This post may contain affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I’ll receive a commission. Disclosure
“Learn to love yourself.”
“Self love is not selfish!”
“Your relationship with yourself sets the tone for every other relationship you have.”
You’ve probably heard these things. They all have a purpose: loving yourself.
Studies show it’s the basis for success, happiness, and healthy relationships.
Loving yourself is an important first step in healing the past, improving your life, and taking charge of your destiny.
“But, Adelia — how do you do it?”
Glad you asked. 😊
READY TO LOVE YOURSELF?
Check out my free guided audio to get started on how to release emotions painlessly on the spot!
Now I’m about to give you….
7 Ways to Learn to Love Yourself
7 Ways to Learn to Love Yourself
Are you kind and friendly to yourself?
Are you encouraging yourself for growth?
Are you loving that which you are?
If you answer no to one of those questions, you are not alone. I’ve totally been there too.
I did a lot of releasing using The Sedona Method to let go of my limiting beliefs around self love and worthiness, and I’m going to share with you the simple ways to learn to love yourself.
Here’s the tricks on how to easily answer yes to those questions.
1. Let Go of Disapproving Yourself
The best way to learn to love yourself is to allow yourself to let go of disapproving yourself.
It’s easy to love yourself for your “good” qualities: your talents, your beauty, your kindness, and your successes. But what about when we see ourselves less than perfect?
We judge, reject, and beat ourselves up rather than appreciate our inner goodness. We see ourselves as limited and unworthy. Yet this could not be further from the truth.
The trick is in learning to love your less-than-perfect qualities.
“But Adelia, how do you do it?”
Do you remember Lester Levenson’s story about how he discovered a process of self-inquiry he called “correcting things with love”?
In 1952, Lester Levenson — the man behind The Sedona Method — was sent home to die by doctors after a second coronary.
Lester was a type-A personality, very successful and driven, and living on Central Park South in Manhattan. He achieved financial success in the restaurant, lumber, building, oil, and real estate businesses. His life revolved mainly around his relationships with women and his business endeavors, although he was also an avid patron of the arts. He had a good life, yet he had to suffer from sickness.
Instead of giving up, he had the determination to heal himself and let go of all his inner limitations.
He discovered we all have this natural ability to let go of our stress, tension, and anxiety, and also all our inner obstacles to creating success and wellbeing.
He realized if you tap this natural ability, nothing can stand in your way.
He then started to correct everything with love.
He discovered that you could resolve longstanding patterns and started to feel more alive.
At the end of a three-month period, he went from a physical and emotional basket case into a state of profound peace, and he lived another 42 years after the doctors had given him that death sentence.
Oh, that was my favorite teaching story about self love!
Learning from Lester, the most direct way you can love the unlovable in yourself is to bring the feeling of love to whatever it is you’re feeling or experiencing — even if it’s challenging or unpleasant.
If you’re having a hard time loving yourself, begin by simply loving the fact that you are unable to love yourself in this moment.
This might sound counterintuitive, but if you allow yourself to love yourself and give yourself approval exactly as you are — as best you can — things will start to fix itself. Because what you focus on, you get.
Exercise:
You can choose to love yourself even if there are things about yourself that you know could be better.
2. Give love to yourself
Let love shine from your heart to yourself, the people around you, and the world.
As you learn to have self love and self-compassion, your life takes on a totally new quality that enriches everything that you experience.
Exercise:
Think of something that you really don’t like about yourself — you can’t stop eating chocolate, you broke up with your first love, you can’t balance your checkbook — you know your stuff.
Now close your eyes.
Remember a time when you felt love in your heart for someone or something? Notice if you feel a warmth or expansion in the area of your heart.
Now direct that same feeling of love toward yourself — just as you are, including those imperfections, perfection, and all.
That’s what Lester called “squaring it with love.”
When you beam love, compassion, and understanding to yourself, especially when you’re experiencing the challenge, you’ll feel a physical shift in your body. You’ll be more relaxed, and in time, you’ll find the answer that you’re looking for. In my experience, most of the time, things fix themselves!
3. Love Yourself In Every Situation
When you can love yourself in every situation — whether you’ve succeeded or failed, whether you feel good or bad, whether you’re enjoying life or hating it — you’ve taken self love to the unconditional level.
Exercise:
Give yourself approval for no reason at all.
When you connect to the unconditional love at you are, self love starts to flow. Remember, that which you truly are is Love. So you just need to tap that Love.
This simple technique comes especially handy whenever you’re having a rough time or being critical towards yourself.
I’ve totally been using this technique most of the time in difficult times and in my happiest times, and things shifted, many beyond my wildest dreams.
The coolest thing, this intuitive act is supported by a team of British researchers led by Dr. Paul Gilbert. They trained people to be loving and compassionate toward every aspect of themselves — even toward their tendency to be self-critical — and it significantly reduced mental suffering, depression, anxiety, self-criticism, shame, inferiority, and submissive behavior, while upping their ability to soothe and reassure themselves.
4. Letting Go of Wanting to Change Yourself
We often forget that our wanting to change our body-mind does not help us change it.
Instead, the more we want to change the way we are, the more we focus on the negative and magnify our negative perceptions. This then becomes a self-fulfilling prophetic loop.
The more you let go of wanting to change the body-mind, the more you can change what needs to be changed, and the more you can accept what is already perfect the way it is.
Exercise:
When you feel like you want to change anything at all, ask yourself this question:
“Could I let go of wanting to change it?”
Yes, as simple as that.
And if you find yourself reacting to this exercise, give yourself love and approval, and then try this again. Let me know how it goes!
5. From Rejection to Acceptance
Again, we spend a lot of time rejecting parts of our body-mind: that pimple, that fat, that scar, that slow-witted…
The more we reject our body-mind, the more it feels like it’s rejecting us back.
As a result, we do things that are not in our highest and best good as a punishment for the body-mind. We don’t clean our face at night. We consume junk food. We refuse to learn new skills. It feels like never-ending wars.
By letting go of rejecting yourself, you naturally move into more acceptance and more nurturing and caring energy. As a result, that loving energy flows both towards the body-mind and from the body-mind towards you.
The more you can support the body-mind with love and acceptance, the more you’re being supported by it.
Exercise:
Throughout the day, ask yourself, “What’s the most loving thing I can do for myself right now?”
Pay very close attention to the answer. If you need to have more compassion for the part of you that is hurting, do it. If you want to take a hot bath to earn some peace and relaxation, do it.
When you experience love, acceptance, and peace, there were no obstacles to loving and being loved. You can easily love yourself and love others, and life can be very fulfilling.
6. Forgiving Yourself for Everything
Self love is a practice that takes work, especially for those of us who grew up in households that lacked love.
And because of what we learned and experienced in the past, we constantly beat ourselves up for what we could have done differently or should have done better.
This causes us to make the same mistakes over and over again. Because what we hold in mind tends to manifest.
It makes us feel worse about ourselves and it affects our ability to succeed and be happy.
Exercise:
I encourage you to use this audio from The Sedona Method to forgive yourself for your past mistakes.
Forgiving Yourself for Your Past Mistakes is designed to help you break this cycle for good and allow you to move on with your life with greater confidence and certainty.
READY TO FORGIVE YOURSELF?
Check out Forgiving Yourself for Your Past Mistakes guided audio to get started on how to forgive yourself painlessly on the spot!
When you forgive yourself, you can stop self-sabotage, achieve your goals, and be happy no matter what circumstance or situation surrounds you at any moment.
7. Set Boundaries
If you constantly feel hurt by someone, it’s time to set boundaries.
It doesn’t mean that you have to hurt them back to get even. When we seek revenge, getting even, and making it right, we create more conflict, turmoil, and heartache for ourselves.
Allow yourself to let go of wanting to be the victim and let go of wanting to get even, and let go of wanting to make things right. By doing this, you will discover that there is usually a higher and better way to deal with what is.
I’m not saying that you should allow others to get away with things that are inappropriate. But most of us get very stuck here and repeat the same pattern over and over again.
So I highly encourage you to experiment with letting go of wanting to get even. The more you do this, the more you will find better solutions for everyone’s highest and best good, and more importantly, let yourself off the hook.
Exercise:
Allow yourself to let go of any pain, grief, fear, and anger towards the other person.
After that, square the situation with love (see the exercise from #2)
By letting go of the guilt, negativity, and belittling feelings that are keeping you from feeling great about yourself, you’ll start to love yourself again and you can look after yourself.
If the situation is too big for you to handle, I can help you with that. Book a free consultation with me to move from pain to peace.
That’s it. Now you have all the simple steps to learn to love yourself.
If you simply do this on a daily basis, you’ll be golden!
Now you.
Do you practice self love?
What do you do on a daily basis to love yourself?
Let me know in the comment below.
PIN THIS!
Did you find this post useful, inspiring? Save this pin to your board on Pinterest. That way, you’ll always have this info on hand!
Leave a Reply