Love Yourself and Be The Hero of Your Own Story

“If you are not the hero of your own story, then you’re missing the whole point of your humanity.” – Steve Maraboli

If you’re wondering what your purpose is here on earth, I can give you the answer. You are here to find yourself. To embrace yourself. To be yourself. And in order to do all of that, you must love yourself.

You see, at some point, we all experience a pivotal moment in our lives that has such a devastating effect that we lose a sense of our own worth.

For me it happened quite early. When I look back now, I can see that I lacked self-love from around the age of ten. The years that followed were tumultuous as I stripped away my true self and became less and less ‘me’ until I reached my mid-twenties and there wasn’t much left of me.

Prior to starting the process of self-love, I had no idea that I was sabotaging myself so badly. If you would have asked me back then if I loved myself, I would have answered yes, but the truth was that I was battering myself from head-to-toe every day of my life.

I wasn’t physically beating myself up, but in my mind, I was tormenting myself.

“I can’t do it.” “I’m not good enough.” “Why is my life so bad?” “I wish I could be different.” “I wish I was better.” “I’m stupid.” They were regular phrases I’d feed into my mind. Phrases that had a massive impact on the very way in which I ran my life. Phrases that limited my life and made me believe that I was less than others and I didn’t deserve as much as others.

Does any of this sound familiar?…

Starting The Process of Self-Love

They say that the worst moments of someone’s life, can be followed by the best, and this was certainly the case for me.

When I experienced the traumatic loss of my dad, I really began to wake up. I saw life for what it was. My dad was the most wonderful man I ever knew but I really didn’t feel like he lived his potential. I felt that there could have been so much more out there for him but his life was cut short.

After years of putting myself down, the loss of my dear dad, was the thing that started my self-love journey. I wanted to make sure I lived my purpose and reached my potential, and that’s what led me to finding out about the importance of loving myself.

When I began learning about self-love, I was amazed to discover that people who seemed to have a lot, had tread through immense pain and suffering to get it.

Think of people in recovery; they go through the agonising process of slowly and aggressively abusing themselves with substance misuse and end up being a shell of their previous identity. It is only when they hit rock bottom that their journey of self-love starts and they begin to heal.

Recovery tells a story that the way out of self-sabotage, is self-love but you don’t need to hit rock bottom to gain self-love. You just need to stop beating yourself up mentally.

How Your Life Can Change When You Love Yourself

Self-love has helped me like the person I am today, on the inside and out. I’m now comfortable in my own skin and I no longer look at other people and feel that I’m less.

But loving myself hasn’t just been good for my self-esteem. I have also learnt to believe in my own ability.

As statistics would have it, I’m not supposed to create something with my life – I grew up in council housing and left school with zero qualifications and nothing to fall back on. Yet despite the stats, I’m in the process of bringing my dream of Soul Analyse to life alongside my husband.

But without self-love, it wouldn’t exist. Learning to love myself has enabled me to use all of my negative experiences as fuel for making my life better. I’ve switched my whole life from negative to positive through believing in myself, and you can too!

The aim is to get to a place where you like being you, where you embrace yourself in your truest form. Once you know and are comfortable with who you are, you won’t look at others and feel less than them and you won’t want to put yourself down at every given moment.

When you love who you are, you will begin to learn that what you have to offer the world is so significant, and you’ll see potential in what the world has to offer you. You’ll also notice that your dreams start becoming a reality as your belief and vision for yourself continues to grow.

Loving yourself means taking all of the suffering you’ve ever endured and turning it into something good. It means becoming the hero of your own story.

To start your self-love journey, affirmations can be a great help in changing old limiting beliefs. Have a go at The One Month Affirmation Challenge.

Self-love, for me, is a journey, something I’m committed to for life. I know that the more I work on myself and build up my worth, the more everything around me improves. I feel that anyone can enjoy the benefits of loving themselves, and I hope you join me.

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