This topic has been coming home lately as an important
foundation piece on which we build our lives. As I have had conversations with Ellen and several patients, I am discovering that self-love seems to be very vague in their minds. Everyone agrees that it is very important, but just what it is and what it looks like appears rather cloudy. This is very much like the conversations I have had with folks about love itself. No two people seem to have the same idea as to just what love is. Personally, I avoid using the word simply because I have always experienced how personal the meaning is for everybody. There is no point using a word that has no common definition. It only creates confusion and misunderstanding.
So let me share my definition of love and work outward from there. First of all, love is not a feeling or an emotion, although plenty of those accompany love. Love is a type of action and behavior. When a mother loves her child, she does not stand across the room simply feeling a feeling. The mother engages in behaviors that communicate connection and participation with the child. Would you feel your mother loved you if she never engaged you or participated with you? Of course not.
Self-love functions just like the love of others. It is an action, a behavior, a way of relating to yourself in the present moment. An article I found in Psychology Today stated my view very clearly:
Each of us has the seeds of profound virtues within us. We all have different seeds, which makes each of us uniquely valuable, at least potentially. Self-love is the process of unfolding and developing those virtues as our light to share with the world. But if we do not become aware of those potential virtues within us and spend our life energies to bring them into manifestation, we live our lives empty and without fulfillment. We spend our time seeking to fill the emptiness from the outside. But that part of our inside can not be filled from the outside. The new relationship, the job promotion, the money, the house, the cars, whatever stories we tell ourselves about what will fill the emptiness inside, they are all lies. The happiness of fulfillment only comes from our own self-realization and self-manifestation of our inner virtuous potentials.
This might sound kind of fuzzy and airy-fairy, so let me put some names to the kinds of virtues I am talking about. There are hundreds to choose from. Perhaps you carry the potential to be a fountain of calming ease for those around you. How about unfolding your imagination. Integrity is one I like a lot. Courage carries a lot of worth as does flexibility. Discerning and benevolent are lovely. Everyone enjoys vitality, charm, generosity, and enthusiasm. Being inspired and motivated really gets things moving. Radiant and enlightening are really up there. Closer to home are harmonious, forgiving, caring, tolerant, and appreciative. Socially powerful virtues might be ethical, conscientious, fair-minded, and practical.
Reverent, humble, and devoted are deep virtues. The list goes on and on. Maybe you are designed to specialize in just a few or perhaps you will unfold dozens of virtues. It is all very individual, unique, and your personal journey to your own bliss.
So how do you go about this process of becoming your own destiny? How do you find the inner happiness that comes from unfolding your inner potential? The good news is that we are already all on this path. Innately we all want to feel okay. That is often hard because we have to balance our fears against our desires. We have so many fears, but we equally have a great desire to feel okay. The first step is to really pay attention to what actually works for us to feel better on our insides. We get so wrapped up in our outer survival story we don’t pay attention to how we feel on the inside. Too often we are just looking for the next fix to make the pain and uncertainty go away. Going from fix to fix empties us of all our joy with life. Life simply becomes a struggle. When we feel this we know we are not on our path to self-fulfillment, self-love. We are not doing anything that we can to appreciate ourselves.
That is my first step – what can I do that I can feel good about? I make this my priority. I have to pay close attention to what that might be. That means I have to come to know myself. What do I really think, feel, and want from the inside? If I were the only thing that existed in the universe, what would I want to create? I forget about what other people want from me or for me and just focus on what would I want to create in my personal universe.
My next step is to do my best to see what is. Instead of imposing my views on the world and wanting it to be my way, I become the anthropologist studying “what is.” I want to see the world as it really is and not just how I want it to be. I develop flexibility of perspective to see life from many viewpoints. I embrace that it is almost never what I want it to be.
The third step is where the magic happens. This is the trial and error process of discovering how I can show up in the world in ways that bring and share my personal universe into the bigger world. What virtues can I develop that allow me to feel good about myself and act from my inner values in ways that generate value for others? Life is meant to be the mirror for our soul. It is hard to see ourselves. We can see how well we are doing in unfolding our personal virtues in how our interactions with others play out. Virtues have value to others. Not everyone values all virtues, but in general virtuous people are valued. We can use this mirror to gauge our success at unfolding our personal choice of virtues.
Our challenge will be overcoming our fears. Fear is the opposite of virtue. Fear will drive us to constrict our life and make us unhappy. We can use this as another reflection of our success at unfolding our potential. Are we still afraid? Do we still feel in need or want? Do we take care of ourselves and make the long choices for better outcomes for ourselves, or are we still driven to grab the immediate reward of temporarily covering up the fear? Reaching for happiness is not a simple or easy path to follow, but it is the only path worth the effort of our life energies. Even the founders of our country understood this when they framed the purpose of our life as the pursuit of happiness. All philosophies and religions of the world have this at their base, even if many have lost connection to this. It is core to our humanness.
Love is the purpose of life, but love only happens where there is self-love. Love is an inside out process. Because love is the active gift of our virtue to others. Our willingness and desire to participate with others
through the gift of the virtues within us is love. It all begins with self-love.
Take care,
David