Finding self-love is a lifelong journey. Self-love is generating happiness within yourself, yet for some reason, society tells us that putting ourselves first can be “selfish” so we can find ourselves trying to balance, how do we put ourselves first without being “selfish.” How do we find & keep self-love? And sometimes we get lost on that journey. In today’s post, I’m going to share the secret I’ve found to discovering self-love.
The secret to finding self-love is to listen to your inner voice. See, I thought I was listening to my inner voice but it wasn’t until recently that I realized that I often listened to my negative ego more than my actual self.
The ego is a person’s sense of self-esteem or self-importance. Now, I would argue that as a whole we do want to be confident full of self-love, however, the negative ego will tell us everything that is wrong with us and if we are not careful it can take over. This is what happened to me recently. And I wondered how did I get so far off? I do have a motivational blog, shouldn’t I have a good handle on this? Why didn’t I? How do we identify this negative self and change it? It’s actually quite simple.
Let me explain.
There are many experiences of losing self-love that come to mind that I could share but I will talk about a past romantic relationship I was in where I was not being treated right. The details of this I will save for another time, but it was a toxic situation. I knew I wasn’t happy, I knew the behavior was wrong. I couldn’t figure out why someone would continue to hurt me when I asked them to stop and was visibly suffering.
Everyone I talked to I’d repeat over and over again how much I hated the situation and wished that it would change. I found myself ruminating in these negative thoughts, literally beating myself up for the situation. I wondered why nothing was changing. What was wrong with me? Why didn’t anyone love me?
I kept praying to the universe, why are you not listening to me!?
And for a moment, the universe spoke back to me. And the universe said,
“I am listing. We are listening. EVERYONE is listening to you. The only person who is not listening to you is yourself.”
And in that single moment, my whole life zoomed out and I could see the full picture. All this time I was constantly telling everyone how unhappy I was and what I didn’t like. I was even obsessing, talking it out loud to myself!
But I was not talking to the universe asking why it wasn’t listening to me. I I was asking myself why I wasn’t listening to me!?
Yet for some reason, I could not realize it. I kept thinking it was everyone else. But how could it be? No one can change the situation for me and clearly, the person I was dating wasn’t listening.
It was me constantly repeating the pain I felt. I was trying to get ME to listen. I was trying to love myself. The only person who could listen and actually make a change was me!!! And at that moment I heard my true inner voice. An inner voice that was very quiet, and sad, and hurt. An inner voice begging for self-love.
A voice that I vowed to get to know and listen to better.
I was so sad because I knew deep down that every moment I continued to allow myself to be treated less than, I was quietly not loving myself. And it had nothing to do with if person I was dating could see that and everything to do with me seeing it.
You see within each of us is a universe. Think of the cells in your body as people, the organs and blood etc are galaxies, and you are the God of that universe.
When I thought I was praying to the actual universe as a whole, I realized I was the God I was praying to. I was the only one not listening. I was the only one who could change everything if I would only listen to my own prayers.
So I finally did. As soon as I realized that I ended the relationship. And it felt so amazing to finally listen. Because every moment I didn’t I was loving myself a little less.
And with that, I had finally fully understood one of my favorite quotes by Paulo Cohello from The Alchemist,
“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams.”
To cultivate and maintain self-love you must never be afraid to make a change. Listen to what you are saying to others and your prayers. The fear of losing someone or something you love is much more painful than it happening. In fact, you are suffering much more by denying yourself the happiness you deserve.
When you listen to your heart, that inner voice you will never suffer. Because you are following your heart, you are putting yourself first. You are listening to you. Trust yourself.
And that is the secret to finding self-love.
