What self love actually is
Why it is not self care, and how to start seeing that everything in your life has been happening for you, not to you.
For years I thought that if I was taking care of myself, I was loving myself. I was wrong, and that one confusion kept me small for a very long time.
I did all the self care. The baths, the boundaries, the green juice. And I still could not shake the feeling that I did not actually love myself. It took me years to understand why. I had been practicing the wrong thing.
This is the full breakdown of what self love actually is, and how to start living it, so the life you thought was impossible becomes the one you are quietly walking toward.
Self care is not self love
What you do for yourself
The bath. The massage. The boundary. The green juice. The day off. All good and worth doing. But you can do every single one of them and still not love yourself, because self care is an action, not a relationship.
How you hold yourself
Self love is not something you do for yourself. It is how you hold yourself through everything that happens to you. It is unconditional, which means it does not leave when your life gets messy, when you fail, or when it all falls apart.
Loving yourself unconditionally
Unconditional is the whole word that matters. It means you stay on your own side no matter what is happening around you. The drinking. The debt. The twenty years spent on a life you ended up wanting to walk away from. The friendships you could not keep. The feeling that you never quite fit in anywhere.
Real self love is being able to look at that entire pile and understand that none of it was proof something is wrong with you. It was the exact set of experiences you needed to become the woman you actually came here to be.
Self love is the unconditional yes to your own life, especially the parts that broke you.
It was happening for you
Here is how it actually works. Life is set up to shrink you. To make you feel small, to make it feel like everything is coming at you, until you hit the rock bottom and the breaking point.
And that breaking point is not the end of the story. It becomes the turning point. The pivot. One day you look back and realize the whole thing was perfectly orchestrated to walk you right to this exact moment, so you could finally step into your purpose and become the version of you that everything you once thought was impossible is suddenly possible for.
You were always internally built for that version. Your external circumstances were just designed to make you believe you were not, so that one day you would prove to yourself that you are.
Shifting into self love
Separate the two
Notice every place you have been calling self care self love. The bath is not the relationship. Naming the difference is the first honest step, because you cannot build something you keep confusing for something else.
Find the for you in your hardest chapter
Take the season that felt like life happening to you, and ask a new question. What did this build in me? What did it make possible that nothing else could have? You are not excusing the pain. You are reclaiming what it gave you.
Change the question in real time
The next time something feels like it is coming at you, catch it and ask, what if this is happening for me? You do not have to believe it yet. Just asking it starts to move you out of victim and back into the driver's seat of your own life.
Stay on your own side, especially when it's hard
Self love is proven in the moments you would normally turn on yourself. Choose, on purpose, to stay with you instead. That daily choice, repeated, is how unconditional love for yourself actually gets built.
Make the impossible possible.
On August 7 I'm teaching Unstoppable You live. I go deeper on all of this and hand you the full playbook for building the self love and self worth that let you step into your fullest potential and finally operate as the woman you came here to be.
It is completely free.
Save my free seatNothing was ever happening to you. It was always happening for you. This is where you start to feel it.
Want to ease in first? Come sit with me on the podcast, The Inside Job.