Cultivating Loving Feeling + Tools for Deepening Self-Love

I grew up with the maxim that love isn’t a feeling; it’s an action. Which I appreciate. Because love is gritty and hard and takes us to depths in ourselves and reveals truths about our human condition that can rock our worlds and shake us to the core. And when it comes to love, sometimes we just have to put our heads down and power through.

But somewhere in this pragmatic, sensible approach, I lost the truth that love is not only practical action and no-nonsense work, but also a feeling we cultivate with intention. And this feeling bit is just as important.

My relationships – with my partner, with my people, with myself, with the earth, with my creativity – all require my investment in creating feelings of connection, appreciation, and awe, as much as they require concrete action and commitment.

I felt this most recently in my relationship with myself, which had become all action, no feeling.  Even though I was loving myself with action – acting and advocating on my behalf, taking care of my body, mind, and spirit, setting boundaries, and going after my dreams and honoring my desires – there was a gap in feeling that left me with a missing piece and asked me to consciously nurture positive feelings toward myself to love myself better.

Because feelings aren’t just fleeting hits of emotional sensation – they are deep energetic compass points, transporting currents of power, and spiritual fuel. And my own tendency to dismiss feelings when it came to love was leaving my love relationships unbalanced and deprived of this essential ingredient.

So I’m welcoming feeling back into the mix and attempting to bring more warmth, appreciation, and wonder to love so that I can create energies that connect me with the world, feed and inspire my relational commitments, and ultimately make love an act of devotion, joy, and transcendence.

Here are some ideas for deepening your experience of self-love:

1) Let yourself feel all your feelings, even (especially) if they seem silly, contradictory, or nonsensical.  Give yourself safe space to feel, and let yourself laugh, cry, and rage.  Speak to yourself like you would to a toddler who is overwhelmed or tantruming.  

2) Answer the following questions: what do I appreciate about myself?  How can I cultivate feelings of warmth and connection with myself?  How might I deepen into delight in my own aliveness and being?

3)Give yourself experiences of wonder.  What takes your breath away?  What inspires and awes you?  Give yourself space to feel, experience, and allow those feelings, experiences, and memories.

4) Ask: What do I most need to deepen self-trust?  Maybe it's prioritizing your basic needs, fortifying your boundaries, cultivating positive feelings for yourself, or deepening your routines of care.

5) Honor your desire, and let yourself want what you want.  Too often, we push down what we yearn for, believing it's too big, too shallow, too frivolous, etc.  What might it mean to let yourself have it, and to allow that energy to pull you forward into mystery?

Wishing you all so much beautiful love and deep relationship.

Making Grounded, Clear Decisions

Being a human being with freedom and agency means that life gives us moments when we’re asked to decide – to go this way instead of that when it comes to what we’re doing, what we’re creating, and who we want to be in the world.

These crossroads moments are exciting and beautiful but also often frightening and anxiety-producing, as we confront the unknowns, eliminate options, and take a hard look at what really matters to us.

Important decisions – the weighty, life-trajectory-shifting kind – ask something of us, and it isn’t always easy.

So here are some of the key steps and practices I’ve found especially important in the (not always linear) process of discerning and deciding:

1. Imagine and Dream

Since decision-making is a process of narrowing and eliminating, it’s helpful to start big.

Imagination stirs up good energy, challenges our assumptions about what is true or possible for us, and opens up space.

The more we dream, envision, and connect with the frequency of our desires, the more compass points we have to guide our way forward.

2. Collect Data

This is especially important for those of us who prefer to dream in big, intuitive visions rather than deal with practical details and concrete realities.

I know I’ve had the tendency to avoid raw data when I’m facing a big decision because I want to hold on to my idealistic vision of what could be. The inconvenient details and bothersome realities force me to take my intuitive dreams back to earth.

But that’s where they have to go if I’m going to make anything with them.

So gather the data and information and stir it into the pot. Let it touch you and engage with what you find without necessarily jumping to immediate conclusions. Let it begin to speak to some of the questions: What’s available? What’s within the realm of possibility here? What are the boundaries and limits?

3. Filter Data and Set Parameters

What matters and what doesn’t? What factors are you centering vs. merely considering? And what data doesn’t really matter at all? Treating all factors and pieces of information as equally important in a decision-making process is mostly unhelpful and can quickly take us to the edge of overwhelm.

4. Be in Your Body

In my experience, good decisions are only ever made when I am grounded and centered in my body and listening to what it has to say.

Our body compass is our best discernment tool.

So in the process, ask and notice: what opens, expands, relaxes, and enlivens me? And what closes, tenses, or constricts me?

Remembering to climb back into our bodies also deepens our capacity to be with uncertainty and ambiguity. It can be easy to spin in the manic energy of I-have-to-figure-this-out, but in our bodies, we can just sit in this tension of not knowing, return to the awareness that we can bear the uncertainty, and be with ourselves through the process, no matter what happens.

5. Question the Scary Thoughts

Our decisions matter, but often, we give our decisions more power over our lives than they actually have and make all sorts of assumptions about how unequivocally wonderful our lives will be if we make the “right” decision and how horrifically bad they will be if we make the “wrong” decision.

When I was deciding something important recently, a turning point came when I realized: I have the ability to be happy no matter what I decide. I still have power and agency to create the life I want, whichever way I go.

Here are some questions for finding (and then challenging) your scary thoughts: What are you making it mean if you choose “wrongly”? Where have you set up strong either/or’s or absolute binaries in your thinking? Are you believing there’s one right (perfect, mythical) outcome? Are you asking for perfection?

Taking some time to identify and question these thoughts can release the pressure valve and open up space for flow and possibility.

6. Return to the Body

Before I make my final decision, I always check in to make sure it’s a “yes” in my body. This has never steered me wrong and has led to so much goodness I could never have predicted at the time.

So wherever you’re discerning and whatever you’re deciding, it really comes down to this: trust yourself and trust the processes you’ve entrusted to hold through the journey. The answers are inside.