It’s the week of Valentine’s Day and I was reminded this morning of being a gal, not too many years back, who longed to have someone in my life who was so crazy about me that we went away on some epic surprise vacation for the holiday, just so I could see how much I was loved.
Maybe you have a similar fantasy rattling around in your head.
As I remembered this, I chuckled at what a projection that fantasy was. The love I was seeking externally was what I actually needed to cultivate myself.
Here’s the #realtalk of valentine’s day, from one single gal to another: if you’re pining to find wild, long lasting love with a significant other and have epic valentine’s day fantasies, you gotta find that same level of epic love and appreciation with yourself first.
I know, I know, sounds like a tired old cliche, doesn’t? And really, it is, until you actually live it. When you live into that that kind of love and self respect, you don’t pine for it externally so much. You don’t sit around feeling empty and wondering where your prince charming is.
Maybe it seems as strange to you as it does to me to be reading an article about love and relationships from an emotional eating and wellness coach, but I realized this lack of self love and looking for it outside ourselves is a major place we get stuck when we are on the diet-binge-shame cycle AND when we are longing for love.
Don’t get me wrong, you can have the desire for love and really really want it, but your satisfaction and joy in life has to be internally motivated. And when it is, you take the time to give yourself the things you dream of doing with this partner. You take care of your health, you travel, have a great home and do things that light you up because you’re chasing the dream of having a full life no matter what.
And believe it or not, finding great love with your soulmate as well as finding freedom with food and confidence in your body all start in the same place: self-love, self-respect and an unshakeable core of self-acceptance.
I know what you’re thinking right about now because I’ve been there. Learning to love ourselves is the LAST thing last thing we want to do when we are swiping right on tinder while sipping our shakeology.
However, I am here to remind you that when you embody an unwavering kind of self love, you have a body confidence and peace of mind that radiates out. You give up on trying to lose weight so you can finally start dating( you instead take care of your health for you), you don’t go to they gym so that you can burn all those calories and keep your weight down (you go because you like the way working out feels). In short, you come to know, in the words of Maya Angelou, that you are a phenomenal woman BECAUSE of the span in your hips and the curl of your lips.
What I’m talking about here isn’t an overnight, seven-step cure all process. It isn’t even necessarily an easy breezy process (because you might have to face all those uncomfortable things you’ve been avoiding while you’ve been sulking about not having a boyfriend), but it IS the process that will get you the satisfaction and joy you are seeking when you’re pining for love outside of yourself.
So how do you do this? You start by giving yourself all the things you have on the shelf until the right body or the right man comes along:: the sexy dress, the fancy dinner out, the vacation you’ve been dreaming of. Start giving yourself the pleasure you really desire, without the thought “this would be so much better if” and you’ll begin to transform your relationship to yourself, the only relationship that is with you for your entire life.
Doing this will get you off the diet binge cycle and into living like the woman you dream of being. It may even bring you the perfect guy to be in love with because you are radiating the confidence and peace of mind that is more attractive than anything else a woman can put on.