Love Yourself Unconditionally

 Love Yourself Unconditionally

 by Kristina Kalman

There is something really special about the feeling when you manage to love yourself unconditionally and without judgment. It is a feeling of peace and a total lack of tension. Reaching that feeling opens up a beautiful space where anything can happen and you can move forward with more confidence. When you can find this unconditional love for yourself it is so liberating!

For me the journey has been rocky to say the least; for many years I have been a master at attacking myself for everything; everything was my fault. Bad weather? My fault. Car breakdown? My fault. There was nothing I couldn’t feel guilty about or blame myself for. I was constantly telling myself how stupid, ugly and wrong I was in every possible way, and I didn’t even know what I was doing! It was so ingrained that I didn’t think about it until I started to open up to the gifts I had suppressed. It was like a record on constant repeat.

When things began to dawn on me it was like a ton of bricks fell from my shoulders and I wanted to learn everything about how to find peace and change the voices in my head and make them positive. It would not be as easy as I thought, but the struggle was oh, so worth it. It is only when we have done the hard work that we can appreciate the peace.

I guess it is not that unusual but; where I come from you really are not supposed to be different and I struggled hard to be like everyone else. This was not possible, so of course I told myself there was something wrong with me and if I couldn’t be like the others I could at least make myself invisible. That didn’t work either, so I was depressed and distant and had a hard time relating to others. I didn’t want to model this to my daughters and when I realized what I was doing I wanted to do everything I could to change. To me writing and learning more and more about spiritual practices is a life saver.

The hardest part has been to start talking about my interest in spirituality, what I believe in and what I do. I was terribly afraid that people would shun me and that I would get ostracized and ridiculed. Instead I have found that most people are interested and that more and more people are open to these thoughts and ideas. The communities I have been led to by following my intuition and guidance are loving and supportive. I have learned that if I follow the flow instead of fighting and struggling things will change for the better. Trusting the Universe and the guidance I get is the way I want to go and when I feel good, good things come to me. In fact; since I started my blog a year ago I have not received a single mean or hateful comment! Not one! There have been a few people not agreeing with me, but that is all.

This is of course a process that doesn’t end. Staying positive and loving towards yourself is something that takes some work and it means you have to learn to monitor your thoughts and feelings and in the beginning it seems impossible, but hang in there! After a while you learn to react when the undesirable feelings start and then you can switch to better feeling thoughts.

In the beginning I managed to feel like a failure when I couldn’t change my feelings and thoughts so it was like a downward spiral until I figured out that the ‘bad’ thoughts are there for a reason. They are there to teach us what we don’t want so that we can go for what we want instead. For me, the easiest way to go from negative to positive feelings and thoughts is to stop and feel through the feelings until they release me. Trying to “run away” from negative feelings only makes them stronger, but if I immerse myself in them and thank them for what they are trying to teach me they go away a lot easier.

The transformation from self-loathing to loving oneself is a leap of faith in the beginning, because it is necessary to make yourself a priority, and that can be very scary. We are taught to be there for others and keep our own light dimmed, to make others a priority and not ourselves. Now that I take a good look at this, it is so very obvious that we need to change and realize that we cannot give away what we don’t have. We cannot model a strong and healthy self-esteem if we don’t have it ourselves, and for me that is crucial. I never want my girls to have to go through all the stuff I have had to go through.

Since I began the journey towards loving myself I have found many new friends and I have also found a courage I didn’t know I had. A couple of years ago I would never have had the guts to write blogs or do remote healings or any of the other new stuff that I now do on a daily basis. It is much easier to stand up for myself and a lot of the things that used to be annoying is no longer worth getting upset about. Traffic jams and other mishaps are no reason to go ballistic; it is OK to be alone with myself and it gives me a chance to do affirmations or think about all the things that I am grateful for, which helps me lift my mood. Getting stressed out and irritated is no longer my immediate reaction to situations like this.

Saying: “I love myself“, sounds and feels strange in the beginning, but when you get there and really know what I’m talking about you realize it has nothing to do with being selfish or not wanting the best for others. Instead it means you put yourself right up there on the list with everyone else and you make yourself just as much of a priority.

For me; this journey is still ongoing and I’m enjoying every minute of it.

Love and light always <3