How To Find True Self Love

Have you ever noticed how much levity there is when you spend time with children? There are no insecurities or judgements, just pure fun, happiness and enjoyment of life. They find joy in playing, exploring, learning and spending time interacting with people. It is remarkable to observe a carefree child in comparison to a stressed-out adult.  With adults, a lot of time is spent in a self-critical space. There's hyper focus on work, money, body image, and other concerns that impact our happiness and how we view our own self worth.  We think that when we get that body, or have that house or buy that car or find that significant other that it will make us happier but we need to find happiness from within before turning to outside objects, people or things to gain it. When we remain constantly inward thinking and focused on what we don't have or what is wrong with who we are, it continues to chip away at our self-esteem. We need to be less egocentric and self-involved and more about community and what we are contributing to society.

We put so much focus inward on ourselves instead of focusing on things like:

"How can I be a better person?"

"How can I serve more people?"

"How can I contribute to this world?"

 

We must start adding positivity back to our lives in a permanent way by shifting from thinking only about ourselves to being connected to something greater.  Here are the 3 main areas that when prioritized, can positively impact how we view ourselves and the world around us.

Constantly Learning and Exploring

We know the importance of feeding our bodies with nourishing foods but we must also remember to be continuously feeding our minds. Constantly learning is essential for our growth and development. Reading books that help us learn more about the life we live and watching things that inspire us are great ways to continuously feed the hunger to learn. Exploring whether that's traveling or exposing ourselves to new environments is important. We need to understand the dynamics of other cultures worldwide but also within our own communities to be connected to how others live.

Getting More Human Interaction

We can alienate ourselves by diving into TV, movies, social media, websites or other vices to watch and covet the way another person may live. This isolation then makes us forget the importance of human to human interaction and in person relationships.  Specifically, as social media has become a compulsive and habitual activity in our everyday lives, this can become a constant daily battle that is always present and is literally at our fingertips at all times. We are bombarded with extremely curated posts that portray inaccurate depictions of life and fallacies around true happiness.  Focus can go on why we don't have the life that another person has and even get more granular to what we did wrong, what we ate that day, or why we don’t have a significant other. This causes us to continue to direct our attention to what we don't have instead of recognizing the many blessings we do have.

Living Our Purpose and Giving

Buzz terms like "self-love" and "self-care" have become increasingly popular and while self-affirmations, meditation and yoga classes are great, true self love is found when there's a larger purpose beyond ourselves, that we are anchored to. One that gives us a mission beyond that of serving just ourselves. We must find our superpower which is the unique skill we have that comes naturally to us and gives us a fire in our soul and share that with the world. This leads to happiness internally rather than searching for external factors to determine our self-worth. There is a relationship between giving and how good it makes us feel.  We then are able to move towards understanding our self-identity and gain consciousness of why we are here on this earth.