❤️ Valentine’s Day reminds us of the importance of love. After all, it’s all we need and it makes the world go ‘round! On Valentine’s Day we remember to say “I love you”. Hopefully on Valentine’s Day we also can say “I love me”!
❤️ I’ve always made time for self care. Besides daily meditation, I treat myself to massages, hot baths, frequent walks in nature, good, healthy food, plenty of sleep and more. I thought I had the self care thing mastered, but came to realize two things — I wasn’t making self-care the most important thing in my day and, even more importantly, I wasn’t always doing it with love. Today, on Valentine’s Day, I want to focus on the love piece. When we approach our self-care with love, it work wonders.
❤️ If the thought behind eating a delicious, nourishing meal is “I don’t want to get sick”, the meal won’t be received and digested in the same way it would if you eat while experiencing the sense of food as love. A focus on the health giving properties of the food and the pleasure of eating will allow your body to absorb use the nutrition in a different way. If you apply a lovely serum to your skin and the underlying feeling is the fear of aging and a sense of “fighting it off”, you will be cheating yourself of the full benefit of this act of self-care. Even doing your self care routines as just another thing to get done wastes a precious chance to show yourself love. Doing self-care as an expression of self-love is magic. I’d go so far as to say that it is the love itself that is the most important ingredient of your food, your body care products, and all the activities which can benefit the body. Walk in nature with an eye to experiencing the love you find there. As you do laps in the pool, feel the deliciousness of the water flowing over your skin. As you stretch or do yoga, feel the pleasure in your body. Treat yourself well — treat yourself to pleasure, treat yourself to love.
❤️ Hopefully you have already discovered many ways to care for yourself already, but we can always find more. I recently contributed to an article on self-care in Redfin, Expert Tips for Practicing Self-Care at Home that has lots of great ideas and advice.
❤️ May you take good, and loving, care of yourself this Valentine’s Day, and every day!❤️