“If I loved myself the way I loved other people, I’d take much better care of myself!”
Recently, I’d posted that a client of mine had this epiphany during one of our sessions. It was one of the most well-received posts I’d created. It blew my mind a bit.
This client and I had been working on health and social confidence for almost a year. The insight that I’m always looking to drive a wellness client towards had emerged beautifully. No matter what happens with this young man, I know that he’s now in a much better place to heal his relationship with the body, food, and fitness.
I talk about love a lot. I speak of self-love as the main ingredient in any positive change or growth. To me, it is foundational for a wonderful life. As I do this, I can see how uncomfortable it makes people around me. How tentative people are to dive deeper into the conversation. How quick they are to change the topic. And…how readily people are to discount that love can be a solution.
Why is the word “love” so challenging for folks?
Why is the concept and actualization of self-love so foreign or down right devalued in our current world?
This article will have more questions than answers, which is a vulnerable act for a “life coach”. And I’m not afraid, as in this moment I will do the thing that I preach, and choose love over fear. (Even as that concept has served me masterfully in my life, I find there is a voice inside that still scoffs at the cheese factor!)
I wonder at times if our allergy, to assuming love is the answer, is so confronting because it is just too simple. Simple and not easy.
What if the idea that love of others and self-love made so many of our other solutions seem unnecessary and invalid?
What if loving self and others implied that we must accept others and our own faults, imperfections, discomforts, mistakes, and violations?
To me, this directs my thought to the fear of acceptance. When we accept and love we don’t encourage further fault, imperfection, discomfort, mistakes or violation. We actually open up the space for relaxation, reflection, and curiosity. Which are all required to heal, grow and change.
What if the idea of love is so challenging because it’s the most expansive and extraordinary gift we can give and receive, and receive that gift we are fucking vulnerable?
If I have the thing I most want, desire, need and crave…I can then lose it. So for some, it’s easier to avoid receiving it at all.
Which then leads me to the train of thought that we consider ourselves fragile. As I do my own work on my mind, body, and spirit, I am constantly surprised at how often my resistance, or “fuckery” as my coach likes to call it, is predicated on the thought that I can’t survive a failure or a loss. That grief or shame will overwhelm me and destroy me psychologically, financially, physically or socially.
When I question these ideas and beliefs about my own fragility I know they are not true. The same goes for my clients. When we dig deep and find the fear hidden under a belief of fragility, the question is simply “Is there any truth to that fear?”.
Almost instinctively we know that we aren’t fragile when confronted with these slippery and trickster thoughts.
The truth is that experiencing loss and failure is a required step in the journey towards understanding ourselves, deepening our connection with others and moving towards wholeness. That when we are confronted with what we thought would end us, kill us, devastate us or destroy us, we not only learn that we are unbreakable but we gain amazing insight and skills that we never would have we not failed or lost something of value.
So my challenges to you are simple…not easy!
How can you accept and appreciate the love of others and self-love more? What are you really afraid of?
And…
How can you remember that you are not fragile? What will bring more belief to the idea that you are the product of billions of years of organic evolution and that ancestral lineage has made you tough as fuck! Or that you’ve survived everything that life has brought you so far.
Finally…
What would be possible for you in your life if you actually embraced, embodied and acted from a place of self-love?
In Loving Service,
Joe