Love Yourself!
Coffee mugs, t-shirts, half-price art from Home Outfitters; they all seem to recommend the same thing. Great advice, no doubt; hard to go wrong with it. Every morning, my bathroom wall inspires me to “Love yourself and the rest will follow”, while I take my first number one of the day.
But you know, I’ve flipped those mugs over to look at the bottom; checked the tags on those t-shirts; and looked at the back of those canvasses – they’re all the same. No instructions. Well, maybe, “Made in Thailand” is some clandestine road to salvation?
The challenge with “Love yourself” is that it’s big. Really big. And yet, more often than not, you’ve paid $16.99 for two, very powerful, very ambiguous words. It’s like 4 ½ minutes at the therapist, “good luck with the rest of your life”, as the door actually hits you on the ass on the way out.
Deep inside, we all want to Love the person we see in the mirror. It’s the truth; it has to be. It’s just that actually going about it, especially if couldn’t feel further from it, probably seems too overwhelming to even understand. Where to start? Where to go? Where to finish?
“Love yourself” isn’t meant to be an imperceptible blueprint. It’s not meant to be a daily existential awakening. It’s actually really simple. Just take it easy on yourself. Put the shovel away, you don’t always need to dig into your soul.
Like anything in life, looking up a mountain you can’t see the top of, isn’t easy. The real realness of it is that Loving yourself will always be the biggest mountain in your life. It’s supposed to be that way so that your experience of evolution and growth will never end. Because, Love knows no end.
You can’t get to the top of this mountain in one big leap. But, you know something; you can climb it every single day. You can take your time. You can stumble. You can take a rest. You can do whatever you want. Just take it easy; take it simple. Find the easiest way to start. Buy some shoes, eat cookies, call in sick; make yourself feel good. It doesn’t matter how; just do things that make you smile. There’s a million ways to do any and all of it. And, they don’t all require transcending consciousness.
Loving yourself doesn’t come with instructions because it can’t. My instructions wouldn’t be your instructions wouldn’t be your neighbour’s instructions. But, you have them. We all do. It’s a smile, a laugh, feeling safe, a hug; all by whatever means that comes to you. The universe doesn’t know your Heart is singing because you just had a life-altering mediation or because you just drank a delicious hot chocolate.
My advice, no $16.99 required, is to not over complicate things. Or, over emphasize them. Or, over think them. Find the things that move you up the mountain, however transcendental or not.
When you start small, you end up big.
Be Love.
