the no nonsense approach
for lasting love
Words by: Kim Engelhardt
Photo by: Jacob Toledo
Everybody talks about it, but no one actually knows exactly what it means: self love. Most people will tell you to pamper yourself, to take yourself out for dinner, to buy yourself flowers, and while these are all lovely practices, they don’t change much! In fact, this approach that I am teaching you here doesn’t have much to do with taking action at all and everything to do with what is going on inside your mind.
Have you ever noticed that voice in your head that quietly whispers to you? Sometimes it might say ‘See, I told you you weren’t gonna get a date.’, and other times it might scream: ‘Don’t be vulnerable around this person! You know what happened the last time you trusted someone! You will get hurt!’ While the narrative of that voice isn’t the most positive, it is very important to understand this: That voice is only there because it is trying to protect you. It is trying to move you away from pain towards pleasure, and away from danger towards safety and it truly believes that it is helping you by preparing you for possible rejection.
Imagine it like an overprotective mother who wants you to stay safe. Even when she says something nasty like ‘You are just not good enough’, she is trying to sell you a story that keeps you far away from any risks that could lead to you getting hurt. But where does the voice take its narrative from? When you were only a small child and in some cases even when you were still in the womb, your subconscious mind tried to make sense of the world that you were born into by assessing situations for danger. Your childlike mind was determined to keep you alive on the planet and formed assumptions about love, relationships and yourself, by attaching meanings to experiences. These meanings and beliefs that you formed back then are all still present in your subconscious mind nowadays. So that voice which you are hearing is in fact your subconscious mind talking to you and you absolutely need to start listening and become aware of its lectures!
Unfortunately that same voice that is so desperately trying to protect you is also the reason why your love life looks the way it does. Your subconscious mind is using these dominant thoughts as a blueprint to make sense of and create your reality. So that means that you are currently seeing the world through the lens of the dependent, small child that you once were and your subconscious mind doesn’t understand that you are now an adult who has so much more power and control. Your thoughts create your feelings, your feelings impact your actions and your actions impact your events, which makes your reality a mirror of your current belief system. Why am I telling you this? Because you can make that voice your absolute best friend, your cheerleader, or your personal assistant. What day could possibly be better to become aware of those thought patterns than Valentine’s Day? Nothing triggers our limiting beliefs about relationships and romantic love as much as the fourteenth of February, so use this to your advantage! If you want a healthy, romantic, long lasting relationship then follow these steps and watch your romantic life shift!
First of all, carry a notebook and pen with you that day (you can also type it up on your phone) and listen carefully to what you are saying to yourself and thinking all day. Write it all down. Alternatively, you can also find a place where you can be undisturbed and sit silently. Then close your eyes, relax your body and ask your mind ‘What do I really believe about relationships?’.
Note down whatever comes up. There will be thoughts that are purely about you as a person, thoughts about relationships and thoughts about others and how they treat you. All of these categories form the concept you have of yourself in love. At the end of the day review your answers. Those notes are usually very telling! Now flip those beliefs into the opposite and make sure these statements are in present tense. For example, if you wrote down ‘I will never find love’, you could write down: ‘Love always finds me.’, or : ‘Love is available to me.’ Now you have two options: You can either read these new, flipped beliefs to yourself every day, or you can record yourself on your phone, reading them to yourself, and listen to it at night, or even in the day as you are traveling from A to B. You don’t have to believe these statements yet, you just have to persistently listen to it on repeat. Your mind learns by repetition and will let in the new information over time.Understanding that even the nastiest thoughts come from a place of love and protection is usually the first step on your journey towards a better relationship with yourself and therefore a better relationship with others. Your events now have no choice but to fall in line with those new thoughts.
Everything in your life comes down to the words you say to yourself and the images you make in your head, so if you are alone on Valentine’s Day, if you haven’t found the love you want, change the words you say to yourself this year and watch as your love life transforms! Real self love starts with giving that voice within a better story to tell. And of course you can do all this while sipping a glass of champagne and eating heart shaped chocolates!