What Self-Love Really Means (And Why It’s Not What You Think)

Back when I was into New Age material to try to heal myself, I read a lot about self love.

Many of the books I read and the self-help gurus I consulted stressed how important it was to love ourselves. They claimed that self love could solve everything from chronic illness to relationship issues.

It was the cure-all, the magic elixir. Something about this self love thing resonated with me but I couldn't totally embrace it.

It seemed impossible. I felt inadequate in so many ways. I was sick and entirely dependent on other people. I judged myself for being ill and unable to get better.

I was feeling such intense self hatred that loving myself seemed like an impossible leap.

How could I love myself when I hated my life, my body and my inability to heal myself? How could I love myself when my guilt and shame were overwhelming?

I wrote off self love as just not for me.

I eventually realized I didn't relate to this New Age stuff anyway. It didn't sit right with me. So, I threw the baby out with the bath water and with it went the concept of loving myself.

It wasn’t until years later I realized what self love really is. It’s called acceptance.

In the darkest of times where there was very little I could find to love or even like about myself, here's what I could do: I asked myself, "Can I let this be ok?"

The many times I was caught in a downward spiral of self hatred, pain, or fear, I was faced with two choices: I could label those feelings as unacceptable and try to push them away or I could accept that they were there.

So I would ask myself that question, Can I let this be ok? Can I let it be ok that I feel shame, pain, or fear right now? Can I accept this part of me that feels so bad? Can I just let it be there and feel it?

The answer was always yes.

I could always let it be ok, because once you ask that question, you are instantly in a place of compassion and acceptance, even if it only lasts for a moment.

No matter how uncomfortable those emotions were to feel, if I let them be ok, it suddenly was ok. It was ok that I was feeling so bad. It was ok to feel it. It was ok that it was there.

In that magical place of acceptance, I was free to feel those emotions fully and let them pass through. Once I accepted them and felt them, they passed on through me like storm clouds.

It was my resistance to feeling them that kept them there so long.

This is what real self love is. It's not the cliche phrase where you force yourself to think positive thoughts about yourself and deny the other parts that you hate.

It's the acceptance of all the parts of yourself: the parts that you love about yourself, the parts that you wish would go away, the emotions that make you feel joyful and the emotions that take you to your knees.

It's about accepting ALL of it.

That's the real, genuine self love and acceptance that I was looking for but wasn't finding in my quest for healing.

If you're like me and you don't think you can do self love, try what worked for me. Try asking yourself that question: Can I let this be ok?

No matter what is happening around you, how bad it looks on the outside, you can make that small switch in perspective from judgement to acceptance in the blink of an eye.

Let whatever is in your life be ok. You may not want it to be there forever, but for the moment, let it be ok that it's there.

That's real self love.

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