go of things that no longer serve you

If you feel like a bird in a cage, know that the door is always open. 

Fly out of the cage is to let go of people or things that drain your energy. 

This is probably the toughest practice. You can begin first by letting go of material things.

Those dresses that are too small, that broken food blender, that 10-year-old bra, those bottles of out-of-date face lotion, notebooks since high school that won't add value to your future. (I highly recommend "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up" by Marie Kondo.) 

After that, you may move to let go of activities: draft a resignation letter for your soul-sucking job, stop going to family gatherings every Thursday night because just thinking of it alone makes you want to poke your eyes with a chopstick. 

Letting go of a relationship is probably the hardest thing because of our intense innate fear of separation. Even when the one who does the separation is us. 

There's no easy way to do it. Think of this as a process of freeing both yourself and others. You are hanging on to a relationship that feels like cage imprisons not only you but also the other person. 

It's not your job to make others happy. And the only one you can save is the one you see in the mirror. 

When you burden yourself with the task of making someone else happy, you give them an excuse to avoid being in charge of their happiness. 

But if you can feel the fear and let go anyway, you'll set yourself and that person free. 

"As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others." Marianne Williamson

Separation always hurts. Your heart will be broken. And so will the heart of the one you let go. 

However, each heartbreak offers an opportunity for growth. If you allow your heart to break and heal, you'll discover within you the strength you never knew you had. 

Whether you practice Self-Love or not, you're still a worthy person. Your worth is given, infinite, untouchable. 

"You were born with wings, why prefer to crawl through life?" - Rumi

Practicing Self-love is how you learn to use your wings again. So you can fly far and high to the place your heart desires. 

Self-Love will help you remember what you were born knowing but had forgotten: that you are worth loving, and life is worth living. 

I'm here with my wings spread. 

Calling you to join me in the sky where you belong.

Remember: you are a beautiful miracle, and you can truly shine your light.

Milena xo

P.S: A SELF LOVE STORY

As we have walked through step by step on how to truly love yourself, but let us not forget about our journey that leads us to where we are right now.

Have a look back at my blog article last week for a short and heartfelt story of self love.

P.P.S: SELF LOVE AND FINDING PURPOSE

Now that you’ve started exploring self love, don’t stop here.

From my experience, as you reclaimed your self-worth, you’ll begin to hear a calling to make a difference. Like Robin Sharma said: “There is no extra people on the planet,” you were born with a purpose.

I’ve made a gorgeous 15-page Purpose Finder Workbook to help you discover your unique purpose and start making impact doing what you love. Download below!

SHARING = LOVING