The Core Lessons of Self are a collection of lifelong processes that focus on positively raising the inner beliefs and feelings we hold about ourselves, so that we can create a life that we love.

Each of the Core Lessons of Self is connected with a specific facet within our Jewel of Life system. In this post we’ll be exploring the lesson of self-love and its importance in the facet of Love & Romance.

Love is one of our most basic needs and without it we can’t fully function as humans. It comes in many forms, from the universal to the more personal, and because of our deep need for connection it is not hard to see why the love from a significant other is one of our strongest and most longed for.

Whilst love from others and in particular our romantic partners is a crucial part of our existence, there is often a very important loving relationship that gets overlooked. That is the one we have with ourselves! In fact this is the most important relationship we will ever have, but we can be so fixated on our connections with other people that it often gets neglected.

Unfortunately, when it comes to love we can have a tendency to look for it outside of ourselves first, but this is really an ‘inside out’ approach because it means that we are trying to avoid meeting our own needs. This then puts unnecessary pressure on the other person as we are expecting them to provide us with something that only we can truly fulfil. And then when they can’t make us feel whole, it creates conflict and conditions.

Whilst other people can add so much greatness and joy into our lives, true happiness has to come from within. This is why self-love is the core lesson in the facet of Love & Romance, because until we are able to learn what it means to truly love ourselves, we will never know how to fully give and receive love in this way too.

Self-love is the practice of loving ourselves without conditions, no matter what. That means there’s no “ifs”, no “buts” and certainly no “when I’s”, i.e. “when I am slimmer, more successful, or whatever unnecessary trait I believe I need to be, then I will be able to love myself more”… It is something that is practiced through our actions and words towards ourselves and it is always for our highest good.

But of course self-love isn’t just about how we treat ourselves, it is also how we allow ourselves to be treated by others too. Unfortunately though, we often do things that don’t align with our heart and soul because we so desperately want to receive love in any way we can.

Sometimes we really need to place boundaries or remove certain people from our lives. This doesn’t mean that we don’t love them, it does mean however, that we love ourselves enough to not put up with things that steal our peace and happiness. Being loving isn’t always going to result in a ‘happy ever after’. Sometimes the most loving thing we can do for ourselves (and others) is to walk away.

Even when love is around us in its various forms there will be times when we struggle to feel it. Let’s be honest, being a human is a beautiful experience but also a complex one. Despite how many people we may have in our lives there are going to be times when we feel extremely alone, making us feel unloved and like we are lacking and not enough.

Although we live on a planet with over 6 billion people, each one of us has our own unique set of needs, desires, and experience of the world, which means it can sometimes feel hard to relate to anyone else. But when we love ourselves enough we don’t feel so isolated or incomplete because we know we are enough.

To really be self-loving means putting our own needs as a priority in our own lives. We are so often taught that any kind of behaviour that puts the self first is bad or selfish and that we must always look after other people first. But being self-loving doesn’t meant that you abandon all care for others. It just means that you don’t do so at the detriment of your own needs and wellbeing.

Homework for the lesson of self-love:

Below are some questions to help you delve deeper into the lesson of self-love, so that you can enhance your relationship with yourself and create more balance, bliss and brilliance within your life.

Question 1: What does self-love mean to you?

Question 2: Where in your life do you practice self-love?

Question 3: Where in your life do you think you lack or struggle with self-love and why?

Question 4: What do you need to let go of in order to create more self-love?

Question 5: What can you start to implement to enhance your self-love journey?

Question 6: What challenges do you think you may face in your journey of self-love and how will you overcome them?

Goddess Gift: