A Path to Relearning Self Love
“Love who you are, right where you are on this journey.” - Jill Birth
The first step to learning how to truly love others, appreciate your body, and transform your life is to learn how to love yourself. For many of us, this is a process of relearning. For years, we’ve allowed the negative voices of fear, shame, and self sabotage to hold us back. I know I did. For me, it looked like years of emotional eating, yo-yo dieting, and unhealthy weight. But today, I want to walk you through the process that helped me to recognize what wasn’t serving me and learn how to love myself again.
Recognizing Your Power
Loving yourself isn’t always an easy job. It certainly wasn’t for me. But the truth (that took me years to learn) is we are all born with exactly what we each need to fulfill our own purpose. If you aren’t seeing that in yourself, you are missing something you cannot afford to miss any longer!
I never realized that until going to an intensive therapy workshop in gorgeous Washington state that happiness can only come from within. Nobody else can make you feel happy, or even content. No one. A favorite quote that I recite over and over in my mind is this one: “Happiness is not determined by what’s happening around you, but rather what is happening inside you. Most people depend on others to gain happiness, but the truth is, it always comes from within.”
All along, I had been certain that it was my circumstances, my job, my marriage, my struggles with infertility, making me unhappy and that my extreme sadness was causing my food addiction. The truth is that, just like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz had the ability to click her heels and go home any time she wanted, I had the ability to make myself happy all along. In fact, I was the only one who could truly do that, by loving who I was. So where do you begin?
Create Your 100 List
It’s time to prepare yourself to move forward and start dreaming again, and this exercise is one of my favorite ways to help my clients do just that. In this exercise, you’re going to write a
love letter to yourself. But, before you begin the letter, first write up a list of all of the things you would choose for people to remember about you whenever they think of you.
Next, consider the moments in your life when you have felt the happiest and most fulfilled—the times when you have really used and developed your talents. What were you like during those moments? Were you a leader? The person who cheered on others or made a joke to lift someone’s spirits? Did you reach out a helping hand to someone who was struggling?
Write all of those things down, too. I want you to have a clear idea about what you’d choose for other people to see about you, as well as the gifts God sent with you to contribute to the world in the first place. Let yourself freely brainstorm and write down your thoughts as you ponder your life and reflect on the moments when you were at your very best. Take your time with this!
Keep going until you list 100 things you love about being you! These can be major personality traits, like your sense of humor or the fact that you’re a movie trivia expert. Or they can be the smallest details that perhaps only you notice about yourself. On mine, I included “I love my toenails” because I was running out of things to say.
If you’re really struggling use these prompts to get your wheels turning:
1. What do others seem to like about you?
2. What are some compliments others have given you recently?
3. Ask people you trust this question: “If you had to say five things you like
about me, what would they be?”
4. What do you look forward to or feel great doing?
Once you have your 100 things, it’s time to start writing. Just like any relationship, words of affirmation are important, think about how you would write a love letter to someone you love. Be thoughtful and caring. Write beautifully on special paper if you like. Spritz it with an essential oil that you enjoy. Make it a letter that you can cherish.
The purpose of writing a love letter is to help you remember what makes you such a unique, wonderful, amazing person. Keep it close and read it when the voices of doubt, shame, and guilt start to surround you.
Acknowledge Your Weaknesses
In order to relearn self love, the first thing you have to do is acknowledge your own weaknesses. On my journey to release weight, I knew I couldn’t resist that basket of breadsticks that a waitress always brings out at Olive Garden. Once I acknowledged that, I had a choice. I could let her bring the rolls to the table, convincing myself that “this time would be different” only to shame myself and feel guilty when I convinced myself “just one breadstick wouldn’t hurt” and one breadstick turned into the whole basket. Or, I could tell her not to bring the basket!
If you can’t avoid popping in for a treat every time you drive past your favorite bakery or fast food place, take a different route on your way home from work.
If you struggle with alcohol but every girl’s night get together is a meet-up at a swanky bar, text the group and ask to shake it up and visit a coffee shop or the park instead.
Avoiding the situations that test your discipline is one of the best things you can do to be successful in relearning self love and trust.
Confront the Deeper Issues
If you’ve written your burn letter, then you can probably see your own addiction patterns and recognize the emotions linked to your negative habits. Once you do that, you can deal with the real issues in your life and stop relying on food, relationships, or any other vice for comfort.
Is your job unfulfilling? Are you in a relationship that seems to leave you depressed and worried instead of feeling supported and loved? Do you have friends that take more from you than they give?
Once you can identify and manage your emotional low points, you’ll find that you won’t need to fill that void for comfort. At this stage, the most important thing is to be honest with yourself. Identifying these things doesn't mean you need to air them out like dirty laundry for everyone to comment on. You just need to begin to see them for yourself and recognize them for what they are, habits that you have the power to change!
Second, surround yourself with support as much as possible. For you, this means relying on friends and family. Others might need a 12-step program or therapy. And some might need both – the more support, the better.
Forgive yourself
The biggest reason so many people give up on losing weight or any other goal is because they don’t succeed right away. To keep moving forward toward your goals instead of sliding back, you must learn the habit of acknowledging and forgiving yourself immediately when you slip up. Even now, after losing half of my body weight, I still have to be mindful in order to keep on track.
Slipping up is something we all do; it doesn’t make you a failure, it makes you a human. It’s what you do afterward that really matters. Abstinence from your triggers is ideal. But, if you do slip up, recognize it as quickly as possible, forgive yourself, and get back on track. Shame is like a disease that eats at you from the inside out, which is why immediate acknowledgement and forgiveness is so important on your journey. Dwelling on your failure creates room for shame and self sabotage. The more you put this to practice (because remember slip ups are inevitable – none of us are perfect), you’ll notice slip ups happen less and less as you develop more confidence.
Other Helpful Resources
If you enjoyed these tips, then I’m creating my comprehensive guide to overcoming food addiction just for you – join the waitlist here to be the first to know when it’s available.
In case this is the first time we’re connecting, I’m Jill, an entrepreneur, speaker, author, and leader inspiring other women to live out their God given purpose by helping them overcome physical, mental, and financial hardships. If you liked this blog post and want more where that came from, here are a few ways we can work together:
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