I started listening to an audiobook titled “The Art of Self Love” by Kim Morisson. I thought it would be a great source of inspiration for my 365 posts on self love. And 2 things happened: One, I was busy when I was hearing the amazing inspiring words at the beginning and I could not take notes. And since I continued listening, I am not sure where the inspirational passage was. Second, the author’s favorite self-care sees to be aromatherapy. I really get the impact aromatherapy can have on wellbeing and at the same time, it is not a practice of self care for me. I believe that part of self love is to be willing to recognize when things that work for others don’t work for us. And that’s ok.

I am back! I had been so exhausted the last few days that I did not turn on my computer and did not even remember I wanted to post about self-love. For me, creating structures that remind us about what is important to us is an act of self-love. The same goes with creating new rules: 365 days of self-love may take 2 years!!!

Another important aspect of self-love is creating boundaries. My friend, Nicole Tsong was interviewed on King 5 (TV Channel in Seattle) and describes different types of boundaries.

https://www.facebook.com/625062212/videos/3292196421010764/

Are you setting boundaries? Or is it something you could practice more?

Today in our Geotran call we talked about when things are not unfolding the way we thought they would and the way we wanted them to. As part of self love, we can stop and notice and then practice detachment: “I would prefer if ………… and I choose to be ok with what is.” Sometimes we are not ok with what is. Then comes the work of identifying what we feel and who can help us heal.

Who would you call to help you sort how you feel?

Today I was reminded of 2 things: self-care is part of self-love and it is not all of it as beautifully explained by my Geotran friend Nicole Tsong. And even when you love yourself, in the self-discovery journey, there are difficult days. In those days: call a friend who knows how to get you out of the hole or call me!

https://www.facebook.com/625062212/videos/958019644831968/

Yesterday, I heard someone say: “We are here in this life, we might as well play full out and participate fully.” I agree wholeheartedly. We are here so we might as well make the best of it. For me, self-love is one way to make the journey more pleasant. What other ways can you think of to make the adventure of life more pleasant?

Today, in my self-love /self-discovery journey, I heard the term purposeful socializing. The way I understand it is meeting with an intention. We have done that sometimes in the Geotran Graticle where a specific question is asked and we get sent to a breakout room to meet someone new and share our answer to that specific question. My next purposeful socializing question is what is self-kindness for you?

In a conversation with a friend, we were doing an exercise to practice not taking things personally. In this exercise we were look for what other people might say that we don’t want to hear. As we were voicing these things, I had a glimpse of how nasty the things we imagine other people may think about ourselves can be. I wanted to yell at myself: Stop it. Stop making up horrible things that people might think. I believe that being able to stop guessing or imagining what other people think about us is an act of self-love.

In this short TedTalk on self-love, Caitlyn Roux says “Personal growth has to be intentional.” So is self-love. It doesn’t just happen as we grow up. It is an intentional process that includes self-discovery. I am passionate about self discovery and have been for years. Who am I? “What defines me as a person?”

When we bring compassion to who we discover we are, we bring in self love. When we love ourselves, our capacity to love others increases. For me, the ultimate goal of self-love is to be able to love others no matter how they show up, to be able to be on the receiving end of any communication and still be at peace on the inside. What do you think?

On this self-love journey, I am back to self-forgiveness.

I found this great article on self forgiveness in which Dr. Cherith Glover Fluker define self-forgiveness as “showing yourself grace and accepting that you’ve done something wrong… self-forgiveness is showing yourself compassion and separating yourself from the mistake(s) that you’ve made”.

Practicing showing myself grace…

8 Self-Forgiveness Exercises and Techniques That Really Work