Self-Love and Self Compassion: The Foundation for Relationships

Today we're going to talk about the balance in relationships and how it all starts with you and the two things that I have found that are most important to give yourself so that you can be in a position to give and receive the balance of a relationship. And when I'm talking about relationships, I'm not just talking about your connections with people, but your relationships to the world around you, the relationships that you have with food, to your emotions, your thoughts, your beliefs, like all of it, everything is in a relationship in our lives. Think about that for a second. Every person, place, thing, experience that we are living in is a co creation and an exchange of energy between two energies, between two people, between two thoughts, between the shadow and the light, between us as a person and a thing. In animal nature, fear, a belief, it's all coexistence. We are living in a world of coexistence. We are living in a world of contraction and expansion, which is the flow of energy. 

I want to invite you to just consider that in that conversation today. Because for some of us, the breakdown in a relationship or the unhealthy relationship is showing up in a marriage. For some of us, it's a friendship. For some of us, it's with our health and well being, with food, with our children, with our parents, with our finances, with our job. But all of us are experiencing multidimensional relationships in our life, daily and multifaceted relationships. 

The words that I share with you today, I just want to invite you to consider, is there an imbalance in your life right now? And what relationship is showing you that there might be an imbalance within you? There's two things that came to me that are important in order to have a healthy relationship with anyone or anything in your life. And it is self compassion and self love. We cannot give something to others or to anything if we do not have it within ourselves. I think for some of us, we know this is true, but maybe we don't have the awareness that it exists. The lack of it might exist. And usually what happens is we start to believe that the other part of the relationship, whether it's a person or an experience or whatever, is the person with the lack of self compassion or the lack of self love, when really the reason that we can see it is because it's showing us a reflection of ourselves. Itt takes really grounded and radical personal self responsibility to look at what you're seeing in the outside world as a reflection of a part of you, because that's what the co-creation of the relationship is. 

Let's talk about self love. Let's just start there. What is it? What does it look like? Why do I need it? How do I know if I have it? And we're going to talk about self love from the perspective of not doing. It's definitely a balance, right? The co-creation of the being and the doing. But I think that the part that people, what I notice, probably because it's a reflection of myself, right? Like every podcast that I record is something that comes through for me. Every post that I post is something that's currently happening in my life. It's not something I read somewhere. It's not something. Now, I may have gathered the tools or the data from something that I read or heard as a synchronicity to the messaging that I'm sharing. But everything that I'm sharing, I'm sharing because I know, because I've been in it. 

What I know to be true is that the first place that we have to start is self love. And self love is in the being and the doing. But I think the being is where the growth edge is for most of us. I think it's easier for us to say that we're blocking time in our calendar for date night and exercise and journaling. And we wake up every morning and we meditate and we journal and we do all the right things. We eat healthy, but there's a difference in the doing of the things that show us self love and the receiving of what we're doing. The receiving of the nutrients of the food, the receiving of the love from other people, and the being in the place to receive. So I just invite you to just explore for a second. Do you give yourself permission to actually be self-love? What does that look like? It's an internal shift. What can it feel like? I know what it feels like for me. And it's something that I practice bringing awareness to. Because the truth is, you guys, you already are love. It's just the perception that you're not that creates the need for it. I'm going to say that again. You already are everything you're seeking, but the perception that you need, it creates the separation. So you already are the being of love. 

Some things you can do is, first of all, participate in doing the things that you do love. If that's hard for you, start there. What are the things you love to do? Give yourself permission to do them. Give yourself permission to receive the joy in the why of why you're doing it. The second part is to allow yourself to notice when you do feel it, when you do feel, because there's a short moment, it comes to us, and the awareness of it is what amplifies it. It activates it. So this is the choice that we have. And so just knowing those little moments of when you do feel love, that you are love in your body, and for some of us, it might show up through our relationships. It might show up through something that we're receiving. 

So you first start by noticing the feeling within your body and just be present with that and notice how it feels. So I'm inviting you to explore a little bit more around the idea of not overcomplicating things and just simplifying to the belief that you already are love, that you are self-love. Because if we do not love ourselves, it's really hard to give to others. And if we do give to others, it feels misaligned. It can feel out of balance. It can feel exhausting. Right? Like a mother who's taking care of young children. I've been there. I know I'll never forget the day one of my integrative holistic practitioners said to me, she'll never get better until you do. And she was right. I was like, wow. Okay, mic drop. So just remembering that it starts with you, we can only give what we are, what we allow ourselves to receive. It's like the cup. The cup that's overflowing already. Can't take on anything else. And if it's empty, there's nothing to give. So really just kind of breaking it down and just simplifying. 

The second one I want to talk about is self compassion. Self compassion for yourself and radical self acceptance for who you are. I'm talking about radical self acceptance for who you are, for who you are in the world. Like all of your shadows, all of your defaults without making yourself wrong, knowing that you are complete with your faults and your shadows and your mistakes and your experiences and your perceived experiences and your self sabotaging patterns and your trauma, all of that. You're completely whole and lovable with all of that. That is unconditional love. Going back to self-love. The self-love has to be unconditional. Again, the greatest suffering is in the separation from the wholeness. You are wholeness. We are wholeness. I am wholeness. I am an expression of wholeness. It's only the belief that I'm not that creates separation and suffering. So when it relates to trauma, one of the things that happens is that we believe that the trauma is separate from us because it's an experience when it is just who we are. It's just an experience that has become who we are. And so it's a shift in the perception that it's separate from us and just really more like embodying it and embracing it in the wholeness of who we are. That doesn't mean that we accept what happened, especially if there was somebody who created trauma for us in our lives. It doesn't mean that we accept it. It just means we don't accept the behavior or the pattern, but we accept the experience as part of our wholeness. And from there we get to choose what we do with it. 

It's pretty powerful to transmute the energy into your purpose, transmuting your wounds into your purpose, through parenting, through coaching, through just your relationships with others. And so what I know and what I witness is that if we're struggling to be compassionate for other people, we are likely not very compassionate for ourselves. But there's a flip side to this. If you're overly compassionate for other people, there may also be an unhealthy balance there. It doesn't mean that you're necessarily overly compassionate to yourself. That can be an escape pattern where it's easier for you to be compassionate for other people than to be compassionate for yourself. So I'm going to say that again because it's super important. Just like the lack of self compassion or the lack of compassion for others can indicate the lack of self compassion, the over giving of compassion for others can also show up as an opportunity for the need for more self compassion. It really just turns into an avoidance pattern. So what's important is to be true to your needs, yourself, through radical acceptance, self acceptance, self love, self compassion. And how do you know when it's out of alignment? Because you feel exhausted and overwhelmed or imbalanced in your relationships with people, with food, with finances, with your job, with your health, with your feelings, with your beliefs. And when you get this, it's pretty empowering to know and just to stand in your own ability to witness everything that's happening around you. With awareness. Without judgment, you start to look at your relationships differently. Your relationships are just a reflection of your internal beliefs. That's all they are. 

So when your relationships are imbalanced in some way, it's an invitation for you to notice where you're out of balance. And there are many other things that I could speak to that will show up. But what I notice time and time again, and if there was a third one, it would be self acceptance. But I really include that as in self love. But it really starts with self love and self compassion. And in the knowing that sometimes too much compassion can be enabling, it can be out of balance. So just standing in that radical self acceptance in all of your shadows and all of your beliefs and not using that as an excuse not to work through them, but more as an awareness without attachment, that is your identity, if that makes sense. 

So it's letting go of the attachment to the identity. The awareness is super powerful. Allowing yourself to work through things and transmute the energy is really great for your health and well being. It just completely integrates your energy fields, your energy patterns. It uplifts your energy body, which includes physical, mental, and emotional. So I hope that I've given you something to really just consider today. And I think some great journaling prompts around this would be what relationships in my life do I notice are unhealthy? And where have I allowed myself to be out of balance? Is it in the giving or receiving? Is it in avoidance? So that could be a really great journal prompt to follow up with. 

P.S.

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Jen Mons is an author, speaker, mentor and coach for high achieving purpose driven ready to shift the paradigm of feminine leadership and redefine excellence and wealth through 5 Element Wellth, Prosperity, Journaling and Soul Wisdom Imprinting.