If you answered yes to any of these questions, it’s scrub-a-dub-dub time! If you answered no to all, you are clean, so continue on.
Scrub Off the Dirt — Get Your Love Loofah and Get to It
If you answered yes to question 1 or 2, then say:
“I release the belief that loving myself is an indulgent, frivolous act.”
If you answered yes to question 3, then say:
“I release the belief that spending money on pampering myself is enough to make me feel loved, happy, and cared for.”
Rub in the Love — Melt This Love Mantra into Your Heart,
Body, Mind, and Spirit
“Loving myself is something I get to do every day. And that can only be good.”
| Daring Act of Love Take a Self-Love Soak Every Day! |
At first waking, before rising from your bed, open your eyes and then close them right away. Keeping your eyes closed, wrap your arms around your body, and tell yourself (either in a soft whisper or silently inside), “<<insert name>>, I love you.” Say these words over and over again, and, so that you can literally feel the self-love soaking into your cells, add a hug — just as you would hug your partner, child, or four-legged companion in the morning. In this case, the being you are directing love to is you. Lie there in that hug, feel your heart open, and imagine pink light enveloping you, infusing your cells with love. Keep the soak going until you feel some love soak in. When the love is activated within you, open your eyes.
At first you may feel nothing; it may take you a few days, even weeks, to open up to receiving love in this way. So fake it until you make it, knowing that eventually the love will get through.
To complete this Love Bath, you need to look in one more set of places — your private places. No, not your private parts — lol! Your private places.
I shared with you four of the biggest misunderstandings about selflove, but unfortunately there are many more. As we grow up, they come to us from so many directions — the media, our parents, relatives, friends, school, religious institutions, and our communities. I’d have to write an entire encyclopedia on misunderstandings to list them all — and given that you haven’t been afflicted by them all, that’d be a poor use of time that could be better spent on where we are going. We’re going to grow your self-love!
So what I’ve done is come up with a superspeedy self-love adventure using some powerful transformative ME Art that will help you identify the misunderstandings about self-love that you picked up from early childhood to today, so that you can see them, scrub them off, and then rub in some love. Create this ME Art and use it to evoke the self-love mind shifts you need to make, and then take a Love Bath to release each one. And, of course, I’ve created a full-color Loveplate that you can download at www.ChooseSelfLove.com! The entire excursion can take you less than an hour. I’ll be waiting for you on the other side!
This adventure was inspired by a combination of powerful techniques I learned from two self-love superstars — Pele Rouge Chadima, one of my spiritual mentors, and Christine Hassler, my self-love sister and cocreator of the Choosing ME before WE 40-Day Self-Love Practice.
Supplies:
♥ A few sheets of paper and some markers
♥ Permission to let the little girl inside you pick up a pencil or marker without judgment of her creative abilities, including the permission to draw and color outside the lines
♥ Optional: “Self-Love Imprint” Loveplate at www.ChooseSelfLove.com
Mission:
Restructure your mind’s understanding of self-love and uncover the subconscious beliefs that you absorbed from the big influences in your life as a result of what you saw, heard, experienced, and witnessed while growing up. Then, you get to take back your Love Power and scrub off these dirty beliefs and rub in the good Love Mantras that a woman committed to loving herself lives by.
How-to:
Step 1. Sketch out your Self-Love Imprint.
In the middle of the paper, draw a small heart and write the word Self-Love inside it. Then draw lines to split the entire paper into four quadrants, and draw four small circles, one in each quadrant. Draw four spokes coming off each circle. Name the four circles Media and Society, Friends and Peers, Parents and Relatives, Education and Religion.
Step 2. Write up to four beliefs about selflove that each of these groups of people told you, showed you, or seemed to believe based on how they lived or spoke.
Go through each group, one by one, thinking to yourself, “What examples, habits, or beliefs about self-love did I see, hear, or otherwise observe … ?” Use the following list as thought starters to help you uncover the beliefs about self-love that you learned, both pro–loving yourself and anti–giving love to yourself. Keep in mind that the terms self-love and loving yourself probably weren’t often used, but that people likely expressed judgments about the attitudes and opinions that self-love and loving yourself include, which you unknowingly picked up in your subconscious. Write the beliefs on the spokes.
♥ taking care of oneself and one’s needs
♥ accepting, forgiving, or being kind to oneself
♥ giving oneself pleasure
♥ expressing oneself fully
♥ saying good things about oneself
♥ being in romantic relationships
♥ having relationships with friends and relatives
♥ trusting your inner wisdom
♥ going for your dreams
♥ having high self-esteem and self-worth
Step 3. Take a ME Moment and just notice what you see.
1. What beliefs do you find here that you didn’t realize you had, that you no longer want to keep? Which ones are you not surprised by but don’t want to keep around either? Circle or underline those — these are the beliefs you will take to your Love Bath.
2. How have these beliefs affected your ability to love yourself well? To make good decisions for yourself? To choose unconditional love and respect, no matter what?
3. What have these beliefs cost you?
4. What would you like to believe instead? Write a new belief for each of the old beliefs as powerful self-loving statements on your Self-Love Imprint. They will become the basis for your new Love Mantras.
Step 4. Clean up your beliefs and take your love power back.
For each dirty belief, take a Love Bath!
Scrub off the dirt and then, on a clean piece of paper, write out a new Love Mantra that you can use when you rub in the love. You can also use the second page of the Loveplate on www.ChooseSelfLove.com as a template to guide you through releasing the dirty beliefs and claiming the new love-based ones. Create an entire set of new Love Mantras that you can start using on a regular basis to restructure your beliefs in support of you loving yourself.
And here’s a