Integritus Prime

I recently completed teaching another course on self-love. As always, I feel very proud of my students as they explore the importance of understanding, accepting, and loving themselves unconditionally. Knowing true love through self-love is a formidable prerequisite for discerning love from another person. It’s not an easy journey, but it’s one of the most rewarding ones.

I learned so much from each of my students. I want to express lessons from them in this post, and launch the journal we have produced together.

Here are three crucial lessons about self-love as a journey:

1. Self-love is about standards: if we have high standards for how we love our family, friends, and partners, then it’s important to impose the same high standards for how we love ourselves. This means prioritizing our integrity, ethical standards, self-care practices, and boundaries. Without these, our self-love practice will not become a solid foundation in our lives.
2. Self-love is about surrendering control: When we seek to control everything, we are coming from a place of deep fear. Self-love helps us to face fear and begin to heal. Of course, healing takes time, but eventually we are able to surrender to the synchronous flow of the universe and our own intuition. This is when work becomes play, and life becomes joy.
3. Self-love is about empowerment: We often take abuse from colleagues and bosses, and even family, but when we begin to build our self-worth, things change. We realize we can be authentically confident, based on who we are. Then, we begin to set boundaries and live a more empowered life.

Each of these three aspects of self-love take time. Hence, it is a journey we take with ourselves as our best friends. There are many more lessons about the journey of self-love, and they are present as powerful quotes from my students and me in our journal, aptly titled: My Self-Love Journey. It’s a great companion for anyone navigating the territory of healing and doing their inner work.

Share with me your own insights from your self-love journey.