I really thought I loved myself. I love my life, I feel confident, and I have pretty high self-esteem. But high self-esteem is not the same as self love. Do I love myself when I feel sad, ugly, hurt, or embarrassed? Do I love myself when I’m failing and weak? Will I love myself if I hit rock bottom? What if I become unrecognizable, inside and out? The thought of failing and hitting rock bottom terrified me. If I let myself go like that, I’d hate myself. And so, I realized that my self love was based on conditions – that I felt good about myself, was doing well in life, was happy. From the day I could walk, I pushed myself with unreasonable determination. I was the baby that went from crawling to walking across the room in one day, after hours of falling and picking myself back up again. My drive accelerated me through school and my career. Now, I see that it came from both a healthy place of craving growth and an unhealthy place of feeling like I wasn’t good enough. I needed to achieve near-perfection in all aspects of my life: career, fitness, personal development, relationships, happiness, and more. I diligently constructed who I am today. Was it all so that I’d feel good about myself, so I could love myself? It’s easy to love yourself when things are going well in life. But this is a very conditional self-love.

A Daily Practice

I met someone in Bali who is so full of love that his compassion radiates and visibly impacts others. He told me that loving yourself is a moment-by-moment experience. A moment-by-moment decision. It starts with your internal dialogue. Throughout the day, is my self-talk loving? It turns out, subconsciously and consciously, I spent a lot of time criticizing myself. Instead of abundant and accepting thoughts, I’d been focusing on my limitations and fears. I started practicing becoming more aware of my internal dialogue. Recently, I was feeling really down and couldn’t snap out of it. I noticed I was trying to fight the negative emotions – feeling increasingly bad about myself for feeling bad. So one night, I decided to stop fighting. I allowed myself to feel the emotions fully, releasing them through tears, until they transformed into relief. It was the first time I embraced my negative emotions as a valid part of me. They seemed to heal as they slipped through me with less resistance. I realized that I don’t have to be so strong and positive all the time. That’s not all of who I am. But for so long, I associated those traits with my identity: the optimist, the strong one, the one who’s always smiling. I have been too hard on myself. I’ve been pretending that I’m strong and positive my whole life, even to myself. And it’s tiring. I know I am strong and positive… But I am also sad, lonely, angry, lost, and scared… I have been all these things and more. I have felt it all – in this lifetime and past lives. My emotions are a part of my human experience – but they are not who I truly am. They do not define me. How long have I not been a true friend, lover, and partner to myself through thick and thin? Can I be as kind to myself as I would to a dear friend in need?

Unconditional Love

Often, it’s easier to love other people unconditionally than love ourselves the same way. We are hardest on ourselves. But what exactly is unconditional love? Giving and receiving unconditional love is an experience of complete acceptance, without judgment or conditions. It’s not: “If you do this, then I will love you.” Or: “When you become this, then I’ll love you.” Or even: “I love you as long as you love me back and belong to me.” How does this apply to your internal dialog? The idea that “I will fully love and accept myself when I finally [become / achieve / do / look like X]” implies that you do not love yourself unconditionally. A lot of these thoughts are subconscious. You might not realize that you’re thinking them. It might appear in some variation of “I’m not good enough.” What would it look like to love ourselves without any conditions? Can we embrace ourselves just as we are now, including and especially our perceived flaws and shadows?

What About Happiness?

Is your source of joy conditional or unconditional? Here’s a common conditional thought: “I will be happy when I finally [make a certain amount of money, get promoted, get married, etc.].” You can swap out “successful” for “happy” and insert your own conditions. In this case, your happiness is attached to certain outcomes or milestones. Once you meet them, you’ll continue to raise the bar on what you think you need in order to feel like you’ve made it. We may be pursuing success, happiness, love – external to ourselves – because we have forgotten our own connection to source. We have forgotten that everything we need is already within. We can only be fulfilled from the inside out.

With Self Love Comes Healing

As we grow up, we accumulate many blockages and baggage that drags us down with negative energy: childhood and past-life traumas, limiting beliefs, painful experiences, people we haven’t forgiven, and more. Self-love begins the healing of the subconscious mind, limiting beliefs, and repressed emotions. It rewires our negative thoughts into positive. When you begin to love yourself fully, you start transforming and aligning everything in the highest frequency of love.

A New Love

If I truly loved myself, how would I feel? I would be free! I’d stop being so hard on myself and lighten up, knowing I am whole just the way I am. I would play, laugh, and savor life. At the same time, I’d be bold and take risks. I’d feel like I could do anything, be anything – and this would not be driven by my ego but by the sheer joy of creating and becoming. It would show up as a humble and quiet calmness. I’d cherish my body as the sacred temple it is, I’d be kind to my racing mind, I’d trust the universe. Bursting with love, I wouldn’t be able to help but share it with the rest of the world. When I started getting a taste of this new love, it changed my entire perception. It shifted my experience of life – my relationship with others, and most importantly, myself. My relationship with myself is my highest priority, because I know that it impacts my relationship with everyone else in my life. Self love is an ongoing journey, a daily choice. If more people could love themselves unconditionally, it would spread in waves of compassion around the world. One by one, we’d detach ourselves from our ego. We’d be able to see our fear and insecurities for what they are. We’d start collaborating more instead of competing to get ahead. There would be a new quality of joy in our interactions as we see each other in our likeness. All because we’d remember our own eternal light within. With unconditional love, it would be unfathomable to hate another. Is this the key to world peace? Written with love, Ashmi

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For daily writing and insights, find me on Instagram @ashmi.path. If you enjoyed this post, I have also written a book called Awakening the Heart of Humanity, with words and art from the heart. You can check it out here.

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