Self Love is Grace

I recently wrote about self-love, and want to take it a little further still. 

It seems sometimes the term self-love gets confused with treating yourself to something nice.  While it’s fantastic and relaxing and nice to have a facial or a massage or go shopping or take yourself out for a coffee or a dessert, that alone does not equal self-love in my book.

Allow me to explain… Say for example you’re a mom of young kiddos.  Maybe you stay at home caring for them or maybe you work outside the home.  Say you’re feeling overwhelmed, tired, burnt out, unappreciated.  While a massage is a welcome relief from the million things demanding your time attention and energy, unless you’ve lined up a child free weekend, the immediate relaxing effects of said massage are going to vanish in front of your eyes like a wisp of wind the second you step into your front door and “real life” comes running at you yelling “mama, mama, mama!”

You don’t need a break.  You need boundaries.  You need something in your life that will mitigate the million responsibilities demanding your attention.  Something that will bring some balance to your life and meet your needs. 

And to keep it super simple, start with the basics.  Food, sleep, exercise, grace…

Start with boundaries that pertain only to how you treat yourself.  Meet your needs as best you can and when you fall short give yourself some GRACE. 

Letting go of the idea of perfection may be the single greatest thing I have done for myself.  Allowing myself some slack and granting grace when I previously would have let the hateful negative self-talk fly… It’s lead to a complete about face when it comes to how I feel about myself and my outlook on life.

I know I am doing the best that I can and that I’m always striving to learn, grow and be better version of myself.  And because I know this to be true I can allow myself some grace when I fall short of my own expectations. 

And that has changed everything. 

Once you start getting the hang of how this feels, you can look at doing the same in your relationships with other people….

You create the life you live one decision and one behavior at a time.  You are always in control.  Outside circumstances don’t even play into the equation. 

Grace is everything.