I thought learning to love myself would be the end of the story. I was wrong.
I figured I could do the work, get to the point where I could look into the mirror and say, “I love you” and actually mean it, and the rest would be a walk in the park.
Job done. Self-love achieved. ✔️
Except, that’s not how it works.
In fact, it wasn’t until after completing my Self-Love Coaching certification that I really understood something important: Self-love is a relationship.
To me, self-love is the ongoing relationship we build with ourselves through the way we speak to ourselves, care for ourselves, and treat ourselves every day, including doing things we love and that make us feel good.
It isn't about thinking you're wonderful every moment or never doubting yourself, it's about learning to meet yourself with the same love, compassion and respect you would offer someone you deeply care about.
And like every relationship, it’s ongoing. It changes. It deepens. It asks different things of us at different stages of our lives.
Some days, loving yourself feels easy.
Other days, it can feel pretty crappy.
And I've learned that those are often the days when we need our own love the most.
I spent years looking for love outside myself
Let’s rewind a little.
I’m the youngest of six children and grew up in a tiny, remote Canadian town.
My father left shortly after I was born. My mum did her best to hold everything together, but our childhood was unstable. There were winters when we ran out of heating oil and huddled around a propane stove to keep warm.
My mum carried her own pain and anger about my dad leaving, and sometimes that spilled over onto us.
Somewhere along the way, I internalised a message:
Whatever I did, it wasn't enough.
So I learned to strive.
To push.
To achieve.
To prove myself.
And throughout my early adulthood, and, if I'm truthful, well into my 40s (yes, I'm ageing myself!), I looked for the love and reassurance I didn't have within myself in other people.
I looked for it in friendships.
I looked for it in romantic relationships.
And I definitely looked for it at work.
I wanted the mentor who told me how brilliant I was. I wanted my boss to recognise how hard I worked. I wanted clients to praise my efforts. I worked my a** off, built a strong reputation in my industry and eventually became “known” for what I did.
And you know what?
That felt good.
The problem was what happened when the praise wasn't there. Then the doubts came creeping back.
Am I actually good enough?
Did I do something wrong?
Do they still value me?
My sense of worth was dependent upon somebody else continually handing it back to me.
Romantic love wasn't much different.
I looked at friends in happy relationships and marriages and desperately wanted what they had. At times, it seemed I'd date anything with a heartbeat!
Canada. Turkey. England.
Apparently geography wasn't the problem. I kept finding myself in relationships that reflected how little I valued myself.
My worthiness factor was somewhere in the negative and it showed up in who and what I was willing to accept.
Then I literally walked into a wake-up call
My self-love journey didn't begin because I woke up one morning and decided I needed to love myself more. It began with a rather painful wake-up call.
One evening, after having dinner with a friend, I was walking home while scrolling through the relentless negativity on my phone.
I wasn't paying attention to where I was going.
And BANG.
I walked straight into a pole.
The bump on my forehead was enormous.
But the bigger impact was realising how I was living.
I was distracted. Consumed with everything that seemed wrong with the world and disconnected from myself.
That pole became an unlikely turning point.
I began meditating.
I stopped consuming the news (especially while I was on my yoga mat, I used to wake up do yoga and live stream the latest international headlines!).
I immersed myself in personal development. I discovered EFT, and explored spiritual teachings and practices that helped me see myself and my life differently.
But one of the biggest changes was much simpler: I started paying attention to the way I spoke to myself.
I began replacing criticism with words of love.
One of my favourite affirmations became: I am love. I am light.
Eventually I discovered Louise Hay's Mirror Work.
I practised looking directly at myself in the mirror and saying: I love you.
At first, those words weren't necessarily easy.
Eventually, I meant them.
I thought I'd arrived.
But loving yourself isn't something you complete
After a few years, I realised I'd reached another plateau.
I'd learned to say loving things to myself.
I'd learned many self-love practices.
But something inside me knew there was more. I didn't simply want to practise love occasionally.
I wanted to become love.
So I created an experiment.
For 31 days, I deliberately filled my days with acts of love, what I now call Love Actions.
Love towards myself.
Love towards other people.
Love towards the world around me and to raise my vibration.
That experiment became my 31-Day Full-On Love Challenge, and eventually the heart of my book, Living in Love: How to Create a Lifestyle of Love, Faith, Bliss, and Crazy-Ass Manifesting (All in Thirty-One Days).
And it taught me something that has shaped everything I've created since: Love isn't simply something we find. Love is something we practise.
The more deliberately I created love, the more love I experienced.
And the more I learned to give that love to myself rather than waiting for somebody else to provide it, the less desperately I needed the outside world to prove my worth to me.
Does that mean I now love myself perfectly every day?
Absolutely not.
There are still moments when I doubt myself.
There are still times when I catch myself looking for reassurance or validation.
There are still days when being kind to myself takes considerably more intention than others.
But now I know something I didn't know before. I can come back to myself, again and again.
Because self-love isn't a destination I reached.
It's a relationship I continue to nurture.
3 Examples of Self-Love You Can Try Today
I call these Love Actions; small, deliberate actions that turn self-love from something we think about into something we actually practise.
And you don't need to completely transform your relationship with yourself today. You can start small with these three acts of love (Love Actions) you can try.
1. Catch one unloving thought
Notice one moment today when you criticise yourself.
Maybe it's:
I look awful.
I'm so stupid.
Why can't I get anything right?
Don't beat yourself up for having the thought, that rather defeats the purpose!
Simply notice it and ask: Would I speak this way to someone I love?
Then choose a kinder version.
2. Give yourself the validation first
The next time you find yourself hoping somebody will notice what you've done, pause.
Before the compliment, the like, the message or the “well done” arrives, tell yourself: I'm proud of myself for this.
Let your approval come first.
External appreciation can still feel wonderful. Self-love doesn't mean we stop enjoying love from other people.
It means we don't make them solely responsible for giving us what we can also give ourselves.
3. Put love into action
Ask yourself: What is one loving thing I can do for myself today?
It doesn't have to be profound.
Go outside for ten minutes.
Put your phone down.
Make yourself something nourishing.
Say no to something you don't have capacity for.
Put your hand on your heart and take three slow breaths.
Love becomes powerful when it moves from an idea into an action.
Welcome to Living in Love
That journey, from searching for love outside myself to deliberately creating it within myself and sharing it with others, is why I became a Self-Love Coach and Speaker
It's why I wrote Living in Love.
And it's why I've created this little shop.
Everything you'll find here is designed to help you put love into action in your real life.
If you're struggling to release something you've done or wish you had done differently, Forgive Yourself and Let It Go is a 15-minute guided meditation to help you begin loosening the grip of guilt and self-judgement.
If your relationship with your body needs a little more tenderness, Love Your Body is a guided practice for bringing appreciation and love back to the body that carries you through your life.
And if you'd like to start making self-love something you actually do, rather than something you know you “should” do, Love Notes to Myself: 31 Days of Self-Love & Love Actions gives you a simple daily way to practise it.
You don't have to wait until you completely love yourself before you start living differently.
In my experience, it's the other way around.
We practise love.
We put it into action.
And little by little, we become more of the love that was within us all along.
With love,
Colinda 💚
Founder of Living in Love | Self-Love Coach | Speaker | Author of Living in Love
Simple Acts of Love Will Change the World.
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