The Greatest Love Affair

I think the greatest love affair we can ever have is with ourselves.

How can we truly offer love and experience love if we don’t love ourselves? 

The answer is that: we can’t. We hamstring ourselves desperately searching for love from outside sources—never really understanding that, until we love ourselves from within, we can neither fully receive nor share love.

Loathing ourselves, hating ourselves, or thinking we’re not worthy act as blocking mechanisms to love. They keep our love from spilling out to those around us and keep others' love from breaching our walls and reaching our hearts. 

Imagine going through your entire life with 50% (or more) of your ability to love and be loved all bound up inside you. A tangled and knotted ball filled with the anguish of wondering, “Am I worthy?” and “Is this enough?” or “How could they love someone like me?” Can you feel the tightness and limitations?

Now imagine going through your life with 100% of your capacity to love unlocked and actively navigating your relationships, connections, healthy boundaries, workplace, partner, kids, family etc. All through a lens of, “I am worthy.” and “I am enough.” or “I know I am loved.”

So, where do we begin?

Falling in love with who we are requires actually knowing who we are. We begin by discovering ourselves. This is a life long journey of adventure, challenge, and intrigue. It’s an invitation, from yourself to yourself. A life in which you truly invest in knowing you. (For those of you whose faith makes you wonder where loving yourself fits in, think about this: if God loves you, why wouldn't you love you?)

Start the love affair with you by taking yourself on some dates! Romance yourself! Find out what you love, what makes you come alive, and schedule dates with yourself, to do those things. 

Take yourself for a walk at sunrise or sunset; find out what your favourite colour is and paint it through your life; take cooking classes so you know what you love to eat and plan meals that include your favourite flavors; take yourself for a solo vacation in a location you love. Date yourself! Gently connect to the light within and fall in love with who you are. Appreciate what you have to offer, flaws and all.

Loving yourself well enables you to love from the overflow of who you are. Everyone around you benefits from your pursuit of understanding what makes you tick. Find all of the reasons you are worth loving. Explore the reasons you believe you might not be worth loving. Release the insecurities, the fears, the uncertainty. Embrace the unknown—believing you will always come through knowing more about who you are than you did before.

Loving yourself is a lifelong journey. It’s a journey worth taking. It’s full of discoveries, none of which have to destroy you. You’re resilient. You’re worth loving yourself.

Journey Prompt:

Take yourself on a coffee date (or a fancy cocktail date—we love those too!). Act like you’re getting to know yourself for the first time.

Get settled into your date space and start getting to know yourself–be curious!