The more you like yourself, the less you are like anyone else, which makes you unique.
When I started painting over three years ago, I did not aim to paint about self-love. At that point, I didn’t know what self-love was. I was merely using painting as a therapeutic medium.
I used to believe that I understood what self-love was, but a few years ago, I lost my ability to love myself after becoming ill all the time and becoming unable to accomplish the things that I used to be able to do. I also had a severe depressive episode, so I turned to painting to help me feel better.
I had to examine my life to understand where my soul needed to be uplifted before I could make work that would uplift others. That required me to discuss my suffering and determine its cause.
Sometimes, our perspective on life’s challenges, rather than the problems themselves, causes us the most anguish. However, some anguish can lessen when we adopt a different viewpoint. I would address one issue in my life at a time, look for guidance in my spiritual studies, and then paint that guidance.
I continued with this procedure for about two years until one day, I encountered something that would permanently alter my course in life.
I was sketching a picture of a woman with encouraging words all around her when it dawned on me that these were messages about loving oneself. It dawned on me then that my paintings were all messages of self-love. However, how is this possible? I believed that I was ignorant of the concept of self-love.
I was so preoccupied with finishing one picture at a time that I could not see that my work was about loving myself. However, I suddenly realized that every painting represented my quest for self-love.
Even more astounding was the realization that my creative process taught me unconditional self-love by providing me with a context and an incentive.
- Decelerate
- Examine yourself
- I pose questions to myself and seek out answers.
- Look for fresh approaches.
- Please be understanding and patient with me.
- Respect my viewpoint. Have faith in my intuition
- Accept my sensitivities
- Please pardon my errors.
- Put an end to my inner critic.
- Give me permission to talk and give me a voice.
Now that I understood self-love, I felt inspired to examine it more closely and apply it to every aspect of my life, at least as it relates to making art.
As I thought more deeply about it and read Wayne Dyer’s book Sacred Self, I discovered two types of self-love.
There are two types of self-love: spirit-based and ego-based. What matters to the ego is what matters to the former: survival, power, and appearances. The latter concerns healing, completeness, and love—essential to the spirit.
I was aware of how conditioned my self-love was early on when I lost the ability to love myself. I now realize that my ego-based self-love was the root of that. However, I was now prepared for unconditional self—love—that is, love that never gives up on us.
My ego ultimately gave up on me, buried in the debris of my life. In its silence, my spirit’s soft voice could finally be heard. This inspired me to use painting as a therapeutic medium. In the quiet place of making art, it evolved into a spiritual encounter that brought me closer to the voice of my spirit.
Before discovering authentic self-love, or self-love rooted in spirit, I believed that self-love meant treating oneself to something nice, like a new wardrobe, a manicure, or a trip. If we can afford it, pampering ourselves is not terrible; if not, it starts to work against us.
Taking care of ourselves is less about facing our issues head-on and more about diverting our attention from them.
Since genuine self-love is not about material possessions, it is accessible to anyone. All aspects of true self-love are healing, assisting, supporting, and empowering oneself. It involves closely examining our beliefs about life and ourselves, testing them to determine if they contribute to our pleasure and well-being.
Living our best life with a sense of wholeness, health, tranquility, and empowerment is the aim of unconditional self-love. Through empowerment, we can improve our personal lives and the state of the planet.
I used to be much harsher on myself before I learned to accept myself. For instance, I detested my sensitivity because it led to me having panic attacks, anxiety, and sadness. This sensitive disposition made me feel weak, foolish, and unworthy.
However, as I learned to love myself, I started to see the benefits of my sensitivity, including the capacity it offered me to comprehend things more deeply and produce meaningful art that moves people.
My life also improved in another way: Self-love helped me make better relationship decisions, and reading self-help books helped me become more confident in myself.
My most significant barrier to self-love, in my opinion, was my ignorance of the concept. Knowing what it is now allows me to catch myself when I start to mistreat myself and remind myself that I deserve my love and support to realign with unconditional self-love.
The following are some of the most important things I’ve learned about loving oneself:
Our relationship with ourselves is at the heart of self-love. It involves being kind, forgiving, fair, encouraging, patient, and helpful to ourselves and how we speak to and see ourselves.
To practice self-love, we must be aware of our needs in all our lives and refrain from minimizing, dodging, or overlooking them.
Self-love develops and strengthens gradually throughout our lives. It’s common to become sidetracked from loving oneself, to vacillate between forgetting and remembering to love oneself. However, those moments of self-love misshapen and become less frequent as we cultivate self-love over time.
Being a judge and humiliating ourselves in front of ourselves is not what self-love is all about. Being a true friend to ourselves and traveling side by side with ourselves on life’s path means truly loving oneself.
