To Love Our Lives We Have To Love Ourselves First

As part of my quest to immerse ourselves in fun activities in nature the last few weeks, we went ziplining on one of America’s fastest and steepest canopy ziplines.

Midway through the course our guide mentioned that the zipline company had to cut down only one tree to build the course and the remaining stump was shaped like a heart. In honor of it, on our next zip we had to yell out something that we loved.

Our teenage and tween boys groaned in discomfort. They whined that they didn’t know what to say.

We laughed and threw out a few ideas in case they really were that lame.

My youngest son took off first and mumbled something under his breath. We were all left hanging in curiosity.

My oldest son went next and yelled “I love hiking!” No surprise there. He recently did a 25 mile hike in one day for fun.

I went next. My first instinct was to scream “I love my family” but that was too cliche for a mom (I could just hear my kids groan again), so I switched last second to “I love being in nature.”

And I heard later that my husband said “I love Melody, O, and H.” 😘

When I asked my youngest son what he said he slyly shared “Me!”

My thought was “Huh? And then, YES!”

I’ll admit, I didn’t see that coming. We were all expecting him to say Minecraft, gaming or our cat.

I was both shocked, amused and utterly delighted.

You see, self-love is a topic that comes up often with clients, so I was tickled to see my son practicing his version of it.

So many of us moms don’t love our lives because we don't love ourselves enough.

We're so harsh on ourselves when we don’t live up to our own expectations. We beat ourselves up for not being perfect and amazing at everything.

This lack of self-love and self-compassion is the root cause of so much of our pain and struggles.

Many of us associate self-love with narcissism and having a big ego. But self-love is simply having a high regard for our own well-being and happiness.

Self-love means taking care of our own needs and not sacrificing our well-being to please others. Self-love means not settling for less than what we deserve.

Loving ourselves doesn’t mean we think we’re the smartest, most talented, and most beautiful person in the world.

Instead, when we love ourselves fully we accept our "weaknesses," we appreciate our "shortcomings" as something that makes us who we are. When we love ourselves we have compassion for ourselves no matter what.

In order to truly love our lives again, we have to learn to love ourselves, even when we fall short of our own expectations.

In my Daily Calm mediation today, meditation teacher Tamara Levitt spoke about approaching our flaws with reverence, holding our grief with tenderness, our mistakes with forgiveness and our frustration with patience.

In the Japanese Kintsugi art form, artists mend pottery with gold or silver lacquer, highlighting the cracks and creating unique pieces. The art embraces brokenness and honors the flaws with reverence.

Just like the pottery, we too have cracks. It doesn’t mean we are of lesser value. Tamara encourages us to honor the scraps, chips and cracks of our experiences. As Leonard Cohen says “There is a crack in everything, that is how the light gets in!”

Wise words.

I’m not sure what Hudson’s idea of self-love looked like when he mumbled “Me” on the zipline. I’m curious to do some more digging in the weeks ahead. It can mean different things to different people because we all have different ways of taking care of ourselves. But I’m glad he is on that journey. As we all know the seeds of self-love start young.

But my quick feedback to him before we zipped off was that he should share it with the rest of the world next time because that was inspiring!

Hopefully we can all model healthy self-love and self-compassion for our kids moving forward. What does that look like for you?

🦋 If you want a coach in your corner to help you work on self-love in your life, I invite you to request a spot in my Master Working From Home one-on-one coaching program this September by clicking here for a free discovery call to learn more. It will change your life, I promise. Not only will we work on self-love but I’ll help you take back your time, achieve your lost goals and rediscover you. Sign up today.

You’ve got this!

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