Sometimes I feel like a hypocrite. I am a self love advocate and yet I still have this incredibly hard time practicing self love all the time. That makes me feel bad because I preach about how you should love yourself and be kind to yourself, when a lot of days I can’t even do it myself. But then I think about it…should I really being shaming myself because I have bad days and sometimes suck at this whole self love business? That’s not very self loving is it? In fact, it’s the complete opposite of what self love is. So, nope, SORRY. I am not going to shame myself any longer for not being perfect at self love. In fact, none of you should because in reality, every single one of us is going to fail time and time again to love ourselves, but if next we can grasp the concept just a little bit more, than maybe the next we do suck at loving ourselves, we won’t suck as much.
So this is what I want to discuss today. When you suck at self love. Because in reality, all of us will inevitably suck at it, even if we’ve pracitcing self love for a long time. Self love really isn’t something we can truly master. It’s a practice, and a practice isn’t something you master, but rather practice daily, getting a little better at it each day, and sometimes failing miserably, but nonetheless learning from the experience. We weren’t made to be masters of self love – which means, it’s not meant to be something we can find perfection at. But we all knew that, right? Because perfection DOESN’T EXIST in the first place.
So what do you do when you suck at self love? Well nothing really, except maybe show yourself a little grace and kindness, dust yourself off, and try again. Every day is a new day, and when you can learn that concept, you will find freedom in realizing that you can start over each and every day. Yesterday doesn’t matter anymore because it’s yesterday and what matters is now. So you sucked yesterday? SO WHAT! Consider today a do-over – a second chance, so to speak.
For me, having that inner patience with myself can sometimes be the hardest part because I am a recovering perfectionist and perfectionist simply do not have patience especially with themselves. They want to get it right the very first time and if they don’t, then obviously they are not good enough. But that’s the beauty of self love. We don’t have to be perfectionists any longer. We can be HUMAN! We can make mistakes. We can fall a little short. We can fall a lot short for all we know. And it’s OK!
I know, I know…a lot of CAPS going on here, but I’m really trying to shout this out to myself too if you can believe it, because I truly need this reminder daily.
Lately, I’ve just been so unkind to myself. I’ve been really struggling with wanting things to be perfect in my life. It’s been a rough road, and frankly, I’m just tired of being on it. I want smooth sailing already. I want to have a life where I’m not struggling at something new every day. I want my dreams to be reality already. I want things to start falling in to place. I AM TIRED OF WAITING. (Sorry, did I just get carried away?)
But seriously, it does become exhausting when you are going from one struggle to the next and not seeing much progress being made. But then I take a second look. I stop looking at how much road I have yet to travel down and look back at how much road I have already travelled, and there’s quite some distance back there. I’ve accomplished a lot in just one year. I went from being a completely dependent and relying on others to help me function in my daily life because I couldn’t mentally handle it, to being homeless, to almost losing everything financially, to ending my eight year relationship, to getting a brand spankin’ new life, home, and relationship and ultimately finding my complete independence and mental health once again. Anyone would say that is a HUGE accomplishment and a HUGE success for going through all of those major life changes and still thriving. So good job, Christina. Pat yourself on the back because girl, you are amazing.
Yes. I said it. You ARE AMAZING. And so are all of you lovely people out there who I know are struggling with so many different parts of your lives and yet still managing a way to keep going. That is the goal. That is self love right there. Because we love ourselves enough to keep going day after day, despite the struggles. We don’t give up, as much as we want to.
So maybe I do need to cut myself a little slack and stop worrying about what I still need to accomplish or what NEEDS to be happening in my life right now that isn’t. It’ll come. Maybe not right now, but it’ll come. You watch, this time next year I’m going ot be writing some new post about how much new stuff I accomplished. And then I’ll look back and say, “see Christina, just be a little patient, it’ll happen.”
So back to my point. This whole self love thing. It doesn’t need to be something you get right away or that you’re good at or that you can master. It’s just something you do. Something you try to practice a little more each day, simply because you love yourself enough to do it. And please do love yourself, because really, you are very deserving of your own love at the very least. You’re deserving of other love too, but if you can love yourself, then really, you’ve got everything you need to accomplish whatever else that comes your way.
I leave you with some poetry:
Dare to love yourself
As if you were a rainbow
With gold at both ends.
– Aberjhani
The Self Love Daily Challenge: Give yourself some grace and kindness when you fail at loving yourself today, and just start over from scratch. I promise it’s ok to do that.
xx
Christina Ciro
The Self Love Challenge 