Those are all great ways to spend your time, but none of it is going to make you love yourself. 
One thing I struggled with was the conflicting idea that I wanted to embrace myself both mentally and physically. I wanted to lean into my intellectual abilities, but I didn’t want anyone to think I was pompous, and for a little while early on, I didn’t want to look ‘too smart’. Then, I wanted to embrace my physical appearance and wear certain clothes, and outwardly admire myself, but I didn’t want to seem conceited

How was I supposed to even like myself when I didn’t feel like I was allowed to do so?
Whenever I would accomplish something, I would downplay it. If I looked smokin’ hot in a dress and got a compliment, I would minimize it. If I could tell my light was shining brighter than those around me, I would dim it. 

I was so afraid of making other people uncomfortable – at all- that I held myself back at the cost of my own happiness. Really, it was at the cost of my own learning and growing, I held myself back because I was afraid of what people would think. 

What Does It Mean to Love Yourself?

So there I was, for the first time in my life, taking on the task of learning what it meant to love myself. All I really had to go on were conflicting messages I had heard since childhood, and images of photoshopped beauty.

Now, this is the part where you trust your process. I didn’t have an answer. I would meditate, I would wait for a sign, I half wondered if I would just wake up one morning and feel this immense amount of love for myself out of nowhere.

I couldn’t figure it out, so I just waited. I realized that there was something missing between my intention, the information I was reading and the outcome I wanted. 
The thing that was missing was time. 

What I would later learn is that something like love doesn’t happen overnight. It makes sense, you don’t love someone after just meeting them. Of course there is the conversation of hormones and all that, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. 
To cultivate real love for another person, you need to get to know them and you need to spend time with them. That applies to cultivating love for yourself as well. 

It’s about getting to know yourself. It’s about knowing how you think and what you want and don’t want? What are your boundaries, values, interests, quirks? What makes you happy? How do you get when you’re sleepy, hungry, or annoyed? What turns you on? What are your goals? What parts of yourself are you working on? 

It’s about learning your own language so you know what to listen for. It’s about being there for yourself, putting in the work, showing up, caring about yourself and what happens to you. It’s about actively choosing who you spend your time with and making sure your needs are met. Having a loving relationship with yourself, as with anyone, requires work. 

That might not be the sexiest response here, but it’s the truth. 

You can research and talk to so-called gurus but I will save you a lot of time and money right now: you already have everything you will ever need, already inside of you. If you’ve heard that before – good!  I’m so glad that you’re already familiar with it, because it’s super important. 

You don’t need someone to tell you what to do or give you permission. There’s no one out there who has access to some information or answers that seem unavailable to you. And there is certainly no one out there who knows you better than you know you. 

You know what’s best for you. Whether or not you’re able to see that at this moment, all you need – is you. 

We all want to cultivate love for ourselves. Every aspect of life is better when you love yourself. You can walk into a room without concern for the opinions of others, only to find that people are happy that you’re there. You can detach from people and ideas that no longer serve you, because you put more value and energy towards meeting your own needs, rather than meeting the needs of others.

It also helps you understand the responsibility of meeting your own needs, and allowing other people the space to do that for themselves as well. When you know and love yourself, you experience life in a way that is more free and authentic and you’ll find that opportunities present themselves to you in unexpected ways. 

If you would like to learn more about my process for learning self-love, I would be honored to share it with you. I am currently putting together a course that talks more in detail about my experience and how I learned love for myself. 

Definitely check back soon, I can’t wait for you to see what’s next!