Self-Love Starts With Pursuing The Life You Want

It seems more natural to crave the reward rather than the struggle. To have results while skipping the process of getting them. To fall in love with the victory and not the battle itself. To boost our self-esteem through justification when we fail to get what we want and to start playing our favorite blame game—blaming our childhood, our parents, even the political and religious systems, only to stay away from looking at ourselves.

Here is the question: Are you willing to stop living the life you have right now and go after the life you want to have?

Are you unwilling to live in an unhealthy relationship?

Are you unwilling to live with an unhealthy body?

Are you unwilling to complain about how unhappy you are?

Are you unwilling to feel tired, lost, and unmotivated?

Are you unwilling to feel anxious, unsatisfied, and unhappy?

Are you unwilling to sabotage your life with self-criticism?

Because if you are truly UNWILLING to put up with your situation any longer and keep your life on hold, feeling empty and unfulfilled, then you WILL make an effort to change it. Only when you stop tolerating your own intolerable situation will you choose to change it.

Maybe by enduring your current situation, you are just simply willing to stay the same and deny yourself the love you deserve. And this can be okay too, as long as you are honest with yourself about the choices you are making to be exactly where you are right now.

Self-love does not meet you first at your best—it meets you in your mess.

This realization on its own is very powerful because acknowledging that you willingly make yourself unhappy, drained, empty, unsatisfied, and unfulfilled is often a big enough catalyst to act and open yourself to a possibility of loving yourself. Facing your own resistance to self-love is the first step. Once you separate the facts from the story, you may find yourself more open to begin. This is when self-love is truly born.

It takes courage to grow and strength to pursue.

It takes courage to be vulnerable and the strength to show it.

It takes courage to stand out and strength to fit in.

It takes courage to live when you use to survive.

It takes courage to trust and strength to keep hoping.

It takes courage to lean on someone and strength to be on your own.

Self-love is an ongoing process, not a one-time fix. You can only take one step at a time. That very step will point you in the direction of the next one. By allowing yourself to feel vulnerable, abandoned, or stuck—all a part of the process—you will offer yourself space where healing can find you unexpectedly, so remain open.

Most importantly, self-love will empower you to believe in yourself and to stop behaving self-destructively. The discomfort of choosing yourself will clarify the meaning of what you truly want and will push you from knowing what is good for you to actually doing what is good for you.

Self-love will allow you to distinguish between a mere fantasy and a true desire by getting really honest with yourself, especially when you find yourself trapped in wanting something month after month or year after year without any tangible results. Clarity is key.

To love yourself means to be in resonance with who you are. Even when, or especially when, it feels unreasonable or limiting from other’s point of view. And then your choices will become no brainers, because acting from the place of self-love will not involve your brain. Rather, you will make your heart in charge.