What Happens When You Actually Like Yourself

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves... Live the questions now. Perhaps you will gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer." ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

I love to get up when the house is quiet in the morning, long before anyone else awakes. I brew my coffee in my stainless steel french press and cozy up to my ceramic owl mug, savoring the comfort of every sip. It's a gift I give myself every chance I get.

This sacred ritual allows me to just BE. To journal my thoughts, to reflect on things, to use the extra intuition found in my tarot spreads and then to write, hike, meditate - whatever I feel compelled to. I may jot down some to-do's for later, but the first matter of affairs is attending to my soul, my inner self. This is what I choose to nourish with because I truly want to love and care for myself.

It wasn't always this way for me... mind you, I've always been a deep contemplater, thinker, writer... but for most of my life I felt like I was trying to find something that was lost. ME. This led to feelings of unease, anxiousness and fear. Feelings I never truly allowed myself to fully feel because quite frankly I didn't even know what to do with the pain they might inflict.

There are many reasons  we as humans hide from pain, from feeling. In many cases we have past traumas or emotional wounds that have shaped us in some way. Once we become aware of this we can take steps to shift.

I've had many breakthroughs in my life where I began to see that my thoughts and feelings were plaguing me in a way that felt paralyzing, constrictive and ultimately led me nowhere good. Why? Because I never could process them helpfully on my own.

I experienced emotional neglect, abuse and trauma and as I began to understand how those things impacted me, I was able to make better choices to heal myself.

Let me tell you something...  over the years, my resolve grew and grew and I never gave up on myself. I never gave up on learning how to turn my internal dialogue about myself around. Regardless of what happened to me, and what choices I had made that did not serve me in life. I truly wanted to learn how to feel content in my own skin, body, mind, soul.

And that's the ticket... you can't set out on a journey to heal without the willingness to do so.  Without that initial willingness, you just won't have the chance to engage in the task of evolving into your own self-love. I've shared many parts of my healing journey with you here, in part my hope is to give you hope. To inspire you on your own journey. To help you be happy, be joyful and BE YOU.

One big shift happened for me when I committed to healthy eating, FOR GOOD. In order for me to do that I had some BIG obstacles to overcome first. It wasn't easy, but it was worth it and I was damned and determined. It became my new normal - habits are formed first by an internal resolve and then through patient, persistent practice.

When you give your physical body clean pure fuel, you come back to life more. This allows you to feel a sense of clarity and peace. When you feel this you are better able to bond with your inner self.

You see, I used to be SO disconnected to my inner self. She was in there, but so much was in the way of me connecting to her. I had to clear the path back to her. This took many steps and unraveling many layers to keep freeing myself.

I became willing to feel my pain, to journal it, to process it, to release it. I learned to start to take responsibility for how I felt in light of my life - my past, my hurts, my childhood wounds, difficulties. Not to dwell on it but to heal it, to learn from it.

If you are unwilling to feel the painful feelings of life and learn how to manage them rather than avoid them, you will resist loving yourself, and you will continue to act out of alignment.

If you feel STUCK in your life... like you’ve lost sight of who you are or that you don’t even like who you have become - look at your intentions.

Chances are your highest priorities are maintaining control and resistance - rather than learning to love yourself.

STUCK = resistance.

What is it you are resisting? If your intention is to feel in control of your life, ask yourself why? What are you protecting yourself from? What hurts are you unwilling to see or feel so you can release them and learn from them?

I talk to women all the time and something that comes up often in our conversations is that they truly feel a lack of internal self-worthiness. They even say things like;  "I just want to be me again", "I’ve lost myself", "I don’t even like myself".

Ladies, these feelings are guiding you … they are calling you to set your intention on learning to BECOME. To be at ease and content with yourself.

You can learn to see your worth without blinders. You can learn to be yourself freely, unapologetically. You can find your inner self and be free. You can fall in love with who you are right now, as well as who you are becoming.

I love how Dr. Margaret Paul simplifies this in her book; ‘Diet For Divine Connection’

We can simplify the choice of our intention by realizing that the intentions we choose for ourselves determines what actions we take and there are only two choices in any given moment:

1. The intention to control in order to avoid pain
2. The intention to learn about loving ourselves and sharing our love with others.


What is your intention right now?
What is it you want for your health and life right now?
What is important about that?
What will having that do for you?
What is getting in the way of you having that?

BE HONEST with yourself. Have you been able to get out of your own way and make the real progress you desire? Not a perfect controlled outcome, rather progress in the right direction... towards your happiest outcome. Progress that you allow yourself to see and to celebrate and to feel empowered by.

If your intent is to actually like yourself - who you are, to see your inherent worth and fully fucking own it - that’s the first step. Focus your heart and soul on that intention and start choosing you.

Choose to love yourself, to nurture yourself without judgement, just acceptance. The more you choose you, the more you can connect with your compassionate inner guidance and loving adult mother. You can tap into your inner Mother and nurture the part of you that may still showing up as a hurt wounded or scared insecure child.

This is why I give myself the gift of time and space alone to nurture myself. To open my heart to my inner guidance. So I can have more compassion for myself, and so I can see how I may be causing or allowing my own wounded feelings to trump. Or even see where I may be holding on to stories about myself or life that just are not true.

How many times do we tell ourselves some crazy story that is not helpful or true? How many times do we beat ourselves up, judge ourselves or even feel like we have things so hard we are powerless?

If your child spoke to you this way would you say to her/him what you say to yourself in these moments? Check in with yourself on that one.

Here’s the bottom line: every single one of us carries immense worth regardless of how we FEEL right now in our current set of circumstances on this earth. You have incredible value and are so worthy of love, even if you feel like you can't stand to look at yourself in the mirror without disdain. And I’m not just talking what you see physically, but what you ‘see’...the whole of you and your life right now. You look at it and don’t even like yourself.

Perhaps you need a pep-talk and to be reminded of some truth:

- Your value doesn't lie in what you accomplish.
- Your value does not diminish when your health does.
- Your worth is not contingent upon your perceived success as measured by society.
- Your worth does not get devalued when you struggle, mentally, physically or emotionally.
- You are not unlovable because your life is messy right now.

When you like yourself you 'know' all of that - you trust all of that - you believe all of that. You are able to call yourself on your stories when they creep into your head.

And in turn, you stay centered.

You start to enjoy life more - you allow yourself to pursue pleasure - you make time for fun for joy.

The challenge is to remember that you have a choice. You always have a choice. You can choose to focus your intention on what’s going wrong in your life. OR you can choose the intention to learn about loving yourself. Learn to like yourself again or for the first time ever. HOW?

Practice. Any intention you set, must be backed up with practice.

And when you choose to practice you are sending a message to yourself that you matter. That you choose you. That you are taking back your power, that you choose to take responsibility for your life, instead of withdrawing from it. Instead of giving up when you feel out of control or can’t control the outcome you perceived.

Your intention to learn, to grow, to heal, to evolve is a gift. It opens you up to your inner intuition. The more you choose to learn, the more you create new neural pathways in your brain to be loving to yourself. You can literally hack and rewire your brain, it's called neuroplasticity. Ultimately, you are the architect of your brain. When you change your beliefs, learn something new or become mindful of your habitual reactions to unpleasant emotions, you actually alter the neurochemistry and the structure of your brain.

How cool is that?! This is one reason I love meditation SO MUCH, because it  - and it too, is a practice -one worth creating a habit of.

And then, when you actually like yourself, life shifts from gray to full vibrant color. You choose to enjoy your life versus feeling stuck or trapped or dis-empowered. This energy brings SO MUCH HEALING.

You learn to embrace the journey and trust the process and enjoy it instead of feel constantly hyper-vigilent trying to control everything. Or stuck in your trauma and wounds.

There are many things you can do as you step into your intention to heal and learn to not only like yourself again, but full on deeply love yourself.  I’ve shared countless blogs on this -feel free to go back and read past posts. Here are a few to get started with:

1. This is the magic key to unlock your overwhelm for good
2. Love is the best medicine of all
3. How to make meditation be your super power
4. She learned how to love herself
5. She learned how to own her worth

Happy reading!



If you haven't joined my 5-Day Self-Love Challenge yet, that is a great first step after reading this post... and take the first step towards a happier, healthier you!

This is my focus, helping women learn to own their worth, love themselves and heal their bodies in my mind-body coaching work. If you feel connected to my work, I invite you to book a breakthrough session with me today. We'll get on the phone and chat about your happiest outcome for your health and life right now, and if I believe I can support you in that, I'll share how.