5 Ways To Love Yourself By Banishing Insecurity & Letting Your Authenticity Shine
Your core self is your authentic self, not your survival self.
Seth Doyle/unsplash Is your insecurity stopping you from living your best and most authentic life? Then, it's time to learn how to love yourself.
The key to authenticity is through self-love but, as we know by now, it is one of the hardest things to do.
But, don't give up just yet because there is hope.
There are tools that will enable you to transform a shame-riddled, insecure self into a positive, balanced, and secure self.
You only need to take the first step in this process by connecting to your core self — your core self that is your authentic self, not just your survival self.
Here are the 5 things you need to do to love yourself, banish insecurity, and let your authenticity shine.
1. Develop the ability to connect to your core self by learning the skill of referencing.
Recall a time when you felt anger, sadness, or anxiety; you probably felt it in your throat, chest, heart, or stomach — this is the core of your body.
You can self-reference by placing your attention on the core of your body so you can connect with the felt sense of your authentic emotions and bodily sensations.
We often say we have a "heavy heart," a "gut feeling," a "closed throat," or "butterflies in our stomach."
Once you can be present with the authentic feelings and sensations arising in the mid-line of your body, you can connect with your core self. Now, you can clearly express your genuine thoughts, feelings, needs, and values.
2. Gain insight into how your brain and heart were wired for connection from your early relational experiences with your family of origin.
What are your attachment patterns which are part of your survival self? By knowing and naming them, you can become less identified with them.
What are the frequent compulsions, obsessions, and addictions that your survival self uses in life?
Recognize how your life-saving survival strategies or coping defenses are still being used when they are no longer relevant and are actually dysfunctional or cause you to abandon your authentic self.
Confront your attachment patterns, survival strategies, and coping mechanisms, and substitute them with mindful choices. Now, you have agency.
3. Figure out how many times each day you burden yourself with the love-limiting habit of needless negativity.
Some inner negativity is inevitable.
Personal growth requires the task of developing the inner witness that can observe your programmed inner critic as opposed to believing it and acting unconsciously.
Don't identify with its shaming, blaming criticisms. Your inner witness can watch the traffic in your mind without judging or considering it.
Use your inner witness to control your brain and stop the voices from continually looping in your mind. This bolsters self-worth and heals depression.
Being present in the moment allows you to connect to your core self so you can be grounded in reality.
4. Nurture yourself with compassionate internal self-talk.
Talk to yourself as you would a good friend. Don't avoid, withdraw, or hide when you're fearful.
Take action and approach life so you can build authentic confidence and healthy self-esteem. Approaching instead of avoiding heals anxiety.
Mistakes, failures, and rejections are inevitable in life; they do not mean you are not worthy of love and success.
You need to give yourself time to both make mistakes and live them out, without internalizing those mistakes as personal failures, precisely to gain eventual mastery.
5. Take time to be reflective of what gives your life meaning and purpose, and be committed to that endeavor.
Purpose and meaning are sources of true happiness.
These tools are only useful if you use them repeatedly.
Healing is not linear. Yet, one of the incredible things about the human self is that it can change and grow.
By learning the art of self-love, you build internal resources, and you can stand in self-love and become an embodied, authentic, functional adult.
You are worth it!
Nadine Macaluso is a licensed marriage and family therapist, a mindful communicator, and master connector. For more information, visit her website.