Read below or Watch on YouTube
This post is going to be all about how to love yourself on Valentine’s day. And it’s also an invitation for you to love yourself every day. And for those of you that are familiar with Human Design, this is an important concept when it comes to applying your Human Design in your life.
Human Design isn’t just about geeking out on the types, centers, gates, channels, authorities, incarnation crosses, etc….
No, because none of that knowledge does you any good unless you embody yourself, embody your truth, embody and know how to touch into yourself and allow all of that energetic information to make it to your conscious awareness and self. Love is a huge part of that.
In this very commercialized holiday and season, you may see boxes of candy, balloons and flowers everywhere you go. You may notice all this pressure gets put on this day to show love to those around you such as your family, your good friends, and your intimate partner(s).
However it’s easy to forget that the most intimate partner you have is YOU. Only YOU experience ALL of life with you. Only YOU get to hear all of your thoughts (Thank God, right?).
This post is not going to be your typical “How to love yourself on Valentine’s day” post. There’s lots of information out there that will tell you to “take a warm bath”, “go to a retreat” or “go to a spa”. And those are all great ideas as the physical form of self love is really important.
However, what I want to dive into today is how to truly have an experience of love for yourself.
You can increase Self Love by noticing times where you think negatively about yourself, trace these thoughts back to where you started those patterns, and from there take the journey to love those parts of yourself.
Click here to watch that video that shares the process in a deep and transformative way.
Loving Yourself On Valentines Day and All Days
Today, I really want to invite you into an inquiry. Take a moment now to inquire and perhaps journal about these questions:
- Where is my peace conditional? My peace of mind, my peace of heart, and my peace of spirit? In what ways am I moving through the world joyfully and peacefully? In what ways do I not let myself because of certain conditions
- In what ways do I experience my power? Does my power have a condition?
- Where have I put conditions on my peace, on my joy, or on my power?
- Are there places where I try to love someone else in order to have them behave in a way in order to feel love?
Brave inquiry like this is how you love yourself on Valentine’s Day. This is how you love yourself every day. It’s done by taking the time to bring awareness to yourself, and to start noticing and getting curious about questions like: Where have I given my power, peace and joy away?
- Where have I allowed myself to feel sad, to feel lonely, to feel “not good enough”, or to feel unworthy when I don’t have what I “want” in my life (such as the person I want, the job I want, etc)?
I want you to take a moment to contemplate these questions. Because, without even knowing it, you have put conditions upon when you can feel love and loved. And what conditions in your external environment signal to you that you are loveable.
The good news is you can unravel all of these conditions from your nervous system with gentle awareness.
Now, if you’re single or in relationship, this is a really amazing opportunity for you on this day! Of course, some people honor love in an authentic way every day, but on this day of Valentines Day, you may notice a collective field of somewhat “performative” romance. You may even be participating in it.
I did for many years. I would do everything I could to try to control the conditions and please the people around me so they would be happy and love me – conditions I put on love and loving – instead of allowing my relationships to emerge from my self-love.
And there’s a lot of performative romance out there. If you fall into this category, you may catch yourself trying to use relationships or dating in order to feel more love and use Valentine’s Day as an opportunity to do so.
Whether you ‘re single, your relationship with your significant other is going smoothly, or its challenging you, the opportunity is there for you to notice:
- Where has my peace, my love or my joy become conditional?
- Where have I placed conditions or expectations on the people in my life to perform in a certain way?
Releasing the Conditions on Love
For example, a “condition” on love is placing an expectation on someone else that they have to text you in a certain way or at a certain time in order for you to feel happy. Or you may, without knowing it, have placed a condition upon them that expects they need to buy you a certain gift, or do a certain thing in a certain way in order for you to feel loved.
Conditions on love place expectations upon others that they must respond to you in a certain way. Your love, happiness, peace or joy may become conditional depending on the other person’s emotional state and actions. And this puts a tremendous pressure on them, creating a challenge for them to feel love and loving with you.
Conditions on love have us give away our own power to feel love, happiness, peace or joy in the moment.
Releasing the conditions on love means you don’t need to base your power, peace, love or joy on what’s happening around you.
It won’t be an easy shift at first, because these patterns are beyond the logical mind. They are wired into your nervous system from when you first needed them to navigate life. For most people, that’s in childhood. So the first step is bringing awareness. To bring more awareness to where you have put conditions on others, or where you have relied on the external world to be a certain way in order for you to feel the way you want.
Taking Back Our Power and Ability to Love Ourselves
The good news is that you can take that power back and you can take back the ability to love yourself.
It’s a practice of bringing gentle awareness to that part of you that feels scared and wasn’t loved for who they were earlier in life – the part of you that had to control conditions around you to feel safe and loved. It is about bringing gentle awareness to the parts of you that learned from society that things have to “look” a certain way, or that you need certain external things to feel lovable, loved, respected, worthy or honored.
It’s about starting to understand how to internally feel respected, worthy and honored.
Of course, you can still hold other people to certain behaviors that honor your boundaries and meet your needs. However, whether other people cross those boundaries or not, you can still love yourself. And you or they can choose to part ways without your experience of love or being loved changing.
It all starts with awareness, and it starts with first noticing and inquiring: where is my love, peace, joy and power conditional on another person or a situation being a certain way?
Start to get curious about: why and how did I let this situation take me out of my joy , or out of my love? In this self-inquiry, you may think: “I was just SO joyful two days ago, and now I’m all over the place and stuck in my head, isn’t that interesting!”
All you need to do is bring awareness, and to be gentle with yourself, whilst getting curious. Notice, and hold yourself in those moments. You don’t need to try to change it. That will happen on its own accord through the space your acceptance creates.
This is how you love yourself. To be present and give yourself your attention.
To breathe and use your breath to direct your attention out of your head, down into your heart, and down into your body.
Be present with the parts of you that are looking for that love from outside of you. And be present with those parts of you that don’t feel like they can have what they want, or express everything they feel, or have “it all”.
It is about continuing to love those parts of you again and again. Even if you’re in a super happy partnership, there’s usually always somewhere you can deepen the love for yourself, and that will unlock so much for you.
The practice is to be with the discomfort that may exist, and notice that this part of you is usually an inner child, or a younger part of you that feels scared, lonely or sad. The practice is to be with them, and to notice if you feel the need of an external condition to feel better, such as to get that certain text, to hear that certain thing, or to have a certain experience. That’s it, right there. That’s the key.
Just be gentle… Whenever you notice your mind looking for a shift from the external world, and whenever you notice you are waiting for something so that you can feel better. Whenever you notice you might get into an anxious mental spiral, thinking: “I just need this… I just need that… then I’ll feel loved/happy/peaceful”. If you notice yourself thinking: “Why did that happen? Why can’t it be better? Why did this happen to me? What did I do wrong?…”
…Whatever it is, it’s okay. Just focus, as gently as you can, with practice and patience, to bring your awareness back down into your heart, down into your chest, down into your body, and to breathe into the sensation and see if you can, with that presence and awareness awareness, bring yourself to a better feeling state before the thing happens, or regardless of the thing happening. These moments are priceless.
And it’s all a practice! It may take a lot the first time, but over time it gets easier. If you want to learn more about getting out of your head back into your heart, check out this Youtube video that talks all about it, too.
You are important and your feelings are important, and you have the power to support yourself and love yourself regardless of all the love you have, or all the love you might not have (just yet) but that you want in your field. And the more you love yourself, the more you’re going to magnetize the partnerships, the love relationships that you want into your life.
I hope you enjoyed this post today, feel free to watch it on Youtube and leave a comment there or comment below here if you want to share any of your thoughts or experiences with this topic.
The leaders that will thrive in the constant and rapid change of the Age of AI are those that can navigate the unknown with confidence, by following your inner compass, and help their teams do the same.
This report gives you a map to how to listen to the wisdom of your body, to the 100,000,000 neurons of your gut and 40,000 neurons of your heart.
The Phoenix System is designed to help you bring awareness to unconscious leadership patterns left over from the Industrial and Information Ages. They block true innovation and creativity that can emerge when staying poised instead of reacting to fears and the whims of your mind.