Written by N
Self-Love
Earlier today I was lucky enough to be part of another wonderful Saturday morning group session! There were a number of topics and questions to be considered and thought about! But I notice that one of the topics has dominated my thoughts since then! And that is the topic of self-love! And I suppose, because tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, it is also a relevant topic too!! So I decided this evening to explore it here in this blog….
I have come a long way from my early days of recovery when I was oblivious to the lack of love I felt towards myself!
I have travelled through the days where the awareness of how unworthy I felt seemed to overwhelm me! During these times I felt so sad that I had somehow managed to have such a low opinion of myself and I wondered would it have been easier to remain unaware and ignorant to the harsh language and negative thoughts I had about myself!
But recently I have begun to notice that somehow the self-loathing and self-hatred has started to turn to something else. And that something is self-love. I notice that the negative opinion of myself has been slowly but surely reducing and disappearing! And this got me thinking…
When the pieces of the puzzle come together in recovery it can feel a little like magic! You suddenly arrive at a point where you begin to see clearly! Or maybe it is that you begin to feel things more clearly?! And this can make you feel like you are under a spell of some sorts! And it has been no different this time when it comes to learning to love myself! I started to think about how I had reached this point and found that there seems to be a hundred reasons I could write here! But then I thought maybe there was a simpler, more creative way to describe it….
So I thought….
What if I could make a magic potion to help others to learn to love themselves? How amazing would that be? I wondered what ingredients I would put in the bottle?….
And this is what I came up with….
Self-Love Potion
Essential Items:
Gentleness
Kindness
Compassion
Reassurance
Credit
Time
Step 1
Get yourself a large, empty potion bottle (real or imaginary will do!!!)
- Gentleness: Slowly add a large bucket full of gentleness into it-Gentle words and phrases. Say them out loud or in your head! Don’t forget to include gentle actions and thoughts too!
- Kindness: Add a shed full of kindness into you bottle! Kindness for your body and for your mind! Remember you deserve kindness just as much as everybody else!
- Compassion: Next add in a truck load of compassion! Compassion for your actions! Compassion for your past!! Compassion for your humanity!
- Reassurance: Add in a mountains of reassurance! Reassurance that everything is and will be ok! Reassurance that you deserve to be loved by you!
- Credit: Add in a million “Well Dones” or as many as you can fit in! After all there can never be too much credit given to oneself! The more credit there is the more love you will feel!
- Time: Add time in there too! As this will remind you that any changes you want to make will take time!
Step 2:
After you have filled your bottle to the brim with all these wonderful ingredients, shake it up and take a sip! Remember don’t drink it all down in one go, as for this potion to work, it is vital that you drink it very slowly! In fact it may take you a while to get to the end of the bottle! But each time you look at the bottle, and take a sip, you must also remind yourself of all the amazing ingredients that went into it! You can maybe reflect on your day and ask yourself if you have remembered to include all of these elements into your day! As the more you practice incorporating all of these magical ingredients into your daily life, the more powerful the potion becomes! And the stronger the love you will feel for yourself! And that feeling is the magical love potion doing what it was designed to do!
Step 3:
(And because every good magic potion needs a spell/chant to make it work, I have included one here!!)
Chant
(Repeat each day x 1000 times!)
I am worthy, I am enough and I deserve to be,
Content and happy and full of light just because I’m me!
I am worthy, I am enough and I will always be,
Special and beautiful and wonderful too just because I’m me!
💕💕💕💕💕
So there you go now that is my Love Potion!
I could have written a load of words here today about all the complicated ways I tried to learn to love myself! I could have looked up a hundred quotes that I found in books or on the internet and repeated them here and intellectualised it all! But to be honest it is only recently, I see how, none of that is necessary or helpful. I have realised that learning to love myself can never be achieved by gathering information or by looking to others. I now know, that if I just add all of the ingredients above into my life and practice often, the seed of self-love will continue to grow and grow and grow!
And how do I know this? Because I can feel it somewhere within me! I can finally feel that the flower of self-love and worthiness is growing and getting stronger!
And I have hope and trust that the magical feeling that comes with learning to accept and love me for being me will only become more magical and wonderful as time goes by!
So all that is left for me to say is..
💕 Happy Valentine’s Day! 💕
I hope your day is full of self-love, not only tomorrow, but for each and every day of your life!
And I hope…that you, just like me, find a love potion that is as magical as mine and that our seeds of self love bloom into magnificent flowers filled with love!!
Nx
