The Heart Of Personal Growth: Loving Yourself As You Are

I am a big fan of personal growth,

So much that I have dedicated the past eight plus years of my life to evolving and growing.

And it has paid off.

My life has transformed in so many ways.

I am grateful to say that I deeply love my life.

Yet I've also noticed that holding tightly onto a pursuit of personal growth can be unhelpful.

It can hold me back from growing.

When I am too focused on my own growth and wanting to be different,

It reinforces the limiting belief that I am not quite good enough just as I am,

And that I need to improve to be worthy and lovable.

And so now what?

I know I want to love myself just as I am,

And that there are parts of my life that I want to change.

So how do I accept myself and make changes?

Well,

I am realizing over and over and over again that when I practice loving and accepting myself just as I am,

That very act of self-love improves my life.

I am cultivating more self-compassion.

I am more deeply loving myself.

I am practicing loving all parts of me,

Including my wounds,

Including the parts of me that sometimes feel harder to love.

The trauma and the pain and the suffering that I haven't tried loving yet.

The parts of me that I am still learning how to love.

These are the parts of me that need my love the most.

And when I begin to love these parts of myself more,

Even if just for a moment,

I know that I am growing and evolving.

When my wounds feel loved,

They have space to shift and evolve too.

How special and tender is that?

And so when I say I have experienced so much personal growth and deeply love my life,

What I really mean is that I deeply love myself.

And I continuously practice loving myself when I have a hard time or when I forget.

And I surround myself with people who show me what it looks like to love themselves.

People who encourage me to love myself.

When I am having a hard time,

Instead of trying to solve it for me,

They ask me,

What can you do to love yourself right now?

What a gift that is.

When I say I deeply love my life,

I mean that I am working on believing I am worthy of having the life that I truly want.

And once I trust and believe in and really love myself,

Or at least practice loving myself,

I am able to put in the work to create and have a life that I deeply love.

And that's why I'm here.

My purpose for being in this body,

On this planet,

In this lifetime,

Is simply to love myself.

Simple,

Not easy.

And as an extension of that,

I hope that my practice of self-love helps you remember that it is so very possible for you to love yourself too.