Self-love was an accidental discovery for me while I was trying to figure out how to be happy. For a long time, I thought self-love was about giving myself permission to do something that I shouldn’t. Usually, that something felt great at the moment but ended up being semi-destructive in the long run. If I had a bad day, I treated myself to a drink, or five, and that lousy day bled into another until I’d ruined the entire week. Self-love used to be an excuse to spend an entire “down day” on the couch eating whatever I wanted and binge-watching shows I can’t remember now. Clearly, I missed the point of what it meant to love myself, and at times made that process even harder after the liberties I’d taken in the name of a reward. I certainly didn’t love the way I felt after a day of stuffing my face with every comfort food within reach. I definitely didn’t love the headache derived from an albeit accidental hangover. It turned into a vicious cycle I somehow had to break. Sometimes life gives us a clear before and after type opportunity, and I got one of those recently. My “change” started as a promise to someone else that was impossible to keep until I made that same promise to myself. Whatever your pivot point was, or will be, I’d like to share some things that changed the way I defined what it meant to love myself.
The first hard truth was accepting there is a big difference between behavior that is self-serving and setting standards based on self-love. Self-love is an honest journey. Admitting I wasn’t happy with myself was the first step towards something better. I only accepted my real unhappiness when I removed all the distractions that kept me busy and stopped going to the bar that didn’t charge me. For me, the process of learning to love myself didn’t start until I let go of the external motivators, toxic noise, and learned behavior I hid behind for the last 20 years. My second hard truth was accepting that having an ego wasn’t the same as a healthy sense of self-worth. For months I had been trying to sound more positive in an effort to prove a point to an ex-boyfriend I’d already broken up with. My ego couldn’t let him be right about anything, so of course, I ended the relationship but was still hell-bent on communicating with him so he’d realize what he’d lost. In case you’re wondering this was entirely self-serving but did not qualify as an act of self-love. I crafted my messages to sound positive and upbeat because he claimed I had anger issues. Everything I did was designed to get the response I needed to bolster my self-esteem and feel better about my unadmitted shortcomings. Predictably, I’d end up cursing him out when he failed to praise my positivity… begrudgingly proving his point.
Self-love isn’t something you can fake and doesn’t have a point to prove. It’s a commitment to do right by yourself, for the sake of (your)self, before anyone else. I realized it wasn’t enough to just sound happy, I actually wanted to be happy. I already knew happiness is mental, not environmental. That was another literally expensive lesson I learned after chasing my idea of happy halfway around the world to my favorite Greek island, only to spend the entire month upset about the aforementioned Ex. Five thousand dollars later, happy isn’t the word I would use to describe myself when I returned: broke, would probably be more accurate. At the end of this expensive, self-serving year I didn’t have much left. I had removed everyone or thing I thought was impeding my ability to be happy and still couldn’t figure out what I was missing. When clarity came, it was heavy. The only thing left in-between me, and my goal was myself. So, I focused my energy on me, changing my internal conversation, and my intentional journey of self-love began.