Happy Belated Valentines to you!  I think it’s official:  The world has caught on that February the 14th is not a day to sit around and wait for your honey to buy you flowers but is a day to engage in some serious self love and epic self care.  I received a total of 7 hand drawn valentines cards (isn’t that amazing?) and over a dozen emails on the topic of self love (thankfully as it is an area I am working on).  At the end of the day I was left with a list of adjectives describing how wonderful each of us are, several messages about how we are each loved by the Divine Mother, three recipes for raw cacao goodies (yum) and explicit instructions on how to give myself a bath.

I looked myself in the mirror and said a few mantras.  I woke up the next morning asking myself how I would be able to carry this love-fest through the rest of my life and celebrate love every day.  I believe I need more baths, more treats and more love from the Divine Mother every day… but as time passed on the 15th I started to feel a little… empty.  Happy but not quite fulfilled.  I want something deeper.

I realized that I could repeat unending positive messages to myself but I would not get anywhere without showing up for myself where it really counts.  When the self-love gets tough I’m going to step up every time.

Here are three ways to show self love powerfully every day:

Self love means honouring yourself even if it means inconveniencing other people.  Have you ever found yourself gathered around someone’s table trying to be nice by avoiding having to tell them you don’t eat dairy or you don’t eat non-GMO corn or something like that?  Sometimes I take a glass of wine and pretend to drink it or find creative ways to throw out foods that I don’t eat (much easier if your friends have a dog).  Worst of all are the times when I eat something I would not normally eat in an attempt to spare someone’s feelings.  This might be worth it if I were weighing an evening of feeling bad against someone else’s feelings but for me it is much more than an evening.  And one choice that hurts my body to spare someone else’s feelings soon becomes two or three and then a pattern.  This way of living betrays self-loathing, codependency, pathological loneliness and definitely not self love.

I remember the gluten free vegan cupcakes that had me barfing on the couch for two days and I remember the piece of candy given to me by a friend’s mother.  I remember the piece of cake that resulted in two weeks of swollen gums.  I am super sensitive so a trace of gluten or food colouring will really set me off.  I know this before eating these things but sometimes I just don’t want the other person to feel bad.  News flash!!  This is crazy pants!!  Part of the problem here is that I want other people to like me and think I’m “normal”.  I want to be accepted.  Well I’m not normal.  But that doesn’t mean I am not acceptable.  I’m a catalyst for change, a spokesperson for health.  I rebel against junk food and animal products and foods that hurt us.  Are you “normal”?  No, I doubt it.  How does it feel to compromise your ideals just to feel “normal”.  You are exceptional.  Treat yourself that way.

It is important to be tactful and gentle in order to be loving to others but it is also important to make sure that you are loving yourself.  If tomatoes make you break out in a rash don’t eat them even if your friend brought them to the picnic.  Yes people will think you are weird sometimes.  You may not be the same as everyone else but I think you’re cool.  From now on I’m going to make an effort to take up just a little more space, a worthy amount of space to honour myself at the table too.  By not telling people what my needs are I am expecting them to intuit them and setting our relationships up for difficulty.

Self love means taking time to prepare real food from scratch.  Yes that’s right.  It can be difficult to find time to prepare food from scratch especially when eating a mostly from-scratch real-food diet.  Time is our most precious resource.  What is more important than our health?  Without it we can’t have a fulfilling life.  Spend time on you.

In your ideal fridge would you find homemade probiotic foods, a variety of dressings and dips, frozen treats, grain-free crackers, cut up veggies of all shapes and sizes and smoothie packs ready to go?  What else is in your ideal fridge?  Can you make that happen?  Let me know in the comments so I can steal your ideas (kidding).

In a world where the majority of people spend a few minutes to pour cereal, pack sandwiches and heat up processed dinners we are pushing the boundaries hard by making our own dehydrated crackers or fermenting salsas.  This kind of real food prep pushes the boundaries of time and physics too… at least the physics of scheduling.  This requires actually setting aside long chunks of time once or twice a week to prepare delicious foods from scratch.  I like to use a couple of hours on Sunday and then a couple more hours midweek to make sure everything is cut up and washed and if necessary fermented/dehydrated ahead of time so that there are snacks and staples ready for myself and my family.

Sometimes other activities with friends and family or work interfere with this prep time.  Sometimes there is a movie I want to watch or a show to attend.  That is a choice that is sometimes well worth it.  It takes true self-love to make this food prep time nonnegotiable.  It takes time to remind ourselves that we deserve a fulfilling life, not just a release in the moment.  Other things may fall by the wayside but holding fast to this food prep time helps me to keep myself running optimally.  This shows me that I care enough about myself to spend the time required to feed myself the way I deserve to be fed.

Self love means limiting the time given to just about everything. Hey, time is limited.  Choosing to do one thing necessarily means less time to do another.  And it shows where our priorities are.  Are we running our own lives or letting them run us… into the ground?

I am either a victim of time or I am in charge of it.  I realized painfully that I had been a victim of time for as long as I can remember.  As long as time is running away from me and I am rushing to get everything done around the house, finish more work projects, write new recipes, stay up late to write e-courses or meet someone in a hurry I will be a slave to time.  If I am a slave to time I will not be in charge of my own life.  What better act of self love could there be than to crown myself the High Priestess of my own life starting with deciding which things are worth my time and which are not?  Warning:  This means leaving work undone and going to bed early sometimes and it also means making a batch of raw cookies when I could be rushing out to meet someone somewhere.  This also means leaving time for physical activity and of course to consciously eat and enjoy all those healthy foods I have prepared.  The busy work is not serving me.  Is it serving you?  I didn’t think so 🙂

Self love is not always easy and it means more than just staring into the mirror and saying “I’m ok”.  Self love sometimes means saying no to the things we each want in the moment so that we can say yes to the lives that we really want in the end.  Self love means changing habits so that they support us in achieving our optimal health.  I’m doing it.  Are you?