I have to admit to the fact that, up until a few years ago, I didn’t even know that this was a question. In my mind, they were completely synonymous with no distinction between the two.
Many times I threw my budget to the wind to get massages, facials, and pedicures. I was always buying new clothes or the latest anti-aging cream that was supposed to make me feel and look good.
I mean, if you feel and look good, it means you love yourself, right?
To any and all of us that are committed to improving our lives through whatever self-help modality we have chosen, self-love is typically one of the core fundamentals of any program.
We want to love those bits and pieces of ourselves that got some negative reinforcement, usually at a young age.
We desperately seek to quiet that little voice that says “you can’t do that!” The voice that keeps us stuck and fearful and unable to manifest our dreams and miraculous happenstance.
I’ve done so much self-love work that told me to give a loving shout out to my chunky thighs or look in the mirror and list everything that is super duper awesome about me. I committed and I did it but, it never felt true to me. It felt fake and disingenuous.
I’ve struggled with accepting the fact that I can be egotistical, selfish and bratty and I love spending too much money on overpriced designer bags. I’ve had an inner battle asking myself if I am meant to meditate and rise above these traits or surrender into loving and accepting them. These have been my burning questions.
Well, I am happy to report that…. Yes! We are supposed to love them!
Wrap all those beautiful, bad, messy, hilarious, sweet-assed pieces of yourself in an expensive cashmere blanket and hug, kiss and love them!
Lets face it…if we didn’t have all those aspect that make us individual, we would be a bunch of poorly dressed, potentially smelly humans engaging in mind-numbingly boring conversations.
I can’t speak for you but, that sounds terrible to me! And if you haven’t already guessed it, dropping everything to take a bubble bath in the name of “self-care” does not equal all encompassing self-love.
How do we learn to love every little bit of ourselves?
I’m a practicing EFT coach so I am crazy about adding tapping into any self help modality.
I also love short cuts and adding tapping to this exercise by Claire Zammit and Katherine Woodward Thomas, it makes me feel like I am cutting the healing time in half!
Its one of the fastest ways I have found to release the false beliefs that keep us stuck and unable to fully love and accept every teensy particle that makes up our awesomeness.
Use the exercise below while tapping through the points.
If you aren’t familiar with the tapping points, use the tips of two fingers to lightly tap the heart chakra point. This is the acupressure point about an inch down from the boney nub of your collarbone on the left side.
Adaptation of the Transformation of Identity Process
Co-created by Katherine Woodward Thomas & Claire Zammit
1. Become Present with Yourself. Close your eyes, breathe all the way down into your hips.
2. Become Aware of the Area You Want to Have a Breakthrough. Think of the area that you really need a miracle in; an area you may have struggled with for a long time yet have been unable to shift up until now.
3. Locate the Emotional Center in Your Body. Imagine that the disappointment pattern you have struggled with in this area is happening again, right now. Notice where in your body you are holding the emotions of your perpetual disappointments in this area. Place your hand on the spot where you are holding the emotional center of your disappointments.
4. Welcome Your Feelings. Take a deep breath and welcome in those difficult feelings without trying to fix or change them.
5. Identify Your Core Belief. Now, invite the feeling to give itself a name as an “I am” or an “I am not” (example, I am not wanted, I am alone, I am not safe, I am not good enough, etc.)
6. Notice the Age/Size. Notice how old this part of you is and how big the energy is of this center.
7. Break State. Open your eyes, shake it out and ask yourself the question, “What’s the best thing about being my current age than being myself at that younger age?” Then list to yourself all your strengths and resources.
8. Connect with Your Adult Self. Close your eyes again. This time anchor your adult, mature, wise self down into your hips, extending the energy of this center down through your legs, down into the earth and extending the energy out to the edges of the room.
9. Love Your Younger Self. From here, turn your attention to the younger self in your body, and extend deep love and compassion to the part of you suffering. Let that younger self know that you’re here and that you love her.
10. Find a Deeper Truth. Now, tell the younger you what is really true about the idea that s/he has about herself. What’s really true as it relates to the “I am” or “I am not” statement that she is captivated by?
11. Wake Yourself Up. Wake that younger you up out of the trance of the false belief by anchoring into the deeper truth, even creating a statement of truth that captures what’s really true. (Examples: I am wanted and deeply loved by all of Life, I was not born to be alone. I came here to love and be loved, I have the power to keep myself safe, My very existence is more than enough to light up all of Life. I need do nothing to prove my value…)
12. Seeing Yourself as Source. Standing in the deeper truth, see if you can identify ways of relating to yourself and others that have been validating the false beliefs (Examples: Inside of believing I am alone in life, when I’m hurt, I isolate and withdraw from others. Inside of believing I am invisible, I place my first attention on others and become invisible to myself so I don’t even know what I’m feeling or needing. Inside of assuming I’m not good enough, I say yes to what anyone wants from me to try to prove my value, and then am overextended so that everyone ends up mirroring back to me that I’m not doing a good enough job.)
13. Identify New Ways of Relating. Again, standing in the deeper truth, notice how you could start behaving differently that would generate a different experience. (Examples: Inside of the deeper truth that I was not born to be alone in life, I can reach out and let down my guard with others when I need support, Inside of the deeper truth that I need do nothing to prove my value, I say “no” when I’m not inspired or unable to fulfill upon all of the demands being placed upon me, and commit only to those things I truly feel called to do.)
14. Identify New Skills and Capacities. Now, notice if there are any new skills and capacities you might need to learn in order to show up this way. (Examples: I need to connect with my deeper feelings and needs in order to be able to express them to others, I need to learn how to have better boundaries so that I can keep myself safe, I need to cultivate a capacity to receive from others in order to evolve beyond being so alone in life…)
15. Commit to Yourself to Graduate From Your Old Story. Self-love is revealed when you show up with a ferocious commitment to outgrow your old story and become the woman you were born to become.
Repeat this process weekly and I promise there will be subtle shifts. You will feel more loving and accepting towards yourself.
You will begin allowing miracles to start happening and you will become a manifesting machine!
I can’t wait for you to experience this!
