The world is an interesting place, full of beauty and joy in so many areas of existence. We wake up each day to experience a full range of experiences and emotions. It could be something as simple as the sheets over you at night, the sunlight on your face. The craving for a certain food, a great moment of inspiration to do something creative. There are the range of emotions we all love and know life can be.
There are also those emotions that sometimes don’t seem to make sense, the ones that create pain and unpleasantness. Being human is an interesting play for us all, one we never quiet sit and understand. People go through long periods in their lives living, but never really understanding who they are. I wonder why that is? For all that we’re aware of, we don’t think to become aware of ourselves. What is self awareness? It’s the ability to observe yourself and all your emotions and actions, to become conscious of your own being, connect with yourself, to know thyself, to love yourself.
There is a great level of understanding within the body that opens the door to life. Our general lives are a set of hardwired actions, beliefs and emotions. Habits and emotions you have formed during a lifetime. There are many that make you just who you are, and who you want to be. There is alot there you can and should change. Habits or behaviours that do not benefit your life, or ones you can simply replace for better ones. To love yourself you must first become self aware of who you are. Don’t try and change anything, just find out who you are.
This is a broad question. Yes, you know the version of you that loves this sport or that movie. This is not self awareness of who you are. Do you ever just sit back and observe your thoughts and feelings? Everything starts from within you, how aware are you of what you do, and why you may do it. This process for me is ongoing, it has many layers, peeling those layers back and finding out who you are allows you to have conscious choice in how you behave and react. This is by no means an easy practice. How do you find out who you are?
You just sit there and observe your thoughts and emotions when you are perfectly still. Sit for 5 minutes and stare, see what thoughts and emotions arise in the body. This is the beginning. Then you can observe your habits. Lying in the bed on the phone for an hour? Scrolling from boredom? Enjoying a bike ride or walk. Emotions arise all day too, we are happy when we enjoy something, or we are angry when we find something upsetting. How about when we just sit there, when we aren’t ‘doing anything’, see how emotions arise with no external catalyst. This starts the process, you start seeing how the thoughts & emotions don’t need externals to trigger them, this opens a vast ocean, your journey of self love and understanding begins.
Starting to understand emotions is a game, it’s a challenging one and a fun one at the same time. You are not your thoughts, or your feelings, they arise within you but they are not yours at all, they are simply fragments of a life lived. Think of your favourite movie, if that movie never existed, then would that thought exist? Ofcourse not, it should show you that thoughts and feelings are simply as they are, but they are not you. Detachment from what arises in the body is a deep challenge, that is why it is important to understand yourself, the more you do, the more you grow.
There are great benefits to this. Life has the inate capacity to heal and create. In knowing yourself, I will safely say, you love yourself. As you start to detach from your thoughts and feelings, you now have conscious awareness of them, the mind no longer runs you, but you can now observe and understand it. Imagine choosing compassion, instead of anger. Love instead of hate. How powerful could that be? My articles on this blog are built around this entire concept.
Loving yourself means speaking to yourself with compassion and kindness. When we start observing the self, in time we realise there is a voice in our head that speaks negatively. It critises you, says you are no good, or that you can’t do something. Our body is innately built for survival, there are unconscious habits we must break which come from conditioning that does not serve us anymore. Where these voices originate themselves is a broad topic, I have other articles such as “Perception is Reality” that expand on this topic. Ever ask yourself a question? Who is the one asking the question and who is the one listening?
As we start to work on ourselves, we start to love ourselves more. How good does it feel when you do something that is rewarding? When you overcome that feeling of laziness and just get up and have an adventure. That is self love. Sure there are natural states which just want to survive, but there are parts of our life where we can thrive. Our body has an energy field, which creates our life all around us. Life starts from your thoughts, its all within you. To make yourself better is to make life better.
This does not mean you don’t like who you are, you must accept yourself for exactly who you are today and really get to know that person and exactly who he/she is. Learning yourself and becoming is one of the greatest pleasures of life. You are within yourself, your emotions & thoughts daily. Become the observer of who you are and in that, you will find understanding for yourself. Do not form your self on the judgement of others, do it for yourself. Be disciplined to enjoy life more for yourself, not to please others. Be sharp, precise and truthful, this energy will be felt by the world. We can feel the presence of such people in a room, it teaches us to be better, for loving yourself is how you love the world around you.
The disciplined you, that is self fulfilling, self caring, self compassionate is the self loving. The one that looks back in 5 years and thinks how grateful he/she is for bettering themselves, which in turn allows for a vast experience of life to enter their realms. Comfort is only enjoyable when you balance it with hard work. Giving to the community and taking actions which are loving to the world , in turn loving to yourself. Your inner world is literally what creates your outer world. There is a great feeling in giving good, for you give yourself the same in that process. Do not be the victim of reality anymore, but the creator. Accountable for all of his/her own actions. Life is a test of character, its not an easy road, it has its challenges and in these challenges you find yourself. If you have had an easy life, then be grateful for it as this is something we seem to believe is guaranteed, but it isn’t. Life needs to balance challenge with comfort in order for us to thrive. What is easy today, sometimes makes life hard tomorrow. It might be easy to sit on the couch and do nothing, but this eventually catches up. Often actions are only challenging at first, but once they become your habits, they are very rewarding and fulfilling.
There are other times where life will test you. These are tests you cannot control or avoid. These are your growth as well. When you go through challenge, be okay to endure, be upset, allow your emotions to move through you, but never condemn yourself for being human. Be kind to yourself these moments, do not wait for someone to rescue you, be your own hero.
People are generally unhappy not because they lack something outside of them, but more so because they cannot find the joy within themselves and the world around them. The best things in life are free. When you can find love in a smile or the trees and birds, you are starting to understand life. Comfort is a great thing, but it can stop us from learning and for much of the western world, they have lived their whole lives with comfort, so they find unhappiness in the smallest things. Something as small as someone not getting a hot coffee can create frustration for people. Really its a lesson in self awareness. See the joy in the world that makes it so easy to get coffee or have it reheated. This is the paradox of an easy life. It creates complacency. The more I challenged myself, the more I learnt about myself and the world around me, in turn the more respect I gained for all of life. Lessons like this create happiness money can never buy.
In self love is keeping your sense of self respect, self worth and morals. Always stand for your truth, but learn who you are first. Be bold in holding yourself to the best version of yourself and never allow otherwise. Practice non-judgement, compassion and understanding for others. Do not let your fear of survival or lack of self-discipline create judgement and anger for the world around you. If it does, you are more than likely projecting your internal self judgement and anger onto the world around you as an excuse to not carry self responsibility. Self love is about feeling safe in your body, when you can drop into yourself and feel the comfort of your self, knowing your home is clear, peaceful, abundant and loving, you will find life to be much easier to navigate.
So in conclusion, self love is taking care of yourself to the fullest. Challenging yourself, being disciplined daily and holding yourself responsible entirely for your own life, by creating the life you would be happy with inside. The right habits create abundance, the wrong internal states create lack. Life is much more an inner game than an outer game. Be discipline, be love, be all that you can be, because there is a version of yourself that carries with it the very life you love. As you go deeper you realise it wasn’t getting more that would satisfy you, it is more in appreciating the world every day and in turn your own inner world that gives you the life you want. I’ve learnt to be so happy in every situation in life, lessons are the hard times, they are the teachers, thank them for they have the power of positive change within them waiting to explode. Be strong, be courageous, be kind, for life will show you a new door that you never knew existed, life will show you the true way to love yourself.
Please check out my other articles as they expand on the inner journey further, it is all linked and I try to sum up the key points in one article when there are so many avenues I could go deeper on. Thank you for reading this article. If you have had the discipline to read this through, you will see how self discipline created knowledge and in turn you love yourself that little bit more, as I do for sharing this knowledge with the world around me.
We Will Teach You 