I’ve heard time and time again ‘If you want to fall in love, you’ve gotta love yourself first.’

I always thought I loved myself.

I really did.

I’ve always been an outgoing, confident, happy person and I thought that’s what ‘loving yourself’ was all about.

Little did I know, I had a huge journey ahead of me that would return me to my true self and allow me to fully feel self-love.

Self-love is not about bubble baths and manicures. That’s self-care.

Self-love isn’t about loving the way you look in a new outfit or thinking your new haircut looks fabulous.

Self-love….unconditional self-love is about loving yourself so much that nothing (yes I said NOTHING) outside of you can effect the way you feel. It’s taken me almost two years to understand this. What this means is that no one, nothing and no action outside of you can make you feel lonely, bad, hurt, mad, angry, resentful, etc….

I spent the last two years focusing on my inner self. I dove into every spiritual book I could find and started meditating for hours a day. (Now, I would have thought this was beyond crazy before—I couldn’t even sit for 5 minutes to meditate and I had no time for spiritual talk–I wanted to heal. period!)

Turns out healing is actually more about the mind than the body. Something I had no idea about until the last two years of my painful journey to wellness. So, why am I sharing all of this with you? Why am I opening myself up and becoming vulnerable the last few months to share what’s saved my life? Because I want to help save yours. Even if you are not suffering from an illness- there’s trauma in all of our minds and we’ve all experienced heart-ache and sadness and anger and many times we push these feelings deep down inside of us instead of releasing them and sitting in stillness to heal our mind.

What’s been really fascinating to me is that the last 9 months I’ve discovered energy work. Now, I’ve tried acupuncture and reiki and many other healing modalities but it wasn’t until last spring that I started to understand the way the body works and that your cells respond to all of your thoughts and feelings every second of every day. What made me realize this? Well, for starters I began working with energy healers who released trauma from my mind. I never believed in this stuff. I never thought it would work. I wanted a magic pill. I wanted to get better asap. And so my journey went from my early 20’s on steroids, pain killers, water pills, morphine and getting bone marrow biopsies at cancer hospitals to Integrative/Functional medicine where I learned what I put into and on my body on a daily basis–effects my health! I also learned how to detox my life and my food (which I’ve outlined in my new BOOK- Eating Clean: The 21-Day Plan to Detox, Fight Inflammation and Reset Your Body, which is now in stores nationwide) to energy work. The amount of information in my brain is beyond anything I can even begin to explain to you and I want to write 10 more books to help people understand that each of us is so different….we’re born in different environments, have different experiences, different beliefs, different values, traditions, different memories, etc. And we are all so unique- which is why getting a prescription pill from a Western medicine doctor isn’t going to cure anything. Yes it might relieve symptoms for a bit- and yes we all need Western medicine to save our lives in life threatening situations but as a society we need to learn how to take care of ourselves.

If I can give anyone any advice about what I’ve learned these past 10 years aside from the wealth of information that is in my book—it’s that we need time to just ‘BE’ and stop ‘DOING’ and stop trying to get ahead and feel important and impress everyone else. It’s time to learn how to be happy with who you are and if you’re not happy- then start sitting in stillness to figure out how you can heal your mind. I’m living proof this is possible and the tiny signs that will show up for you on a daily basis will blow your mind. Most of us are way too busy to notice the signs right in front of our faces–this is how many of my clients are. They are focused on everything externally- the job, the promotion, the vacation, the clothes, the salary, the car, etc. And while all of those material items are lovely, they’re not going to make anyone happy after a few minutes. They’re “Conditions” meaning these conditions are used by many people to bring on happiness but soon they realize after having these conditions- they’re still not happy. Which brings me back to my point about Unconditional love. You’ve gotta be so happy and vibrating on such a high level with the love you have for yourself that the boyfriend, the husband, the new home, car, job, etc. can’t bring you down or cause you to look outside of yourself for happiness. Now, yes–these things are all lovely and having anything on the outside does make people happy but if we don’t start with finding happiness inside, there will never be real, true happiness on the outside.

I see this with so many of my clients and I went through this myself. In my 20’s I took pride in my job at VOGUE and Ralph Lauren and that defined me. My fancy clothes defined me. My friends defined me. The fabulous vacations I went on defined me. And now—I look back at all of that and I’m in awe at how I had no love inside of me (even though I was confident and so happy with life)….and I was reaching outside of myself for conditions such as vacations, clothes, boyfriends, etc. to make me happy.

These days, I’ve learned how to be vulnerable. To open myself up. To love, to friendships, to dreams, to everything that is flowing to me. And now I realize the last 30 something years I was blocking everything that was trying to flow to me because I was reaching for conditions to make me happy, which never works.

There is love all around us. However, if we focus on the news and the terrible things going on in the world- then that’s going to dominate our vibration. If we focus on love and surrounding ourselves with loving people who respect us and care about us and if we keep our nose out of the fear on the news and in the newspapers and the toxic people who are negative- then we’ll start to notice how beautiful and lovely and peaceful and graceful life really is.

It’s taken me two full years to say that I love myself so much that nothing- yes nothing- on the outside can bring me down. I’ve learned how to create a safe place inside of me and share my knowledge and wisdom from my heart in hopes that I inspire others to take a different path with their wellness and realize they have a choice. We can end up down a road on pharmaceutical drugs with a band-aid approach or we can dive deeper, get to the root cause and heal our minds with joy, happiness and unconditional love.

To make anything work, you have to start with YOU.

You have to put yourself first.

That’s why the airlines tell you to put on YOUR oxygen mask first before you help anyone else. I’m such a giving person and the last 33 years led me to give give give give give give give and try to impress impress impress impress everyone from my father to my family to my boyfriends. Now I realize that there’s nothing to prove to anyone. I am my true self and I’m perfect just how I am. And you are perfect just how you are. You don’t need any fixing but you can take some time to do a little tune-up as I call it and dive into understanding more about YOU and why you tick and what makes you happy inside and do more of that. Listen to your favorite music and dance in your room, surround yourself with loving people, treat yourself to a tea at a fancy tea shop…life is all about being good to yourself and doing away with the negative talk that so many people have in their minds on a daily basis–and they don’t even realize it. Listen to the way you talk to yourself and about yourself for 24 hours and write down everything you say that isn’t kind. I’m sure you’ll be shocked to see what you come up with. My clients find themselves in awe over what they really are saying to themselves on a daily basis (I’m fat, I’m not good enough, I’ll never achieve that, I can’t afford that, I’m not pretty enough to date him, etc.).

So, how can you start to put yourself first and learn how to love yourself? When was the last time you sat in stillness without your phone or newspaper or a book or someone bothering you? Find more time for yourself to nurture yourself so that you can then, in turn, nurture others (your family, your friends, your lover, your pets, etc.)

Know yourself.

Trust yourself.

Value yourself.

Accept who you are and stand your ground.

Live in the present moment.

So many of us focus on our past or worry about the future and it screws up our thoughts and feelings and vibration that we are giving off to others. Stay focused in the present moment–if you are washing the dishes–focus on the washing, if you are in the shower–focus on the washing, if you are driving–focus on the driving. These are three key times during our day when our thoughts go into the past=fear or future=worry.

Soon, you’ll be able to notice those negative thoughts and you’ll view these thoughts from a higher level. You’ll learn how to be at peace with them instead of unconsciously repeating these thoughts over and over again to yourself, which in turn negatively effects your well-being and healing.

True strength comes from learning how to love yourself unconditionally and taking care of yourself- not just on physical level with your food and environment but also with your mind.

I hope this little insight into my healing was helpful…

More to come.

xo

And if you haven’t had a chance to check out my new cookbook, Eating Clean: The 21-Day Plan to Detox, Fight Inflammation and Reset Your Body, you can order it now right HERE and you’ll get 6 Free Exclusive Recipes that are NOT in my cookbook!