The belief that you won't be a humble person if you grow too much self-love, that is simply not true.

“Can there be a positive side to having low-self esteem?” My heart leapt out of it’s chest, what an important question my client was asking!

We live in a world that has trained us to believe we constantly need things to be fulfilled. Through marketing, media, and being sold “The American Dream” at a young age, even if you’re not American, you have likely been on a search for fulfillment at some point in your life.

If we have learned anything from 2020 so far we have learned that the systems we have in place as a society are no longer working as they are. We may not all agree on what the new solutions should be, or even know at this point, but the general consensus is that things are not working right now. This is in large part because of what we have been told to believe, what has seeped into our subconscious by nurture and nature. Whether this was taught to you by your parents, or not, there is an underlying teaching that if you grow too much self-love, you won’t be humble. If you love yourself too much, you won’t be liked. If you don’t have some self-criticism, you will be too egotistical. These are simply not true. 

First, by the simple act of asking this question, I can answer without a doubt in my mind that there is no amount of self-criticism that would be healthy for my client. I can almost as confidently say the same thing about you. Reason being is because you are here to begin with. Simply by being here I know that you have an innate desire to heal, to grow, to evolve. And it is likely that you want to feel better within yourself, and your life because you too know that you create a ripple effect in your world, and by healing yourself, you are naturally helping others heal. 

Your desire for healing, to feel better in your body, to feel more yourself, to love yourself, is not too much. 

“There’s a part of me that thinks that low-esteem and low self-worth is helpful.” Another common misconception that is also simply not true. You think that this critique of yourself is what motivates you, what keeps you in check, or you think that your will power is what stops you from eating chocolate. It’s not. It’s actually this exact thinking that is keeping you stuck. When you keep your attention on the negative things you don’t like about yourself, or on low self-worth, your mind begins searching for proof of this belief system and wont’ stop until it finds it. And what does that do? Well it only leaves you feeling worse about yourself than before. And what happens when you don’t eat the chocolate? You might feel proud for a moment, but that pride is fleeting because suddenly you will change the goal post of success in your mind without even telling yourself that you’ve changed it. And then you’re right back at feeling bad about yourself. 

Creating a new habit is not about will-power, it’s about creating new patterns in your brain. It’s about healing yourself from the old way of thinking, and creating space for you to replace it with something new. It takes time, it takes patience. It requires commitment and a willingness to change, to grow.

This is not to say that you can force loving yourself on yourself. If you don’t believe it, that won’t work, and in fact could make your self-criticism worse. “Where your awareness goes, energy flows.” This means that if your awareness is focused on self-worth, is focused on making the changes you want to make, on celebrating the small moments that you have shifted, on the things you do love about your body, the things you do love about yourself, you will begin to create flow through the energy of love. But if you’re focused on the critique, on the low self-worth, you’ll continue to perpetuate this energy. 

Having low self-worth, being critical of yourself, self-berating, are all forms of self-rejection, which is not loving yourself. It’s a system we were born into and is deeply rooted in our culture. We cannot help that. What we can help is ourselves. We can change the way we respond to the messages we are told. We can change the way we respond to the criticism in our heads. We can love ourselves, instead of rejecting, through the things we don’t love, until we grow more self-love. 

Learning to love yourself is a daily journey. 

A journey that involves deep cultivation from within yourself. A journey that is then supported through Mother Earth and strengthened by your own healing of it day in and day out. By the words you use towards yourself, but the actions you take towards yourself. And when you are overflowing with self-love, you spread that same light and love to others around you. That is why you can never have too much, because if you do become full on it, and by it I meant the true deep self-love from within, you spread it to others. 

And I can promise you, no amount of true, deeply cultivated self-love is too much. Typically, the people you think might love themselves too much, are very likely the same people that are hurting deep inside. 

Self-love is  something that you work on constantly because as soon as you learn it, as soon as you heal one aspect of self-love, you get to another lesson or learning wrapped in a different cloak.