What is self-love? Here’s a concept that has forcibly been made to most of society over the last few years in a wildfire type of manner. But really, what’s the hype behind it all?
Practicing self-love is the practice of understanding and allowing yourself to be all that you are and love every part of that. To be clear, self-love is different than body positivity. Where body positivity relies on the false pretense of loving yourself when you really don’t. Self-love is the process of becoming aware of these parts within you and directing your energy in ways that allow you to heal and fall in a new love with yourself.
Self-compassion; being kind to yourself and treating yourself with understanding and forgiveness. Listening to yourself; hearing what your body and mind need and honoring that call.
In all my years working in the health and wellness industry, I’ve reflected on why we deprive ourselves of actively practicing self-love. We act in ways that counter our ability to love ourselves properly because we haven’t healed. We haven’t healed from past trauma, pain, hurt, or fear. We’ve lacked the ability to feel our emotions fully, which has prevented us from fully experiencing the healing capabilities we have as humans.
The Hungry for Happiness vision is all about practicing self-love, self-responsibility, and feeling in order to heal. To truly gain an understanding of your place in this world and how you fit into the bigger picture of the universe, creating a space for healing within yourself is critical. When you allow emotions to emote and feeling to feel, you allow freedom and flow into your being. Freedom and flow are key to igniting your self-healing powers.
For years we have been lied to by society. We were consumed by ads and deceptive marketing tactics that attempted to show us how to effectively practice self-love, but the truth is that we have been lacking in the self-love department for most of our lives. Now then, why are we seeing the rise of self-love advocates like myself and everyone behind the Hungry for Happiness mission? Because we’ve all caught on to the lies and destruction that has been taking place all these years.
It’s no longer a time where we can expect anyone outside of ourselves to heal our wounds. We can no longer count on bandaids to heal bullet wounds. The self-love movement dates far back, but what really helped me grasp what was actually happening was when I decided to finally separate myself from the toxic diet industry. It was in the moments that I realized I needed to hate the parts of me that I hated so that I could love myself back to health.
Low self-esteem can be a monster. At times it can cripple us into never wanting to leave the house. And for me, and likely some of you, it led to my emotional eating disorder. What I’ve come to realize is just how practicing self-love plays into what goes on with my health and wellness. They are interconnected as one.
I use to binge eat because I was trying to cover my feelings up so that I didn’t have to experience them. I was refusing to feel, which deterred me from healing. What I didn’t understand is that no one could help me, because I was designed to heal myself. We are all designed with that capability – to heal ourselves. It’s part of our innate power as human beings.
Practicing self-love is about being honest with yourself so that you can not just peek into the dark spaces, but bulldoze right into them so that you can begin the process of healing.
I know that many of you are coaches, or thinking about becoming self-love, body-love, or food-coaches, so I wanted to add this for you. It’s important that you build your business based on your energy. Your energy is a reflection of what you will be creating as a coach, and humans are cool in the way that they can sense varying energies. When you heal yourself or are in the process of healing yourself fully, you give out an energy that draws the ideal clients to you and creates the space needed for you to be of service to them in the ways that they need. In the long-run, faking it won’t cut it. You have to be in the process of healing yourself to truly come from a place of love.
Practicing self-love can look like many different things in today’s world. But it’s more than just taking nice bubble baths and repeating mantras in the mirror (though I highly recommend both of these things). It’s about shifting into radical self-love and realizing that it is a practice, not a destination to come from a constant place of self-love. Loving yourself from a place of truth and honesty will change everything in your life and send ripples into the universe for others to do the same.
Self-love is having balance in all aspects of your life, including food and body. And the Food Freedom Journey is designed to help you get to there. Over the course of twelve months, I’ll guide you on a journey of self-discovery to uncover the reasons you’re using food as a drug and show you how to overcome emotional eating – for good. The process is gentle and much softer than the intense crash diets you’re probably used to. If you want to learn more about it, head over to this link so that you're notified once enrollment for the program opens, and join an incredible community of women embarking on the journey too while you're at it.
