Learning how to love yourself and understanding why it really matters is no small task. It takes determination, persistence, and discomfort. In a time where we are conditioned to want and get things immediately, starting a practice that requires continued effort, patience, and kindness seems so daunting that most of us turn a blind eye to the one thing that we all need the most: Self Love.

There are many different definitions out there that try to capture the essence of what loving yourself means and what that looks like. In my own journey, I found a lot more confusion than clarity when I tried to wrap my head around the concept of learning to love yourself. It is a pretty nebulous thing to understand, and if you can’t understand it, then how can you ever really practice it?

Love to Success’s mission is to take the mystery out of the concept of Self Love and to provide a clear definition that you can actually apply to your daily life. Whether you believe it right now or not, every single living breathing human on this planet needs to practice Self Love above everything else. 

Building Your House Starts with the Foundation

Think of it like this: How would you build a house? Would you start by putting up some wood posts and then tacking up the drywall? Would you start by picking our your furniture before the structure is built? Would you have your roofers come out before the foundation and walls have been built? 

No, of course not! You would start by laying the foundation. If you don’t have a foundation, you can’t build the walls or hang the drywall or put up the roof or move in the furniture. You absolutely need the foundation if you want a long lasting, strong house. 

We humans are the same way. Self Love is the foundation for a long lasting, strong, successful, happy life. But we get distracted by working on everything but the foundation. We focus on the outward cosmetic things in life rather than the first making sure we have a strong inner foundation to build from. 

What worth does your brand new car have or your corner office or your trendy haircut or your new iphone have if you feel empty and cold inside yourself? What worth does your Instagram following or your designer clothes or your luxury vacation have if you feel a nagging desperation and sense of something missing inside yourself? 

Material Success Doesn’t Mean Anything Without Self Love

No amount of money, socializing, partying, career climbing, or fast cars will ever make up for what is missing inside yourself. No amount of love, respect, admiration, or compliments from other people will make up for what is missing inside yourself. Most of us are numb inside because we are scared and we wake up everyday knowing something is missing but we just don’t know what it is, which scares us even more. That drives us to numb ourselves even more to drown out that awful nagging feeling. We use alcohol, caffeine, overworking at our jobs, friends, sex, money, shopping, our kids---anything that will temporarily distract us from that pain inside that we just can’t name.

We are all trying our best to convince everyone else that we aren’t freaking the fuck the out inside, that we really do have our shit together. But in reality, we are all playing the same game. Almost none of us have our shit figured out. Almost none of us feel like we are where we “should be” at this point in our life. Almost none of us feel like we are really living with purpose and meaning and feel fulfilled. (I wanted to write this post and say that None of us, but I’m giving some space for the possibility of the few humans on this planet that just may have it figured out. I haven’t met them yet, but those unicorns just might exist!)

However you define “success” for yourself in your life, you will never truly achieve it without practicing Self Love. If you don’t love yourself, then you will never be...rich enough, skinny enough, hot enough, high enough on the career ladder, drive fast enough, have a house big enough, take a vacation luxurious enough, receive compliments or accolades often enough, etc. Fill in the blank. You will never feel like YOU are enough. 

The reason you will never feel like you are enough or you have enough or you do enough is because you are seeking meaning, purpose, love, and acceptance outside of yourself. Most of us are never taught to give those things to ourselves. We are taught to go and seek out those things from others because we aren’t even aware that we can (or should be) giving those things to ourselves. 

Self Love Was Never Modeled For Us

And if we ever do hear things as children like “Love yourself” or “Be yourself”, those things are not modeled for us. They are empty words that sound nice and are well intentioned but they fall flat because no one is showing us HOW to love ourselves or be ourselves. We receive conflicting messages and we grow up hearing those empty words but then we are brutally criticized, judged, and outcast when we make mistakes or make choices that aren’t what others think we should be doing.

What a confusing mess! No wonder there is so much violence, abuse, crime, and pain in the world. We are all in pain and we don’t know why or what to do about it, so we go and we hurt others.

The point is we are all struggling inwardly and most of us don’t know why. There are plenty of answers out there but what I’ve found is that the answer is one simple (but not easy) thing: 

We are lacking Self Love. 

Ok, I hear you: If the answer is so simple, why aren’t more people onto this? Well, it looks like a lot of folks are in fact onto this notion. But because Self Love is such a fluid concept and there is no checklist or one right way for how exactly to love yourself, most people who are aware of this concept miss the mark. 

Why listen to me over anyone else?

Love to Success was created to help simplify the concept of Self Love and make it understandable and usable in your daily life. I don’t have all the answers but I am out here every single day trying my best. I like concise definitions and things that are practically applicable. I don’t like a lot of fluffy nonsense. I like lists and clarity. I want to understand the thing and then I want to try doing the thing. That’s what I am trying to provide here at Love to Success.

The beauty of the internet is that you get to pick what you consume. If something doesn’t resonate with you, you can move on until you find something that does. When I started my journey trying to understand what the hell Self Love is, I couldn’t find anything that really made sense to me. So I decided to make something new in hopes that it will help someone else out there who was just as confused and lost as I was. 

Like I said before, I am not an expert. I am just a human who is trying to find some purpose and meaning in my life after doing all the “right things” that just kept me feeling empty, lonely, and angry. I’m just experimenting every day with what works and what doesn’t (sorta like a mad scientist of Self Love!), because life is really just one big experiment. Let’s at least try to have some fun with it!