“The reason self-love matters so much is because it sets the standard for what you will allow into your life,” Dr. Claudia Thompson.  The main theme of most of my work is that taking care of ourselves allows us to take care of others.  Knowing who we are and finding a way to thrive allows us to be and do more.  Finding a way to purpose allows us to create more than we can imagine because we step into the expansiveness we spoke of yesterday.  We can’t expand when we spend all our time telling people they’re doing it (life) wrong or showing people that we are the best/know better than they do.  Knowing everything works well as a novelty, a party trick for trivia night, but when it comes to practical application and making a life, it turns into a giant pain in the ass.  The opinion of others gets us nowhere. Calm down those of you thinking about the whole “people you know” game because I will acknowledge it often isn’t the things you make it’s the hands you shake.  What matters is the arena of the opinion.  If we tell the fish to fly it will fail miserably but if we have that fish swim, it will be first every day.  So the truth is audience matters.  We will never win over everyone, so we need to find the arena we need to be in and have the right intention. 

When we love ourselves, we nurture the gifts that show us the standard we need to live by so we not only benefit ourselves but others as well—so we can fulfill our purpose.  We know what works for us, we know what doesn’t.  We know what we need to learn and what we can let go of.  In short, when we practice self-love, we understand what matters in our lives and where we need to focus our energy, effort, and talent. We know the room we are entering and the value we bring.  Now, as far as the arena of the opinion and our intent on entering this game, if we enter the arena with the goal of showing everyone we know everything, we will have a whole lot of opponents and not a lot of support/opportunity to learn.  But if we enter that arena prepared to do the work, to back what we say, what we feel, and match the same of others, we end up with a system that benefits many.  We learn the arena isn’t a battlefield where we have to earn our place—it’s a place of creation.  So, networking and shaking hands is great—but we need the right context around it.  We need to know what matters to us and we only do that through caring enough to take care of ourselves.       

We need to set standards of behavior in our own lives, set the tone for what our life looks and feels like.  These are things we can only learn in the process of loving ourselves because of the implicit honesty of who we are. We aren’t designed to be a one size fits all experience for the world.  We are designed to be unique, to create, to blaze trails, to light the world up.  We do that through the power of being ourselves, through nurturing ourselves, for stoking the fire in our lives and allowing it to turn into something amazing.  Something that took me a really long time to believe and understand is that self-love isn’t selfish.  It is the standard by which we operate and it is the fuel that allows us to do what we need to do; it is what we must do so we don’t become selfish and bitter in this world.  It is the joy we learn to create when we allow life in.  It is what we must do so we align with the creative side of this universe and allows us to assume our position as creators, alchemists who shape the architecture of life.  Self-love isn’t about finding ways to spoil ourselves every day—it is about finding ways to honor who we are and allow that authenticity to shine in the world without shame or fear.  Self-love is the reflection of who we are, the mirror of our deepest beliefs—don’t let the world see you as dingy.  Let the world see your light—show the world how to embrace it.