How to start your self-love journey - Self-Love Challenge
At the beginning of my personal development journey, I had no idea what self-love was... And I had no clue I wasn't loving myself... Let alone what to do to start loving myself.
Seriously, how do you even do that when you're only starting on your journey and when society tells you that taking care of yourself and prioritising your needs is selfish?
A lot of people have asked me "How can I love myself?", "Where do I start on my self-love journey?", "Is it about loving my body and how I look?"
So I decided to help and bring more content around Self-Love...
Back in February 2021, I created a self-love challenge that I posted on Instagram. In this article, you will find this self-love challenge, it's like a personal development plan, you get inspiration, self-love prompts, tips and info that can help you on your path.
It's been a long journey for me and if I can help you accelerate yourself so that you can love yourself and improve your life and your relationships, I'll be happy to do so.
I have a free clarity call available - whether we work together or not, you'll walk away with clarity on your next steps.
From self-abuse to self-love (my personal self-love journey)
Throwback to 2008-2009, my dear friend & Medicine Man teacher (a wise and powerful Lakota Elder) sent me a message and some of his words where "you do not love yourself". If I'm honest, I had no idea what he meant, I was confused because I didn't know self-love was a thing. I had become a busy executive, I was successful and even if I was aware that I struggling with body image issues and being super hard on myself (I'd call it self-abuse...).
I wasn't aware that it wasn't "normal" (if I may say so) to always be hard on myself, to belittle yourself and to feel like I had to prove I was worthy of my position in the company so I wouldn't deceive my boss who had full trust in me... (see how I was projecting my insecurities on my boss - a confident business man and CEO who knew what he was doing...) Yet, there was a void within myself, I was feeling either overwhelmed or empty, sometimes depressed, even burnt out at some point...
Now it's easy to see that the void I was feeling was the lack of connection with myself, even if I was aware and sensing a lot around me, I was missing a key element... awareness of myself to a deeper level. Back then... my teacher had sensed it and he told me that I had to love myself. So to the level of awareness I had at the time, I thought "ok I need to work on my eating disorder and feel better about myself"...
Then the healing journey started, the journey back to myself...
My words of encouragement to you: if I managed to love myself and become my own friend, you can do it too
Fast forward to now, I am helping others understand the void, get through it so that they can get to the other side where the light (THEIR light) shines... and this involves connecting back with yourself, healing wounds and traumas, shedding false beliefs and programmings, inherited patterns so that the truth, YOUR truth, can be found! It's been a long journey for me, and pretty dark too if I'm honest, but because I've been through it and came out on the other side on my own, I can help you navigate it with grace.
It does NOT have to take time, you don't have to do it alone, but you need to do it. I can't do it for you, just like my teacher couldn't tell me how to love myself, he could just be the catalyst so that I could work my way through it and then become a teacher for others. If you'd like to go to the next step of your journey back to yourself, I can help you clear blocks so that you can release those from your energy field and elevate your reality. That's the key ingredient to manifesting.
Feel free to drop me a message, let's chat.
Myth-busting: "self-love is about physical appearance" -> not true
Have you ever thought this?
At the very beginning of my journey, I thought it was about loving your physical appearance and your body... something I had struggled with since childhood because of the bullying I had undergone, among other things... You can't know better until you know better, right?
Although loving your physical appearance and your body as a whole is indeed part of loving yourself, self-love goes deeper than that.
Self-love implies the physical, emotional, mental/mindset, soul aspects of you, what makes you you, your energy. It's about loving each and every aspect of yourself.
Self-love goes hand in hand with self-acceptance, that is to say accepting yourself and knowing you also have the power to improve what you feel you need to improve - NOT from a place of running away from yourself - but from a place of embracing yourself and growing because you know you have potential and you are infinite. Self-love needs to be unconditional, it implies healing your traumas, false programming (false beliefs, thought patterns), toxic habits, emotional wounds. That's what we call "doing the shadow work".
When you do the "shadow work", that is to say when you heal and learn to accept yourself fully more and more, you release bocks, you unlock new opportunities and you can manifest (or create) your dream life.
What is shadow work?
Acknowledging and exploring every aspect of yourself, including those that you judge harshly and that you don't like about yourself in order to heal wounds and love yourself unconditionally in spite of everything you went through.
If you need help with Shadow Work, I have something for you, click the image to unlock your