Journey to Self Love

Recent events in my life have really shown me the lack of self love I really have. I can be so critical of myself. I used to have a problem with perfectionism. I had to have everything perfect and if it was anything less, I was self conscious. Over the years I’ve learn to allow myself to make mistakes, which was hard because growing up I felt like I couldn’t make mistakes. But I still have along way to go in this area.

I can be so hard on myself at times. Whenever I go through another depression, or have unexplained anxiety, or make a simple mistake, I tend to beat myself up. I find that I tell myself “it’s okay Ray” too many times a week. I had two people close to me recently shed light on how I treat myself, and they were so right.

A conversation I had with my cousin really brought everything into perspective. I was feeling guilty about some things that happened recently and I felt the need to apologize to her. Her response was golden, “I think that’s an apology you need to say to yourself and forgive yourself “. I thought about that for a while, but I couldn’t forgive myself. I can’t, because in my mind I just keep making mistakes and faltering.

I think now is the time that I have to give myself permission to feel and be okay with it. I often times feel defeated when my mood is down for more than a few days. I feel like I shouldn’t feel the way I do, which ends up making me feel worse. I often dismiss my efforts and fail to give myself credit for my progress. I think I have to learn how to be okay with being less than perfect. I have to learn and believe that I am good enough. I have to learn how to love myself as I am, flaws and all. I have to learn how to love myself as others love me. I have to love myself as I love others.

I need to change my belief about myself and how much I care about others’ perceptions of me. My worries about how others feel about my words and actions fuels my thoughts that I am not good enough. I want to be able to fall in love with myself, and love myself unconditionally. I want to be the person I can rely on. I want to be kind to myself, loving and forgiving.  So I’m starting this new journey to self love. I intend to work through my insecurities that are blocking me from truly loving myself.

Through all of my journeys in the past few years, I feel there is an underlying theme of self love. This journey will not only incorporate the skills that I learned in my past journeys, but it will also allow me to truly accept myself, my truth, my life, as it is right now. Self love is a new theme for this period in my life. I am ready to accept this challenge.

-Ray