The Power of Self Love

How you love yourself dictates everything in your life. Literally everything...from the relationships you choose to bring into your life (both platonic and romantic) to how you care for your physical form to the food you choose to fuel your body. 

If you want to begin to make shifts in your life, if you want to go deep, start with how you love yourself. Be honest. I know we cannot always be honest with yourself, but if you set the intention, you will get there. I promise.

I can say this, because I know for a fact that it is true. It took me 8 plus years to realize that I was never able to have the loving relationship I so deeply desired, because deep down I believed I did not deserve it. I spent years working on patience, self acceptance, self love, healing old wounds both my own and through family lines, grieving, working on strengthening my physical form, and finally now - working on shifting how I fuel my body.

I have known for a while now that my diet needed to change. Even if I wasn't sure how to do it, I knew it was coming. One of my dearest friends had been working through a course that was fascinating. With her encouragement, I purchased that book and in that instance decided I was going to do this completely and fully from a place of love and nourishment. I read a chapter a day to give myself time to process resistance that would surface, and I allowed myself to feel all the feels.

Do you have any idea how much our emotions are wrapped up in how we fuel ourselves? So many!!! From how we come together with loved ones around food, to how we grieve surrounded by food, to how we can use food to mask our feelings of sadness or loneliness, or to how we can use food to punish or deprive ourselves. Even diets are no you can't have x y z. 

So here I am two weeks into a four week physical reset and I am finally just realizing how deeply loving yourself is tied up in to what we feed ourselves. It is empowering to search for recipes that fit within the confines of the detox. It is invigorating to know that I am intentionally giving my body the nutrients it needs. And it is mildly frustrating to feel all the aches and cramps and low energy and brain fog that incurred during the first two weeks when I was detoxing sugar and other processed ingredients - I couldn't believe how deeply I was affecting my body. 

I am not saying you have to go to the extremes that I have chosen to go to. But, if you are suffering ask yourself....what needs to shift? How can I show myself more love, more joy? How can I care for myself in a way that will support my growth and expansion? We get so focused on the immediate fixes that sometimes we are not able to see that it goes far beyond the surface. When dealing with weeds, if you cut off the weed, it will just grow back. You have to go deep down and get all the roots. 

Exercise - Create a tree with all the branches of yourself. What words would you use to describe yourself? Then go below the surface - what words does your inner voice use to talk to yourself (be honest). Then look at all those root words and ask yourself...are these truth? are these said from a place of love? How can I begin to shift the words at the root so that I can begin to bring the words from the tree down into the roots? Sit with this daily. You don't have to have answers or epiphanies every day, but that intention and actively sitting with your feelings will go along way.