Are we missing the boat on love? Part 4

Why is it hard for women to genuinely love ourselves? When talking about self-love, many women are surprised to learn that they aren't sure what it means or how to do it. And discussing it makes them uncomfortable.

Consider that part of the reason may be because for most women, we grow up under a subtle (and for some, not so subtle) barrage of messages that tell us there's something wrong with us and eventually we believe it. From parents and teachers to peers and cultural messages, women are scrutinized for their appearance. This scrutiny suggests that we are not acceptable as we are and that we must have the right body, hair, makeup, clothes or man to fix our problem. This messaging is a disaster for women because from the place of shame, self-judgement and rejection that this messaging creates, it's dang near impossible to accept and love ourselves.

Many of us are also raised in a way that confuses self-love with selfishness when these are two very different things. Self-care, i.e., self-love, is not being selfish. It's being self-aware. If we don't shore up our own boat, we can't hold ourselves with sovereignty or show up for life with any real power. It's like putting on your own oxygen mask first so you can help others from a place of strength.

With a little poking around, it's not hard to see why so many women struggle with love. Most of us grow up in a culture that distorts what love is, diminishes women's sense of self and demolishes women's capacity for self-love. In time, we forget the purity of it all and do our best to control things so we can find and feel the love we've become disconnected from inside.

Control is the realm of our conditioned mind. It's whole mission is to help us access pleasure and avoid pain in life. There's nothing wrong that, yet when we let it guide our lives, we miss the boat. Here's why—it uses fear to guide our lives, which is the opposite of what we actually want.

We actually want to guide our lives from love, not fear. Making that switch requires us to relocate our power source from our conditioned mind back to its proper home in our heart. Read that discussion in PART 5.