How To Love Myself: 5 Ways to Love Yourself, Even Though…
When you make the same remark, the same mistake, the same choice you swore you wouldn’t make again, can you love yourself anyway?
It is one of the hardest questions we ask, and it sits at the heart of the self-love journey.
As a soul coach with 25 years of experience, and the author of The Butterfly Silhouette: 12 Principles for Following Your Soul, winner of the San Francisco Book Festival in both Spirituality and Poetry, I’ve spent decades sitting with people in this exact place.
Each of us has a soul that came here to learn and grow, and that learning includes the messy, repeated, very human moments we wish we could take back.
This is soul-centered spirituality for spiritually hungry souls, and learning how to love yourself begins with the eternal part of you that is connected always.
In this article, you’ll learn:
- How to see yourself the way your soul sees you
- How to forgive yourself for repeating mistakes
- How to forgive yourself for wanting people to like you
- How to soften the inner voice that judges you
- How to feel emotions instead of thinking your way around them
- Practical practices like gratitude and loving kindness meditation
If learning how to love yourself is something you’ve been working on, The Sunday Scroll is where I write each week about soul-centered spirituality for spiritually hungry souls. It’s for people who want to feel closer to something greater, and more connected to themselves, without religion. Sign up here.
How to Love Myself: 5 Ways
When you are judging yourself for what you have said or done, it can be hard to remember that you are still in the middle of your story. The five practices below are the ones I have returned to in my own life and in my work with clients for over two decades. Each one is a doorway back to yourself.
1. See yourself the way your soul sees you
Your soul came here to learn and grow. That is the whole reason you are here in a body, walking through this life. When you keep that in front of you, the way you see your imperfections begins to soften.
Your soul does not look at the moments you regret and call you a failure. Your soul looks at those same moments and sees a person doing the work of becoming. The mistake you keep making is part of a soul lesson. The fear you keep bumping into is something you came here to heal. The flaw you cannot stand in yourself is often the very edge where your growth is happening.
When you see yourself the way your soul sees you, you trust the process. You understand that your timeline is not the soul’s timeline. You stop measuring yourself against an imagined finish line and start noticing how far you have already come.
This shift is the foundation of self-love. Without it, every misstep becomes evidence that something is wrong with you. With it, every misstep becomes part of the soul’s classroom. You are allowed to be a student here. That is what you came for.
Your soul came here to learn and grow.
For a complete guide to Self-Love including self-care, how to connect with your soul, shadow work, affirmations, the self-love journey, self-compassion, self-forgiveness, and embracing imperfections, read: A Complete Guide to Self-love: Make Your Soul Smile.
2. Forgive yourself for being imperfect
Self-forgiveness is one of the most important practices you can build, and it can go slow or not so slow. And it’s ok as each soul travels at its own speed. Forgiveness is not a single moment. It is a process you return to again and again, often for the same thing.
Repeating mistakes is part of how we learn. Your soul is patient with this, and you can learn to be patient with yourself in the same way. Principle 5 in The Butterfly Silhouette is about giving yourself compassion for all that you are, including the parts of you that are still figuring it out.
A simple practice: when you notice you have done the thing again, pause. Place your hand on your heart. Say to yourself, I forgive myself. I am still learning. Then return to your day. Over time, this small ritual becomes a way of meeting yourself with kindness instead of criticism.
The mistakes you make are part of soul lessons.
3. Forgive yourself for needing approval
The desire to be liked is one of the most human things about us. We share this planet with billions of people, and wanting to belong is woven into who we are. There is nothing wrong with that desire. The question is what we do with it.
Some people will love you. Some people will not understand you. Some people will simply move through their own lives and never notice you at all. None of this is a measure of your worth.
If there are ways you would like to grow in how you show up with others, name them gently. I am working on being a better listener. I am working on being less reactive when I feel misunderstood. This kind of self-talk is patient and forgiving. It points toward growth without making you the problem.
When someone disagrees with you, that is part of life. When someone does not like you, that is also part of life. You are still allowed to love yourself fully through both.
4. Soften the inner voice that judges you
The way you speak to yourself shapes the life you live. Shad Helmstetter, in his book What You Say When You Talk to Yourself, writes about how we are programming ourselves all day long with the words we use in our own minds.
What we tell ourselves, we believe. And many of us are carrying inner voices that are far harsher than anything we would say to someone we love.
In The Thought Store, my book about a futuristic town where thoughts have a physical form, I describe how thoughts carry an actual frequency that affects the body. The negative thoughts we hold about ourselves are not just uncomfortable. They are a kind of weight we carry in our cells.
The work here is not to silence the inner critic overnight. The work is to notice the voice, and then offer something kinder in its place. I am doing the best I can. I am learning. I am allowed to be a work in progress. These are not affirmations you have to believe perfectly. They are seeds. Plant them often enough, and they grow.
For a complete guide to Positive Energy including the science of good vibes, attracting positive energy, sending healing vibes, positive thinking, optimism, and affirmations, read: Positive Energy: A Complete Guide to Creating Good Vibes.
If you’ve read this far, the soul work is already happening. The next sections move from how you talk to yourself into how you feel, and how you build the daily practices that hold you up.
5. Allow the energy of the emotion
When something painful arises, the instinct is to think your way through it. Why did this happen? What does it mean? What should I have done differently? The mind takes over, and the emotion gets pushed aside.
But the emotion is what actually needs your attention. Principle 7 in The Butterfly Silhouette is about feeling and allowing what is real, rather than analyzing it from a safe distance.
When a hard feeling rises, try this. Sit with it. Notice where it lives in your body. Breathe into it. Let it be there without trying to fix it or explain it. Emotions move through us when we let them. They get stuck when we don’t.
This kind of emotional honesty is one of the deepest forms of self-love. It says to your inner self, You are allowed to feel this. I will not abandon you while you do.
Practice gratitude
Gratitude is not a performance. It is a quiet practice of noticing what is already good. When you are working through hard moments with yourself, gratitude reminds you that you are not only your struggles. You are also the person who notices the morning light, the kind text from a friend, the meal you actually enjoyed.
A simple practice at the end of each day: name three things that touched your heart, no matter how small. Over time, this rewires the way you see your own life. It also raises your vibration, which makes self-love come more easily.
For more on this, read How to Create an Attitude of Gratitude for a Better Life.
Loving kindness meditation
Loving kindness is an ancient practice of directing warmth and goodwill toward yourself and others. When you feel disconnected from yourself, this meditation can be a way back.
Try saying these words slowly, with one hand on your heart:
I am love. I am divine love. I’m giving and receiving only love. I’m living my highest truth. I’m allowing my greatest healing. Thank you for keeping me in love’s way.
You can repeat this each morning, each evening, or any moment you need to come home to yourself. Read more on loving kindness meditation here.
Positive affirmations for self love
Affirmations work when you use them consistently and with feeling. I have written a comprehensive collection of over 200 affirmations to support your self-love journey. You can find them here: Best Affirmations for Self Love.
The most important relationship in your life is with yourself
Every other relationship in your life is shaped by the one you have with yourself. As your authentic self walks deeper into the world, your sense of self-worth grows alongside it.
Your soul wants you to be your true self. That is part of why you are here, to learn, to grow, and to bring your particular gifts into the world. Self-doubt and a focus on past mistakes can stand in the way of that, but they do not have to.
For more on the soul and what it asks of you, read Soul Meaning: What Is the Unique Soul.
Final thoughts: How can I love myself?
The self-love journey is one of the most worthwhile things you will ever do. We cannot fulfill our destiny without it.
Love Yourself is Principle 11 in my 12 Principles of Metamorphosis. In The Butterfly Silhouette, the caterpillar is stuck beneath a stone, unable to free herself from her own self-doubt and self-rejection. What changes everything is the moment she finds it within her to love herself anyway.
That is what you are being asked to do. Love yourself anyway. Love yourself through the mistakes, the fears, the moments you wish had gone differently. Be true to your soul, this eternal part of you that is connected always, and let your love for yourself grow alongside everything else.
