The first few steps into loving our-self unconditionally are to admit our insecurities and where we lack love for our-self. This is where we have to begin. We have to be able to acknowledge the things that are no longer serving our highest good or our evolution.

At times we adapt beliefs, narratives, patterns, habits etc. base on survival mode. It doesn't necessarily mean it reflects who we are authentically. It's never easy having to face aspects of our-self that we've suppressed and rejected. It's uncomfortable sitting and unpacking our insecurities and our lack mentality. These are the challenges we face when we step into learning to love our-self unconditionally and just like any other challenges, we can overcome these.

The List-

IT'S A JOURNEY:

Loving our-self is not about the destination nor does it have to have a deadline or some sort of 'ending' to it. - In the context of healing and inner work, there is a need to remove timing and expectation on needing to be 'fully healed'. These types of expectations are the beginning to create the recipe for disappointment and unnecessary pressure. It's never about the destination anyway. The journey is located in the present moment and that's the moment that truly matters. That’s the only moment we are genuinely in.

OUR LIGHTS AND TOOLS:

The best ways to cultivate unconditional love is to be compassionate, loving, empathetic, nurturing, kind and forgiving towards our-self. - There will never be an amount of shame, judgement, hatred or rejection that will yield unconditional love. Those aspects are not needed when we are healing and reclaiming our power back. We must bring in the opposite experience we had to our reality to heal. Being loving, empathetic and kind towards our-self is a habit that becomes effortless the more we practise it.

(Side note: If you are having trouble providing these needs at this moment, begin with liking yourself and just hating yourself a little less each day. Begin spotting or listing all the things that went right instead of what went wrong. Practise listing gratitude each day and counting your blessings. - Train yourself to spot at least one blessing in your experiences or what you are grateful for.)

THE INFRASTRUCTURE:

Reconstructing our foundation and belief system doesn't happen overnight. - This process of reconstructing our inner world takes time and with timing, we do not control it. By focusing our energy on the things we do control such as our effort, work and patience we stand in our power and not give it to things that are not in our control. This is also a great way to remember that it's okay if we fall back to our old habits or behavioural patterns. Just because we fall back to old ways doesn't mean our progress has been thrown out the window. Breaking out of behavioural and thinking patterns takes time and cannot be done overnight. Practice patience not just towards the things we don’t control, towards our-self too.

GRIEF:

It's okay to let parts of personality and identity go as we learn to love our-self unconditionally. - Our identity is not set in stone. We can change them whenever we like. As we learn to view our-self from a place of love, we will begin to change aspects of our beliefs, narratives, patterns and conditioning. This will require us to let go of aspects of our-self that is founded in a lack mentality. This is where grief comes in.

Grief looks different on everyone and with grief, it has other emotions compiled on top or by its side. There is no wrong or right way to grief. Not everyone will resonate with how we grieve and vice versa. It's important to remind our-self that grieving is a part of healing. As we let go of the old and outdated perspective we must let go of versions of our-self that resonate with it.

THE BODY, KNOWS:

Our emotions are stored in our body too and not just the mind. - When we are letting go or healing our inner wounds there is a need to feel and sit with what's coming up for us. We have to be able to feel it in our body or at least welcome it in. This can come through as psychical sensation in an area of our body or as tears. Processing our emotion also doesn't have a deadline or timer set on them.

There are just times our emotions take time to process and be able to let go of the energy attached to them. Please welcome in compassion and empathy. Each time we process it, we gain a new level of perspective. Where we begin to view it through the lens of optimism.

A handy technique I recently learned was the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). It’s where we tap parts of our body as we say the negative emotion we are feeling in a form of a mantra. We say the negative mantra as we tap because it’s a way to welcome it into our body and feel it. Here is a reel of Kate an EFT practitioner explaining the benefits of using this technique. - Instagram Reel

Life will always have its hurdles to overcome, that's how life was constructed. Life also has polarities; we also experience wins and successes. Loving our-self is not all rainbows and sunshine. Having to remind our-self that self-love is not supposed to be perfect. It's supposed to be accepting our-self as we are.

We are not supposed to be perfect.

We are allowed to make mistakes, fuck up and learn from them. As that's all we can go if we've made a mistake. As long as we’re learning and continue to take the lessons instead of the expectations.

Don't feel as we have to be at a certain 'stage' or cycle in our journey. Trust your own timing, journey, evolution, growth and self. All this inner work simultaneously goes hand in hand. They are the puzzle pieces and each and one of them is as important as the next; as it requires to create the whole image.

Be Kinder, Less Critical.

Loving our self unconditionally is a journey and it’s a term that has been thrown out a lot in the recent days. Although loving our self unconditionally isn’t as easy or as glamorous as it sounds.

When we have adapted to loving our self through the conditioning of fear base foundations, having to reconstruct that causes a tower moment. It’s where we have to tear down our infrastructure back to the foundation to change it to a place of unconditional love. Having a foundation that is fear base will also reflect not just the relationship we have with our self but also those around us and other external factors within our outer world. When we begin to move from a place of unconditional love, we are prompted to let go of those or things, that we are no longer an alignment with.

By learning to love our self doesn’t necessarily start with love, it usually starts from acknowledging and embracing. What I mean by this is when we acknowledge the relationship we have with our self in the present moment, we embrace who we are now and rather than creating illusions and deception on how we honestly feel and see our self.

Accepting and embracing where we at in the present moment is key; by doing this we are removing the illusions we have covered our self with. We have to learn and begin somewhere, it is okay to not move from a place of unconditional love, just yet.

Begin with simply getting to know our self; what sparks that flame of passion and peace within us? Finding those fragments that create those spark is key. This will look different on everyone, as not everyone will have the same fragment of flame. It’s important to solely focus on what makes us passionate and peaceful. Detach from other’s expectation and pressure to be a certain way.

We shouldn’t mould our self for others comfort while we stay small and uncomfortable. Those who fear or judge our light are not the people that are aligned with us.

The thing is, from centuries of unconscious conditioning from society and family, we have moulded our self to someone who's (might) not an alignment with who we are naturally. We have the nurture side of our self, which is how we were brought up and how our family loved us. Then we have our nature side, which is who we are authentically, underneath all the social and family conditioning. -- As I’ve mentioned before, we have been unconsciously conditioned and it’s not just our current generation, but also the past and the one before that and so on.

Realise that our society has been on these cycles for many years now. That each and one of us, past and present generations have broken certain cycles within our bloodline or society; that we have been ascending throughout the centuries. We have changed as a collective and we will continue to do so. The thing is we cannot demand change from others when we, our self haven’t done the change our self. And by ‘change’, I mean living a life aligned to who are by nature. We do this by stripping our self from all the social and family conditioning that is holding us back from living a life full of passion and peace. -- What may be authentic to us, might not resonate or be authentic for others. It’s needing to ground our self in that concept that we all came here to experience this human life and we all have different and unique souls, which will alter our experiences to what our soul needs to further evolve. -

The beauty of this experience is that we all reflect a part of our self of one another. Those reflections are just a way to enhance our self-awareness and get in touch with our wholeness. Each fragment being reflected back at us is an opportunity to accept or deny them; when we deny them, we deny a part of our self too. We are allowed to begin to love and accept our self, from all angles of the spectrum and polarity of life.

We have to be able to look at our self from an honest place. We have to admit to the bitter and sweet truth of it all. Not all truths are comfortable, although we do have to start somewhere. It’s okay not to love our self unconditionally just yet, we live in a world that profits from our insecurities and puts us on a cycle of internalised shame.

Loving our self is not a one day trip we take, it’s a 24/7 journey we are on. We can not separate our self from our self, there is nothing we can do about that. The relationship we have with our self is the model for other relationships we have. If we have blueprints and programming base on self-abandonment and people-pleasing, then we go on a cycle of abandoning our needs and self to feel a sense of belonging or love from others. It’s where we go on a cycle of chasing and running after those who reflect that fragment of our self or will take advantage of that part of our blueprint.

Loving our self is not something we can buy off eBay or Amazon, it’s more than reading self-help books and reciting affirmations, it’s having to look within and do the inner work and the root cause of the reason why we feel unlovable or unworthy. It’s removing those barriers to feeling love, acceptance, worth and validation form our self. -- In this process, it requires as to heal parts of our self and reclaim fragments that we have suppressed or deemed unworthy or unlovable.

Loving our self has cycles and process within the journey, which goes hand in hand with other areas of our life. It’s having to be nurturing, be patience and kind with our self as this is not a one day trip we take. It’s something we overcome every single day. And there will time where we feel like we are on top of the world and other times, we feel as if we back to square one, although there will also come time and day where we begin to see that we are no longer the person we were from our past; the one who moved from a place of self-abandonment and believing they were unworthy.

Until that day comes, keep continuing to Be Kinder, Less Critical.