What Self-Love Means To Me:
A Personal Journey

Oftentimes, I have heard people talk about self-love. It is a term that has been used and over-used in the last decade, specifically amidst the current or the younger generations.

Whenever I have heard or thought about the word self-love, it has always intrigued me about what the word truly means. It is surely not self pampering, nor is it related to something materialistic that can be found in the external world. Neither is it about inner arrogance, selfishness, or narcissism. So what does self-love really mean?

In my reflections, I have found that perhaps it’s about developing a deeper relationship with self. A path towards greater self-awareness is foundational to self-love. So, when I sat down to reflect on the term and what it meant for me, my own journey and approach to inculcating self-love within, is what I am trying to reflect in this blog.

Know yourself to develop a relationship with yourself

In order to develop a deep and meaningful relationship with anyone, be it a friend, family member, or life partner, we may need to know and understand the different aspects about the person first. Similarly, I feel we can only love and build a strong relationship with ourselves, when we understand the different dimensions of our own selves.

Know the different components of yourself

In my understanding, the ‘self’ is a holistic combination of different components including the body, mind, intellect, experiences, personality, etc. to name a few. So, in order to develop true self-love, we need to know these different components, how they interact with each other and function in this world. We may need to introspect about – What is the self? What is ‘self’ made out of? Who are we calling ‘self’? Is it our physical form? Is it our mental form? Is it our experiences in life? What is it we are talking about, when we say ‘relationship with self’?

If everything is transient, who am I having the relationship with?

However, I have observed that each of these components of ourselves are transient in nature. For example, our body, our mind, or even our experiences, are all fundamentally transitory. These are aspects that are ever-changing and are impermanent. So, if all these are transient, then who, or what exactly are we having the relationship with? It is perhaps when we ask this key question, that we finally begin to comprehend that we might actually be something beyond these components.

Beyond the body and the mind – who am I?

In my understanding, our true inner self is just pure formless conscious energy. We are all a part of the same universal energy that created the universe, makes planets revolve around the stars, and makes life bloom even in the most unlikely of corners.

One easy technique I constantly use to remind myself about the true nature of my core self is by making the difference between ‘who I am’ and ‘what I have’. Remember, things that we ‘have’ cannot be us. For example, I have a car, but I am not the car. I am someone who has a car.

Similarly, I recognize that our body is something we have, our thoughts are something we think, our experiences are something we go through, and our emotions are something we feel. So, these transient things can never actually be us. We are the formless universal energy that has a body, has a mind, thinks thoughts, and goes through experiences. These might just be tiny aspects of the totality of who we truly are.

“What a liberation to realize that the “voice in my head” is not who I am.
Who am I then? The one who sees that”.

– Eckhart Tolle

The nature of my relationship with my ‘self’

Like any other relationship, I believe the nature of our relationship with ourselves, involves us knowing ourselves, accepting the different aspects of ourselves, sitting with ourselves in good times and bad, spending quality time with ourselves, being honest with ourselves, loving ourselves for who we are, forgiving ourselves for our mistakes, rejoicing the good things about ourselves, and just looking at our own existence with a whole lot of gratitude and love.

Spending quality time with self

‘Me time’ to me, is about sitting with ourselves, thinking of our core conscious self, our different transient components, observing them, and deeply introspecting about things like – What has been my journey so far? What has been my experience? What are the mistakes I have made? Can I forgive myself for those? What are the things I have created? What are the good things I have done? Do I feel grateful that I was able to do all that? Real ‘me time’ is sitting with yourself and having a heart-to-heart conversation.

However, ‘me time’ does not mean becoming a recluse. On the contrary, I believe that it is only when we are amidst the magnificent aura of our own self-discovery in solitude, is when our connection with other people and the world at large also evolves.

Inculcating true self-love

I believe we can only love when we truly accept ourselves and appreciate our own existence in this world. In order to get there, we might all need a very meditative approach. Loving yourself perhaps has nothing to do with the world around you. The world around you can be very, very different and can change all the time.

I have noticed that when most people talk of self-love, they usually talk about it in the context of the outer world. For example, most self-love write-ups talk about going for a holiday, spending ‘me time’ on a beach or at a spa, going out for a lavish meal, and the like. It is as if we all need a star destination, to feel loving about ourselves.

But in my understanding, self-love isn’t an outward experience at all. It is an inward journey that you embark on with yourself and by yourself, unperturbed by the world around you. It is a journey you can take anywhere, irrespective of where you physically are. I have found self-love has to be a personal journey about embracing my own existence, being in the moment, being in a space of complete self-awareness and self-discovery, and truly feeling grateful about my own existence.

Barrier to self-love

The biggest barrier to self-love, according to me, is our ego. If our real ‘self’ is pure conscious energy, our ego is the ‘false sense of self’ we create for ourselves. It is the ‘I’ we identify with, and all the labels and stories we attach it to. It is the ‘story’ we tell ourselves and the world about us. It is the constant voice in our heads. It is everything that forms who we usually think we are, and yet, in reality, it is everything we are not. It is a created, illusionary, false sense of self. It is a story about us that we have made up out of fear.

How does the ego sabotage our relationship to self?

According to mental health experts, our ego is a product of our mind, a sort of defence mechanism, which aims to create a positive and meaningful self-image for ourselves. It is the voice in our head that constantly comments, and attaches meaning to everything in the world.

I understand that the ego operates from a fear principle. We all want to be a good person and we fear being ‘nothing’. So, the ego is created in our mind, which constantly attempts to eliminate this fear by collecting and attaching itself to different materialistic and emotional elements. In the process, we all get attached to labels, thoughts, emotions, and experiences, which we use to create an image for ourselves. Perhaps, this is why we are so attached to our own identity markers. However, in reality, this self-image is completely false. I believe, true self-knowledge or self-awareness comes from being able to distinguish between our true self and our egoistic self.

At the core, I believe we are all the same formless universal energy of consciousness. We are someone who has an ego. We are not the ego.

Overcoming the ego barrier with self-knowledge

In my experience, as we become more and more self-aware, certain attributes related to our ego start dropping off. For example, if I have attached my identity entirely to my body, and god forbid something goes wrong with my body, then I end up completely devastated. This is because my identity is majorly attached to my physical form. But if I know that I am beyond my physical form, and live without attaching my physical form to my identity or existence, then even if my body grows old or suffers, I will still have peace in my mind. I myself will not suffer from inside. I might be able to take my situation very practically, and still feel joy, happiness, and peace within.

True self-love as the only path towards everlasting peace

I have realized that living with peace entails gradually diminishing our attachments and cultivating the art of letting go. With deep self-awareness, we might be able to let go of the attachments that we think define us. I always try to focus on the fact that self-awareness is directly proportional to the ability to let go.

I feel if we have the self-drive to become more and more self-aware, sit with ourselves to introspect and accept who we really are, have the right set of people and engagements in our life attracting the right kind of energy, and read the right texts to guide ourselves, we can create a deep and everlasting bond with our own selves. And that is what self-love truly is. I believe self-love is our one and only path towards living a wholesome life full of love, gratitude, compassion, and peace.