We’ve all been knocked off center and caught in an experience that feels less than desirable. When this happens it’s easy to feel sad, withdrawn, like we’ve done something wrong, if we were “better” these things wouldn’t have happened to us, or self-blaming like we shouldn’t be having this experience at all. When life is intensely different from normal, we can feel adrift without anything to hold onto.

How do we get through these difficult times? By relying on self-love to guide us to the best way to take care of our needs moment by moment. If you’ve never been particularly good at taking care of yourself when you’re feeling well, let alone when you’re feeling down, here’s an outline of what self-love during a difficult experience might look like.

Alone Time
Often feeling less than optimal can bring about an introverted or isolating process. The pain of sickness, grieving or depression is intense, and many times we wish to be by ourselves. It’s important to follow those inner urges to retreat from many of the normal day-to-day activities and seek solace with our own self when necessary. This down time can be healing as it slows us down, makes us introspective, and allows us to listen within. 

Expression
If you choose to be in solitude, allow your alone time to be healing and expressive. Any media in which you can give expression to deep emotions can be equally healing. Expression such as writing, painting, collage, conscious breathing, or talking aloud to a friend or yourself in a mirror can help clear the subconscious and permit the progression of emotional healing. 

Nature
In addition, when you feel the need to be alone, follow your inner instincts by going for a walk in nature, sitting beneath the trees, or watching the water. Sit with the Earth and let her listen and provide comfort as you softly express your sorrow. Fresh air and a change of scenery can help you breathe, give you access to the healing power of nature, and get you through at least part of the day. 

Reach Out to Others
Withdrawing is sometimes the best answer—and sometimes it’s not. Rest assured that you don’t have to handle your experience or your emotions all by yourself. Even if it feels like no one would want to be around you right now, it just isn’t true. There are people who will listen with acceptance to your feelings and thoughts. 

Many people can offer the type of listening or support you are looking for. A trusted friend, understanding family member, trained therapist, doctor, or religious counselor can offer compassion, nonjudgmental listening, and a safe environment for emotional expression. 

The emotions that accompany the pain of illness, surgery, depression or intense sadness are often messy and can feel overwhelming. Sometimes just having someone sit with you, listening, and quietly holding your hand as you fall apart emotionally can provide the most important healing. 

Even if you don’t feel like talking about anything in specific, sometimes it’s important to spend some time with people and trusted friends who love you. You don’t have to be entertaining or your usual self. Just being in the presence of a friend can lift you up just enough to make it through the day. 

Connect with the Right People
Not everyone is capable of sitting with you in a helpful, reaffirming way. Listening with empathy to a person sharing dark or despairing feelings can be difficult for many people to handle. It’s a normal tendency for people to get nervous and want to talk, give advice, try to fix the problem, or offer solutions. Some people will argue with you about how miserable you feel or insist that you just “snap out of it.” Don’t give up because one or two people weren’t able to provide support in the way that you needed. Consider telling those people what type of listening would be most helpful. 

What you really want is someone who can be present with you comfortably, who can validate your experience, and who truly wants to understand how things are for you right now. If a particular person can’t learn how to be with you, trust your instincts and reach out to someone else. 

When you are in the presence of another person, give yourself a break from feeling responsible for his or her comfort. Making small talk or taking care of others is often an impossible task when recovering, grieving or depressed. Even the thought of keeping someone else entertained requires too much energy. Let someone know that you just want to sit together outdoors, watch television, or read together. Reassure them in advance that you have no need for them to entertain you, and that they don’t have to fill up the silence. 

Human Contact
If being with a friend doesn’t feel right, consider scheduling a series of massage or chair massage sessions. We often delete human contact and pleasure from our lives when we need it most. Massage won’t cure you of grief, illness or depression, but there is something very basic and fundamental about

being in the presence of human compassion and touch. When you’re receiving a massage, you can be with another person—just the way you are—without feeling like you have to smile, be nice, or give anything back. 

Ultimately, there are no preset criteria for when to be alone and when to seek support. Sometimes talking with someone is what you need; sometimes sitting in silence with another person or being alone in nature is most helpful. As you continue to travel through your journey back into health and well-being, trust yourself to discover your own unique balance between using self-help techniques and reaching out to others for support, listening, and validation.

Are you looking for new ways to end depression? Even if you are angry at yourself for being human and have lost all hope, Depression Freedom shows the gentle steps you can take to skillfully lead yourself through depression and restore the joy of living. It is impossible to read this book without being changed by it. The inspiration within these pages will captivate you and be the inspiration you need to stop the reign of darkness and embrace a new celebration of life.

There is simplicity in solitude
No expectations, no judgment
No need to distort feelings
Time to cultivate forgiveness
Become my own best friend 

Within this sacred place
Freedom to break through layers of resistance
Liberation from fears and doubts
Unlock the doorway of misguided beliefs
Step into the power deep inside 

Embracing inner truth and insights
I make my choices, select my direction
Allowing joy and pain
To pass through an opened heart
The journey of liberation and emergence 

Annette Colby 2010

Too often when our relationship with ourselves or our life is not as healthy or happy as it could be, we complain, criticize, and start exerting more control upon ourselves. We sometimes forget to focus on taking compassionate actions designed to expand our joy and fulfillment every day, and instead focus on trying to fix a problem. We just have to rethink how we approach the situation. 

So, here is a little quiz to help you know how you can improve your most important relationship… the one you have with yourself. 

The best way to take this quiz is to answer each question before you go on. Write down the first things that come to your mind, and then explore more deeply by being curious about your answer. 

Ready? 

Take the Quiz 

1.  What can I do today, and tomorrow, to expand love within myself? 

2. What can I do right now to bring more peace into myself, and into the world? 

3. How can I motivate myself with excitement and love, creating a joyful process on the way to fulfilling my dreams? 

4.  What can I do that would totally and happily brighten up my life right now? 

5.  What am I missing in my relationship with myself or life? 

6.  How can I connect more deeply with the creative spirit of life? 

7.  What is one positive way that I can express my gifts and talents? 

8.  What did I used to do that I loved, and that made me feel alive? Would doing those activities once again bring more joy into my body and my life? 

9.  What new habit or character trait do I wish to cultivate? 

10.  What still feels incomplete to me? What am I resisting doing? 

Now you have ten perfectly designed ideas to help you know how you can create a more meaningful, more joyful life experience. By using your own answers, you can decide to “turn the page” on what you no longer desire, and move forward in a heartfelt direction.

Can’t get excited about the day ahead of you?

Feel like you’re not in love with yourself? 

If there’s one thing I’ve learned during my 50 years of life, and over 25 years of helping myself and others lead a life filled with energy and enthusiasm, it’s that everything begins with an authentic desire to feel better. This is just another way of saying that what we all want to be filled with our own love, bubbling up from inside of ourselves, and expressed outwardly into the world. We want to be free to place our energy and authentic desires into creative activities that have meaning to us personally. 

While there are many ways and many paths to achieving this higher state of consciousness, I wanted to share some really specific and concrete things you can do today, right now, or this week to change the dynamics of your relationship with yourself and start feeling excited about your life again. 

Simple, fun, and effective! Here you go…. 

Create a Big Vision for Your Life.
Think big and write it down. There’s something magical about thinking into the future and imaging yourself living a great life. Writing down your dreams begins the process of crystallizing that imagined life by moving it into reality. No longer is your desire swirling around in your ethereal mist. It has now taken a step into physical life. 

Start Small.
A big dream is exactly that—BIG. And big often implies overwhelming. That’s why your big written dream is only a roadmap, not a daily action plan. Use your dreams as a guidepost to determine your everyday choices and actions. With each choice and action you can ask, “Did I move in the general direction of my dream, or did I wander off course?” 

Look for the Passion in Your Journey.
Having more passion involves a sense of knowing what you want and moving in that direction because doing so is important to you. You decide to face your challenges or attempt to bring your desires to life because doing so will allow a new expression of who you really are. You decide you want to feel differently in your body, overcome stress, end your struggles with weight, find a way to move through depression, or begin that new career because you want to live your life differently, more powerfully, and filled with more happiness. You may not succeed right away, but you have to know within yourself that what you want is important to you! 

Live in the Present.
Take whatever steps are necessary to heal your past, forgive and let go, and live in the present moment. Reexamine your past experiences from the vantage point of this present moment. How did you grow as a result? Was there a hidden gift in the experience? What did you learn as a result of the situation? Repeat this process until you can forgive yourself and others, let go of fear, anger, and resentment, and bring the wisdom gained from those past experiences into your present life. 

Demonstrate Appreciation to Yourself.
Author Melodie Beattie explains to us, “Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life.  It turns what we have into enough, and more.  It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity.  It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.  Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.”  

Cultivating an inner appreciation for the joy that is already present in our lives shifts our focus from what is wrong with our lives to what is right.  If we take the time, no matter how troubled we feel, we can find something about ourselves and our life to be thankful for. Allowing yourself the opportunity to feel even a little better than you feel right now is how a great life expands. 

Look For the Best In Yourself.
Maybe you’re not sure exactly when it happened, but somehow it became a habit to focus on what was wrong with your body, your life, and your inner being. No need to dig up old skeletons, but there is a need to change focus. Start looking for evidence of your worth and beauty. Don’t just come up with a thing or two you enjoy about yourself, come up with a hundred wonderful things about you. Write those things down and begin the process of teaching yourself to recognize the love that is you. 

Engage in New Activities and Have More Fun.
So much of the self-help journey is focused on attempting to fix the undesirable parts of ourselves and our lives. While it’s important to learn how to love and embrace those hard-to-love parts, we often forget to hit the easy button. In this case, engage in new activities and have more fun. Humans thrive on new experiences. There’s something inside us that wants to play, to experience new things, to expand our talents and knowledge. One easy way to get out the rut and experience more vibrancy is to do something out of the ordinary. Today, find at least one new way to laugh and play and explore! 

Remember that what is most important in life is what will give you joy in both the long-run and the short-run, not just what will give you a moment of pleasure. Reflect on what you truly value in life and make your needs a priority. Give yourself more opportunities to engage in the actions that bring feelings of joy, love, and happiness. There’s nothing more important to yourself—and to the world—than your growing love of yourself!

Self-compassion is a skill. That means if you don’t have much compassion for yourself, especially when you need it most, there’s a lot you can do to erase the self-doubt and self-criticism and bring in the self-love.

Here are four easy steps that can get you started:

Journal

Keep a journal with you and write down every critical, disempowering, or demeaning comment that you tell yourself. Use your journal writing to elicit awareness. Placing your inner voice into the external world provides perspective and the ability to make a different conscious choice.

Practice Self-Supportive Thoughts

Once you become aware of unsupportive thoughts and feelings, you can teach yourself to feel more self-compassion by utilizing self-supporting self-talk. This type of thinking skill strengthens the core of who you are. It replaces self-defeating thoughts with realistic (not just positive) statements.

1. Acknowledge the truth of how things are for you right now.
2. Validate your thoughts, feelings, and emotions.
3. Take a breath and recognize the truth about how well you really are handling this difficult situation.
4. Give yourself motivation but keep it believable.

Breathe

When you breathe consciously and deeply you are saying yes to life, yes to your own physical experience. Deliberate breath is the choice you make to be alive, to be you, and to be connected to your senses. Breathing settles the body by reducing sadness, anxiety, fatigue, irritability, muscular tension, and stress. It can also help quiet the chaos of your mind. Now you can tap into the center of your being. Who you are is love. Take a breath and instead of recycling self-critical thoughts, allow in peace, calm, and a sense that everything works out for your highest good.

Expect More Out of Your Self

Putting yourself down may be a habit, but perhaps it’s time to ask yourself to step up to the plate and give yourself what you really want―which is compassion. It’s your job to love and support yourself, especially when things seem at their darkest.

Yes, expanding self-compassion requires choice, effort, and persistence. However, allowing yourself to experience love from the inside out is not something that someone else can do for you or give to you. Only you can make the choice to fill your life, body, mind, and spirit with the love of who you are!

About the Author: Want to learn more about how to live consciously, love deeply, and laugh often? Come along with Dr. Annette Colby and learn the secrets to creating the life you’ve always wanted to live! Subscribe to her blog Divine Self! today.

We all know what it’s like to want to improve ourselves. We want to be healed of our childhood wounds. We want to be free of the burdens that weigh us down. We want to be happier. We want to be better people. We want to be engaged in work that we love. We want our hearts to sing, our minds to relax, and our bodies to feel good.

In over 20 years helping people make a shift into a more fulfilling life, I know firsthand what works and what doesn’t, what brings success and what brings struggle.  From my years of interaction, I have found one tool that makes the most difference to people’s successful transformation. That tool is self-compassion.

What is self-compassion? Consider your answers to these questions:

• Are you compassionate and gentle to yourself when you lose, fail, or face disappointment as well as when you win or excel? 
• Are you kind and forgiving to yourself when you feel regret and sadness? 
• Do you build yourself up instead of beating yourself down?

In short, self-compassion is having sweetness for yourself no matter what else you might be experiencing. It is the ability to treat yourself kindly in the face of failure, rejection, defeat, and other difficult experiences.

If someone were to ask me, “What is self-love?” I would reply, “A growing ability to be true and compassionate to yourself. For it is only when you are filled with the love of who you are that you can share this gift with the world.”

To be true to ourselves is a lifetime journey of self-discovery and self-acceptance. It is building on our unique gifts and interests, while accepting without shame our weaker aspects.

When two people enter into marriage, they often share the familiar vow, “I take you to be my wife/husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and health, to live and cherish: from this day forward.” This vow takes into account that life is… well, life. It is a journey of varied experience. Self-love is the ability to provide this same promise to not abandon ourselves when times are difficult.

Self-love involves a daily cultivation of a truly satisfying, fulfilling, and rewarding relationship with yourself. The result of self-love is not a perfect life, unending happiness, or the creation of the perfect human persona that everyone accepts, admires, and validates. Instead, self-love is the ability to summon a compassionate feeling into yourself no matter what you experience in life.

Connection with Self

How do we do tap into inner compassion and love during those times that are worse, poorer, and sicker? In part, loving yourself includes tending to fundamental needs such as physical movement, eating, sleep, and self-care. It is self-loving to get a massage, light some candles, or take a bubble bath. However, self-love is something much grander.

When our actions are motivated by fear, by what we “should” be doing, or our intent is to control, our wounded self is in charge. This type of behavior is not so much self-love as it is survival. Self-love is the ability to stop, take a deep conscious breath, and move beyond a habitual reaction. Breathing brings us back into center where we can connect with who we are beyond our wounds and automatic responses. 

Self-love is the ability to pay attention to intuition, follow the voice of our heart, and honestly give expression to our true feelings. Self-love is a minute-by-minute awareness of our inner wisdom combined with self-permission to respond accordingly. It is about saying “no” to those actions, behaviors, and routines that feel unsatisfying on the inside, and saying “yes” to what is gratifying and fulfilling.

In essence, self-love includes intentionally focusing energy on actions and behaviors that warm the heart, please the senses, and allow life to flow through your physical self. Self-love brings you back into your body, and back into feeling and breathing and sensing. It is offering yourself compassion for the experience you are having while also being aware of the actions that would best offer nurture and support your mind, body, emotions, and spirit.

What is the Most Self-Loving Action in this Moment?

Self-love increases when we stop, take a moment to consciously breathe, and feel our way through these questions:

• Am I treating myself fairly?
• Am I treating myself with respect?
• Am I treating myself with kindness?
• Am I paying attention to what I need and want?
• What are my needs during this situation or circumstance?
• Can I allow myself to feel into a positive outcome to this experience?
• Do I speak to myself with compassion?

The journey of self-love is ever unfolding and ever expanding. As you listen to your spirit, also known as your heart, intuition, knowingness, true feelings, or gut sense, you offer yourself respect. As you take action to express your inner self… that’s self-love in motion. And further down the road, as you evolve into the person that does not need to be understood by everyone…that is the embodiment of self-love.

About the Author: Want to learn more about how to live consciously, love deeply, and laugh often? Come along with Dr. Annette Colby and learn the secrets to creating the life you’ve always wanted to live! Subscribe to her blog Divine Self! today.