How to Love Yourself Unconditionally

[ad_1]

Because I write about love, it feels especially cringy to publish something leading to Valentine’s Day.

But, since I rarely write about romantic love, I’m going to be OK with the fact that my inconsistent inspiration to write coincided with the 14th of February.

I promise I won’t tell you that this time of year is a perfect opportunity to let your loved ones know that you love them, and I especially won’t give you gift ideas. Not ones that you can buy, and not DIY ones.

Actually, what I’m going to write is that you don’t need anything for Valentine’s.

And your loved ones don’t need anything from you.

Many spiritual teachers say that the ultimate truth is that we don’t need anything. At all. Some would even go as far as to say that you are already enlightened. But I digress.

Point is, our inner experience often says: I am not enough. I need to be more. I need to achieve more. I need to be better at this or that. I need to have more.

In other words, we need things so we can be happy.

So how come some spiritual teachers say we don’t need anything?

It’s because spiritual teachers understand a few things we don’t understand yet. One of the things they understand is that the things we want to acquire in order to be happy (whether it is a sports car, a lover, a promotion, or a state of mind) feed a bottomless pit of a feeling of lack. This feeling of lack is a direct result of not recognising our worth. Not knowing that we are loved no matter what.

Anything we add to this pit to try to cover the surface so it feels whole is pointless. It could help us feel better temporarily, but soon enough, that feeling of lack will re-emerge and will demand another thing to be put into it to placate it.

We want the Jaguar to prove that we are successful, we want the relationship to prove that we are lovable, we want the promotion to prove that we are better, we want the state of mind to prove that we are accomplished.

We assume that once we get that desired object, we will feel worthy, and this will make us happy.

What if?

What if instead, we base our entire paradigm of being in the world on the premise that we are always loved, unconditionally?

That we are always worthy and valuable?

If we do that, the bottomless pit of feeling of lack would quickly be replaced by a growing mountain of feelings such as joy, happiness, and bliss.

We might still need things, but those things will not be acquired to placate an insatiable hunger. They will be acquired to help us spread the joy in the world.

In this scenario, gifts could be a wonderful expression of a deep wisdom: that you and everyone you know are loved unconditionally, all the time, merely by the fact that you exist.

Maybe you don’t believe that you are always loved, unconditionally.

Perhaps you have an inner voice — perhaps even an inner conviction — to the contrary. You might think you are not worthy of love.

Heck, we all have something we don’t like about ourselves.

Perhaps it’s something in our physical appearance, or an attribute, or maybe it’s a thought pattern, or some actions we took that we regret.

But unconditional love is not dependent on any of these.

You do not need to do anything, prove anything, achieve anything, buy/give anything, or become anything in order to be loved.

The only thing you need to do is to realise that it is so.

And I know it’s hard to believe this, especially if you have the life-long habit of disliking yourself.

But please bear with me.

What would happen if you decided to change your paradigm to one that stipulates that everyone — including yourself — is loved no matter what?

Would that make your life better or worse?

Would You Rather?

Let me put it differently: would you rather go about in this world collecting evidence that you are a bad person, or would you rather live in the world with the unshakable knowing that you are loved no matter what?

If you have the option to know that you are loved unconditionally at all times, why would you choose to think badly of yourself?

Once the knowing that you are loved unconditionally becomes the vantage point from which you interact in the world, you are free.

You are free to be the most authentic version of yourself, including all your mistakes, imperfections, and quirks.

And the need to be something better stops becoming a point of stress. Instead, it becomes a natural progression — an evolution of your expression of love for yourself and for everyone and everything in the world we live in.

So How Do We Effing Do It?

The title of my article promised a ‘how to’, and no BS.

How do you actually start loving yourself and stop un-loving thoughts about yourself from ruining your life?

Like many things in life, the answer is very simple yet not necessarily easy.

First, you need to identify the thought patterns and behaviours that lock in the self-deprecation, self-judgement, self-loathing, and/or self-blame.

These can come in many forms.

At times, it would be easy to detect these. For example, making a mistake and then the thought “I’m so stupid” (self-deprecating) pops in.

At other times, it could be much more subtle. For example, when saying ‘Yes’ to someone when we actually want to say ‘No’.

There are countless forms of less-than-loving thoughts and behaviours we have about ourselves.

There are a few different tools to learn how to replace those thoughts with loving thoughts.

The one that worked wonders for me personally is ‘The Work’ by Byron Katie.

It’s a simple and effective process of unlearning harmful thoughts and replacing them with helpful ones.

A super quick overview of her method could be described as:

Notice when un-loving thoughts arise,
Pause,
Find a way to replace them with thoughts that will serve you better.

(‘The Work’ has 4 steps to it, but the idea is the same).

And there are other methods, too.

It’s as simple as ditching your thoughts and adopting new thought habits that support your new resolution: to act from the understanding that you are loved, always.

Don’t expect this process to happen all by itself, or to happen overnight.

For some people, this process will be swift. For others, it might take a while to establish the new unconditionally-loving way of relating to themselves.

And don’t beat yourself up for making lots of mistakes along the way and not noticing that you are not loving as it happens! It defeats the purpose. If you forget the new habit you want to form, if you find yourself being mean to yourself again, this is as good a time as any to pause and find the thoughts you want to think.

So there you have it: the roadmap for loving yourself unconditionally.

I hope you enjoy the ride!

—

This post was previously published on medium.com.