How Mindfulness Made Me Fall In Love With Myself

It was my 29th birthday, I was looking at myself in the mirror; single, no kids, and the fine lines around my face just starting to reveal themselves. I had been carrying around the notion that I should have been ‘further along’ in my personal life than I was. My career was going great and I felt healthier than ever, but it still didn’t help the fact that I felt I was trailing behind societal ‘norms’. I would spend hours scrolling through social media, admiring my friends’ engagement photos, gender reveal party invitations, and funny videos of their own kids walking for the first time. I felt like I was letting myself down, my family down, and ultimately, I felt alone.

That summer, I was called in by my Dermatologist because they saw some abnormal spots and wanted to take some biopsies. As I was checking out, they handed me a brochure and told me, “We wanted to let you know that we’re running a special right now for light therapy and we thought this might help you with your cheeks and on your hands.” I thought, ‘Yikes’, another reminder that I was getting older (If you don’t know, light therapy helps treat light age spots from sun damage and if you’ve grown up in Florida, you can almost guarantee you’ll have some).

Right then, I knew I needed a hobby, something to keep me busy and distract me from my own thoughts. My insecurities about my skin and my feelings of loneliness were taking over bigtime, so one day I decided to take a yoga class. If you haven’t taken yoga before, let me tell you it’s the one practice where you’re forced to really examine your body; your marks, your insecurities, your unmanicured feet, even the spots you missed shaving on your ankles.

One day in class, I was in a downward dog pose and the instructor said, ‘Take a moment to stop judging yourself.’ As I was looking at my unpolished toes and the unshaved parts of my ankles that I missed, I thought something to myself that changed everything:

‘These feet have walked through a lot of great places and carried me to a lot of great accomplishments.’

As we ended class, we did a small meditation on loving ourselves and the instructor said, ‘…put your hands on your heart,’ and the thought popped into my head again… ‘These hands have done some really great things and have helped so many people.’ I left feeling lighter, but I knew this was just the beginning of my journey to self-love.

After that moment, I realized how much I loved meditation and the act of just being. I decided to start practicing every day. I’ll admit, it wasn’t easy for me at first, but the instructor’s voice kept popping into my head each time I doubted, ‘Take a moment to stop judging yourself.’

Over time, the meditation became easier and easier. I gave myself grace throughout the process and always began my meditation with, ‘Take this moment to stop judging yourself.’ Many people assume that meditation requires hard work. For example, I used to envision meditation as needing to be in a serene garden whilst practicing hours of silent prayer, on top of ‘shaming’ myself over and over again if my thoughts led astray (if I happened to build my grocery list in my head instead of focusing on the mantras!). Eventually, I found that it was invigorating and even fun. I first started with 5-minute guided meditations, then increased to 10-minutes. From there, I graduated to 5-minute unguided meditations with just music, until finally I was able to achieve 10–15 minute unguided meditations.

My favorite meditation that I practice is my own form of a ‘self-love’ meditation filled with self-affirmations. If you struggle with the things that I have struggled with, it can feel phony when you begin this process because you might not actually believe what you are telling yourself. It’s necessary, though, to grant yourself the kindness you deserve, even if you don’t get it right away. It’s not easy to just simply start loving yourself, especially if you have been telling yourself unkind words for years. It’s a habit that you have to build just like exercise or eating healthily. During this meditation, I put my hands on my heart and focus on each part of my body. I slowly breathe in and out, giving myself gratitude with each deep breath.

I thank my head for bringing me new ideas for my business.

I thank my face for being able to smile at people.

I thank my heart for beating 100,000 times a day.

I thank my digestive system for allowing me to taste some really great food.

I thank my hands for doing good work.

I thank my legs for taking me places I have always longed to see.

The most interesting thing about this practice is that your body works for you and gives back to you without you even asking it to, automatically. Once we take a step back and think about how amazing we actually are as humans (while reflecting on how complicated and intricate the human mind is), we start to really see what’s important to us.

The important thing to note here is that this didn’t mysteriously happen overnight. I decided to start meditating in small increments and as my repetition in the practice of mindfulness grew, my love for my body grew.

Sometimes our current mindsets are framed around the old stories that we’ve told ourselves over and over again; the culmination of many years’ worth of negative ‘self-talk’. Can you imagine the emotional undoing it takes after telling yourself ‘you’re old’, ‘you can’t’, or ‘you’re unworthy’ for many, many years? Right. So, if it doesn’t work the first time, be patient, it will come. Like anything good in life, it’s worth the wait!

Recently, I adopted another practice, which I do at night called ho’oponopono, which is a Hawaiian term that can translate to “make it right.” It’s the easiest form of mindfulness that you could ever practice. It’s powerful in providing healing and getting rid of bad memories that may have built up over time. It’s made up of 4 phrases:

I’m sorry.

I love you.

Please forgive me.

Thank you.

All you have to do is put your hands on your heart and repeat these words over and over again before you go to bed. At first, images of other people might pop into your mind, but eventually, images of yourself might pop up.

You might find you’re telling yourself:

I’m sorry if I held you to an unrealistic standard.

I love you no matter what mistakes you make.

Please forgive me for speaking unkindly to you today.

Thank you for always working for me.

What I found is that ultimately when I practiced my morning meditation and my nightly ho’oponopono, I wasn’t losing my temper as much, I felt lighter, and I actually didn’t lash out at people for silly things like going 5 miles under the speed limit! My patience and compassion for others actually made me start loving myself more. The reality is, self-love is the core component to feeling happy and more successful. If you don’t practice self-love, you won’t take as many chances and you can miss out on some really great opportunities. The fear of rejection and failure plague us more than we realize. It’s because of my mindfulness practice that I’ve been able to take more chances, achieve more, and finally feel at home in my own skin. I invite you to go outside in nature and just observe everything around you, all of the animals and plants in their diversity. They all have different colors, shapes, sizes, and even the noises they make are vastly different. Don’t you think the world would be boring if everything was exactly the same?

Many people wait until things are perfect to start enjoying who they actually are. Truly, there is no better time than now to start loving yourself. The self-love meditation and ho’oponopono practice were so easy for me to start that I’m confident you can easily start them as well.

If you practice these daily, you might be surprised at the change you inside of you.

Liv Well,