How does self love help me in these trial times?
I can’t lie and say that this has been a piece of cake for me. However, what I can say is, it’s thanks to the tools I have acquired, I am always able to go back to my center and be ok.
‘Self love’ means so many different things to different people. I’ve come up with a global definition that I feel applies in general to anyone who wants to have a way to describe it.
‘Self love’ is an act or series of acts that impact your life in a positive way by caring about yourself in a myriad of ways.
From what I can remember, my road to self love started when I was 30 years old. At the time, I lived abroad (I’m originally from Mexico City) as a personal chef for a very wealthy guy and my boyfriend lived with me.
He was an alcoholic and although he never hit me and he was a sweetheart when he didn’t drink, when he did he could be an a-hole. He also did verbally abuse me a couple times.
These “random” episodes made me start to overthink how I’d had to modify my life and consequently stopped doing what I love to accommodate his drinking addiction.
One day I finally stopped and said to myself: “Is this how you want to live your life?” .“No”, I answered. My inner guide thankfully told me to take action and take it NOW!
I ended the relationship while having panic attacks too so I had to tackle all things at once; my nerves, my loss and the weight I had gained (mainly because I stress ate so much while he and I were together .)
The only way I could deal with all this was with patience and love. I learned how to meditate, I reached out for help and slowly but surely, I took one leap after the other to get to the place I am today 15 years later.
There is not one thing I can think of that couldn’t be fixed with self love. This brings me to the world’s current situation.
Right now, many of us are under stress, anxiety or panic; thinking the worst case scenarios. Many of us are binge watching news to see if something useful is on there. Even though 99% of it is useless information. To be honest most of us already know the important facts and safety by now.
What if we did this:
Turn our eyes inside, take advantage of the time we have to see what’s going on with ourselves to reevaluate our lives; to see what no longer serves us, to reunite with valuable people we know and let go of toxic people we have been wanting to say goodbye to for a long time.
All these are doses of self love, to nourish our body. Even if what we want to eat all day is chips!
If we just did some kind of body movement so we can oxygenate our cells and feel energized maybe we would feel better. What if we cooked for ourselves or our family.
Do you know one of the oldest demonstrations of love comes through food?! All the energy in our hands goes towards the food we make and into the body of whoever eats it. Think about that!
I know it feels uncertain and scary at moments, but we get to choose. We choose what to do with our day, we choose if we want to keep feeding fear or take control and do productive nourishing things.
Whatever the situation is, this is OUR life and we get to choose. We get to choose our state of mind, who can and cannot get into our brains and how we can center ourselves.
I encourage you to close your eyes and ask yourself “What do I need right now?”
Treat yourself with love, care and compassion and let us navigate these waters one day at a time, together.
We got This!
