How Exactly Are You Supposed To Go About Loving Yourself? Here Are The 5 Steps To True Self Love

by Marcy Neumann

Self love is a real buzz word.

What does it really mean to love yourself?

In order to explain what self love is, it’s easier to show you what it looks like. When you truly LOVE yourself:

You find it easy to make decisions, because you know exactly what you want.

Your connection with your partner is solid, because you have a strong relationship with yourself.

You know what your passions are, and you’re making a living from them—in fact, you’re making more money than you ever dreamed.

You look in the mirror and you like the person looking back.

You’re not plagued by regret, worry, or self-doubt—you’ve made peace with your past and feel optimistic about your future.

Your life is full of supportive people, exciting experiences, and delicious opportunities.

At the bottom of it all, you’re just…happy.

Is It Even Possible To Be This Content? Yes, It Is!

The kind of ecstatic life I’ve described above isn’t a pipe dream—it’s exactly what I’ve claimed for myself and what I’ve been able to help thousands of people enjoy.

And it’s all because of Self Love.

Self Love is the absolute essential requirement for living a life of purpose, authenticity, and connection. When you have Self Love, life becomes incredibly easy.

But how exactly do you have Self Love? Is it something you practice? Something you’re born with?

I do believe we are born with unlimited, expansive Self Love. As a baby, you came into the world being absolutely true to yourself. There was nobody else you needed to be.

When you were hungry or upset, you sure let people know it. When you wanted to sleep, you did.

As you get older, however, you started to realize something—you saw that other people had certain ideas about how you should behave.

When you did something they approved of, you saw them smile. When you did something they didn’t like, you saw the opposite reaction.

Soon, you would start to do what I call “shape-shifting”— where you tried to mold yourself into whatever you thought you needed to be in order to be approved of, accepted, and loved.

Before long, your connection to your true nature—and therefore your Self Love—would shrink.

My System For Tapping Into The Self Love You Already Own

Your authenticity is your birthright, it is the fulfillment of who you came here to be, and so is Self Love.

It hasn’t gone away—it’s still there, just buried beneath the mountain of expectation you’ve had piled on you over the years.

When I “woke up” mid-life and realized that my own essence—and my own vast reserve of Self Love—had been overshadowed, I resolved to remedy this situation as quickly as possible.

After much trial and error, I hit upon a system that removed all the “debris” and allowed the pure authenticity and Self Love within me to shine—and therefore power my entire life.

Since then, I’ve distilled my method into 5 distinct steps:

1. Get Abundantly Clear On What You Want

If you have a hard time making decisions, don’t really know what you want to do with your life, or you often have regrets about choices you’ve made, I can guarantee this:

Your connection with yourself—and therefore your true desires—has been substantially weakened. You’ve tried so hard to be liked and agreeable, that if someone asks you what your “gut” is telling you, you wouldn’t know.

Getting clear on what you want acts like an anchor and a compass—it’s your roadmap by which to gauge every decision, fork in the road, or action step you must take.

2. Recognize The Patterns That Keep You Stuck

You’ve been doing certain things for so long, you probably can’t see your patterns. You’re just too close to them. But through my method, we take an eagle-eye view of the many negative patterns that keep you stuck and unable to create a life you love.

In my case, I got used to maintaining an ideal image—a perfect facade of wealth, social status, and perceived “normality.” When I finally decided to make a change in my life, nobody could believe that I had been so unhappy. Pretending had become an art form for me, but Self Love cannot exist in an atmosphere of deceit.

3. Let Go Of Everything That Does Not Serve You

Are there people in your life who bring you down? Commitments you wish you could step away from? Often times, we’ve carefully arranged our lives in such a way that we’re willing to stay stuck in draining situations just for the sake of maintaining the status quo. Meanwhile, you are depleting your energy and creative resources to move forward.

Through letting go of these energy vampires, you free yourself up to be true to yourself and make room for the right people and experiences to enter your life.

4. Forgive Yourself For Past “Failures”

Forgiveness is a pivotal piece of Self Love. Because you’ve been shutting down your innate capacity for Self Love until now, once you start this work you will feel sadness and regret. You will look back on decisions you made and wish you would have done things differently.

But holding on to this pain actually keeps you in the energy of the past and doesn’t allow you to see the possibilities in front of you right now.

5. Accept Yourself—Completely

Think about how you want to feel when you’re in a relationship or a friendship. Chances are, you want to feel accepted for all of who you are. When we are criticized, blamed or ignored, we feel we are not accepted.

Without acceptance, there is fear, insecurity, and lack of spontaneity. Acceptance means freedom. Likewise, the way to show love to yourself is to accept yourself.

Carl Rogers, a famous psychologist, once said: “The curious paradox is that once I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”

Your 5-Step Action Plan For Self Love (That Brings You True Love)

It took me several years to create my 5-step path to Self Love, but when my clients learn the system and put it into practice, they find themselves in a completely different realm of experience.

When you go through Self Love For True Love, I will lovingly take you through each of the 5 steps:

1. Through carefully designed assessments, we’ll probe into your heart’s deeply buried desires and unearth the authenticity buried there. You’ll learn what YOU truly want, and you’ll see why going for what you want is THE path to overcoming fear of expressing your needs.
2. We’ll identify and dismantle the negative patterns that keep you churning in frustration, worry, and regret. When I show you how to interrupt the pattern, you’ll set off a new chain of positive events that hurl you forward into your positive, boundless future.
3. We’re going to free you from the draining people, situations, and environments that are creating a wall between you and self love—including the societal imprints you grew up with that have kept you stuck.
4. The key piece of forgiveness will help you finally let go of your ties to the past and therefore the energy of what’s behind you. Free to move forward, you’ll gain critical self compassion and understanding which are the hallmarks of real love. My unique 7-step process of forgiveness is powerful, effective and transformative.
5. With the path clear and your heart firmly focused on the here and now, you’ll embrace every aspect of you with loving self-acceptance, freeing you to become the most expansive self you were born to be.

Self Love doesn’t have to be a mysterious, unreachable concept. It’s your birthright, and I’m honored to help you reclaim what is already yours.

Love,

P.S. Do you suffer from “imposter syndrome”— the fear of being exposed as not competent?

If you worry that someone’s going to tap you on the shoulder and say, “Who do you think you are?” then you need to read this: