What Is Self-Love?
By Rosemary Fajardo
Self-love is being – being your infinite, ever-expanding, beautiful self. It’s being connected with yourself and all of the parts that make you, you. Self-love is being compassionate with yourself and allowing yourself to understand that the dark, shadow side that you experience within yourself is happening for you to help you recognize what you need to heal and love in order to expand more of your beautiful, infinite being of love. Self-love is when you allow yourself to give love to yourself first, because if your cup is empty – how will you give love to others from an empty cup?
It wasn’t until I experience my hardest, most difficult times of suffering where I really started to grasp the concept and importance of self-love – specifically through my several difficult breakups. Although we each have our own unique journeys, sharing my experiences with practicing self-love has made me realize that our darkest moments are a blessing in disguise to help us awaken to the love that we already had inside of us all along.
Most of our life we are taught to believe that love is something that we achieve externally, but after several heartbreaks... I just knew that there was something more to the love that I was taught to believe. After constantly giving myself to another, I realized that I kept giving from an empty cup – which left myself constantly drained, frustrated, and out of alignment with myself.
If you feel drained, frustrated, or simply just have had enough – this is a sign for you to practice self-love and return back to your beautiful being of love.
Here are a few practices that help me return back to my being of love whenever I become aware of when I’m not loving myself:
Meditation + breathing exercises
Because it’s so easy to get caught up with the everyday never-ending noise, meditation and focusing on your own breath is vital to removing yourself from this noise. When you take the time to sit down with yourself and start to take notice of your breath, you practice getting in touch with yourself and the love within.
Surround yourself and be present in nature
Nature simply is what it is. Because we ARE beings from nature, allowing yourself to surround yourself with the energy of being can be a beautiful reminder of how beautiful it is to simply be. When you become one with nature, you become one with yourself.
Practice detachment from what no longer serves you
How can you tell what no longer serves you? Take notice of whatever causes you to feel drained. The harder it is to detach yourself from it, the more you actually need to detach yourself from it because it’s taking you even more away from yourself.
Listen to your body
When you listen to your body and take action on the signs that it’s giving you, you start to become in tune with yourself and love your body more. If you feel tired, rest. If you feel constant tension or pain, give love to that area. Your body always gives you signs of what you need to give love and focus on towards in the present moment.
Do something on your own that makes you feel joy
If you have a hard time thinking of what to do, think of what you loved to do as a child (especially if someone didn’t let you do it as a child.) As children, all we did was radiate love because we were simply being and already weren’t programmed to believe that love comes externally.
Be vulnerable and share how you feel with people who hold a safe space for you
Sometimes we just need to express how we feel to release the energy that is built up within our bodies. It’s important to share with someone who holds a safe space for you because they can shine their love and light when you’re trying to find your own love within (because the self-love journey can be hard and uncomfortable.) Having someone there to expand their love with you can make your journey a lot easier.
Be compassionate with yourself and be grateful for what you have
Practicing self-love takes time and consistency, so the most important thing is to be compassionate with yourself and practice gratitude for what you have throughout your self-love journey. The journey never ends because it is always infinitely expanding.
To this day, I use these practices to align back into my being of love as well as other practices that resonate with me in the present moment. Through Lots of Love Club, we provide opportunities and reminders for these practices to help people experience being with others who practice self-love to help expand their own being of love as well.
Whenever you feel like relationships and life aren’t going your way, the #1 thing to remember is that the love that you’re looking for is already inside of you (you just have to fill up your cup again.)