Filling Your Cup With Self Love

The old adage says you can’t love another until you learn to love yourself. While we’ve all heard this adage -and generally accept it as truth- we rarely hear much in regard to HOW you love yourself. Loving yourself sounds great, but what does it really mean?

When I reflected upon this concept, I found that I was blessed to be born into a family that provided unconditional love and support. This filled me with love and confidence that I could harness to accomplish things in the physical realm. I created my dream job, married a great woman, and had beautiful daughters. We lived a few blocks from the beach and life was great.

But when it all came crumbling down I was forced to rebuild from the ground up. My foundation was broken. Who was I? What did I want? What was I doing wrong? How did I need to grow?

Did I have too much confidence? Did I love myself too much?

I started to question almost everything I believed to be true.

What did I love about myself? What did I dislike about myself? What did I know about myself? What was I still learning about myself?

I started working to put the pieces back together. As I slowly built myself back up, I solidified a foundation of self-awareness that allowed me to start moving forward.

Through the process I had friends tell me I was being too hard on myself. I needed to love myself more.

…but I thought I WAS loving myself.

It caused me to deeply examine what it means to love yourself. Where does this love come from? How do you love yourself?

I slowly found answers as my self-love grew. Now, a few years later, my cup of self-love is finally feeling full.

Through this process, there were a few major lessons I learned. Below are the primary takeaways on my journey to experiencing deep and sincere self-love:

Appreciation Of Strengths

An easy place to start improving self-love is through appreciation of your strengths. What do you like about yourself? What are you good at? What makes you different from others? What skills do you have? List them out. Make as big of lists as possible. Be proud of your strengths! List them with pride and own how amazing you are.

Forgiveness Of Past

After acknowledging your strengths, you’re hopefully in a place where you can face your past. This is a crucial step in obtaining self-love. You’ve probably done some shitty things in the past. You weren’t always the best version of yourself. You’ve made mistakes. You’ve hurt people.

And it’s all ok! Everyone has made mistakes. It’s part of the human experience. We are here to grow and develop. Our greatest growth often comes from our greatest mistakes.

The important part is forgiving yourself after making the mistake, instead of holding onto it and developing guilt or other negative emotions. You’ve done it, it happened, and it’s over. Own it, learn from it, forgive it, and move on from it.

Granted, this is often easier said than done as self-forgiveness is one of the most difficult steps on the journey to self-love. Often, counseling, therapy, and other healing modalities are necessary to help you uncover pains from the past that you’ve hidden within yourself.

Freeing yourself of the shackles from your past is a huge step toward fully loving yourself.

Acknowledgment Of Weaknesses

Similar to strengths, we all have weaknesses. When you allow your weaknesses to exist in your blind spots, they hold power over you. They hold you back. Suppress you.

However, if you acknowledge your weaknesses, you can take ownership of them. You can work to improve them or learn how to avoid them. When you gain awareness of your weaknesses they can no longer hold you back or get in your way. By owning your weaknesses, you are learning to love even the lesser parts of your fully beautiful self!

Pursuit Of Passions

After taking ownership of your strengths and weaknesses, and forgiving your past, the next phase of self-love is fully stepping into the present. One of the most concrete ways to do so is by dedicating time to pursue your passions.

What do you love?!? What are you passionate about?

Your passions create love and excitement within you. When you nourish them, this love and excitement fill you. You feel alive and are filled with joy. Ideally, you can take time for your passions every day. Having the ability to do something you enjoy, with just yourself, dependent upon no one else, is incredibly powerful making this a huge step on the journey to self-love.

Self Expression

While this step isn’t necessary to achieve self-love, self-expression can be a beautiful piece of the puzzle. As you begin to develop self-love you start to come alive. You are quicker to smile and lighter on your feet. As this shift begins, you are often overcome with a desire to share the light that you feel within. Stepping into this desire to truly express yourself allows the self-love energy to flow. The more you authentically express your true self, the more your self-love can deepen and grow.

Have Fun With Yourself

Laugh at yourself. Dance around the house. Pursue your passions. Enjoy the process of cooking and eating. Go on walks. Lay in a hammock. Just do things by yourself. While doing so, think about all those strengths of yours you listed up above. And think about those weaknesses, continue working to improve them. Appreciate all the work you’ve done and the effort you’ve made to get to this point in life. Smile at yourself. Love yourself.

In Conclusion:

Like all aspects of the personal journey, there is no one correct path. We each need to pave our own road based on our personal needs and desires. At the same time, there are often aspects of our individual journeys that are relevant to others on their journey.

While your cup of self-love will look different than mine, there are certain ingredients that go into all cups. Hopefully, some of these ingredients can help you fill your cup with all the love you need to overflow.