The concept of self love is very often discussed in the manifesting community and a lot of definitions are thrown around as to what it means to love yourself.
Some will associate self love with self care – such as taking care of yourself, treat yourself to pedicures, or taking yourself out on dates. And it is all of this, without a doubt. Other people will associate self love with activities such as talking to yourself in front of a mirror, writing yourself love letters, or affirming all sorts of favorable things about yourself. And it is also all of this, as well.
However, in my opinion, there is one thing that is the ultimate act of self love that we should all aspire to. And that is, giving ourselves our best life and committing to living this life every single day. Contrary to popular belief (including within the manifesting community), we don’t need to wait for our manifestations to come in before we can live our best life. This is something we can do right here, right now, with what we already have, regardless of the status of our manifestations. All it takes is an inner shift and a knowing that we are already whole and complete and that everything has already been given to us. Our manifestations are done and will materialize sooner or later, but they are only meant to add to the feeling of already being whole rather than induce it. In other words, we are not manifesting to become happy, we are manifesting to add to our completeness.
Living one’s best life takes a combination of determined inner imagination and in some cases, inspired action in the 3D reality. Deciding who we want to be and taking any necessary steps that will support this state – that will naturally come from the state we have stepped into – is what leads us to living our best life. Even if we’re not ‘there’ yet, being happy and content with the direction our life is going towards is enough to give us a feeling of fulfillment and self realization.
Taking care of our ‘messes’ in life (whether they be physical, emotional, in our relationships with others, to-do lists that never get tackled, or something else) is also going to ease our emotional load significantly and add to our general wellness and wellbeing – physical, emotional, psychological, and mental. This also contributes to bringing order back into our life, feeling in control, having a sense of accomplishment, and ultimately feeling content with ourselves and our life.
And that is the definition of living your best life and aligning your mental and emotional states with your physical reality to expand yourself into new, better, more complete versions.
Anxious thoughts and feelings are common when manifesting, especially in the beginning stages of one’s manifesting journey where we don’t yet fully understand or appreciate own true power. Regardless, such states can feel very real and all-consuming while we’re going through them. So with this in mind, here are a few practical tips that can help you feel better and break the intrusive thought patterns when they start arising.
1) Start breathing in and out slowly. Focus all your attention on your breathing. This will interrupt the pattern of intrusive thoughts in your mind. Repeat the breathing until you feel better – typically it only takes a few minutes or less.
2) Get up and move your body. Go for a walk or a jog. Hit the gym. Dance in your living room. Do some yoga. Even clean your home if you prefer. Moving your body helps any pent up blocked energy to move through you and you will quickly feel much better.
3) Remember the fundamentals of the Law. Your desire already exists in the quantum field (4th dimension) – you’re not creating anything from scratch, you’re just focusing on your desired outcome to bring it forth to the 3D. Your desire is already your and waiting for you!
4) Distract yourself. Anything in point #2 is a great option here, or you can do something else. Read a book. Watch a movie. Call a friend. Clean up a mess in your home. Check your to-do list and pick an item or two to tackle. Anything that doesn’t require any deep level of thinking and can distract your mind through entertainment or can help you feel like you’re accomplishing something will do.
5) If you’re still feeling anxious and worried, give yourself a hug. Allow yourself to let out any feelings and don’t be afraid to cry, scream, punch a pillow, or anything else might help you feel better. Remind yourself that everything will be ok, that you are ok, that you are worthy and loved, and that you will feel better again soon.
Self love is a favorite topic in the manifesting community, along with self concept. Yet there seems to be some confusion over what self love actually refers to and even more so, how you practice it. Beyond that, there is the ever ongoing debate about whether self love is actually needed to manifest your desires or if it is something that is purely pursued for self improvement, but has nothing to do with conscious manifestation. In this post, we are going to attempt to tackle these questions and give some clarity.
What is self love? Self love is not to be confused with self care, such as treating yourself to a spa, massage, pedicure, or taking yourself out on a date, although self care is definitely a part of self love – and an important one at that. It is also not to be confused with arrogance, a sense of self significance over others, or a self concept of others not deserving you and needing to beg for your attention because you are so much better than them. Self confidence and feeling secure in yourself are essential for self development, but arrogance is actually nothing more than insecurity in disguise. Self love though is much broader and encompassing of many more things than just self care, confidence, or security in self. I would actually argue that these terrific traits are the result and byproduct of practicing self love in the first place, but not its definition. Self love is synonymous with unconditional self acceptance, as well as belief and trust in oneself.
Self acceptance means that you embrace the concept of your wholeness and perfection at all times while recognizing your human imperfections and forgiving yourself for these. It means realizing that you are whole and perfect just as you are by virtue of having being born in this world as a human by God’s will. This alone means that there is nothing else needed for you to be perfect and whole. No fixing anything, no healing anything, no intervening in anything, no beating yourself up, no putting in effort – you are already perfect, whole, and complete right now, in this moment, just as you are. You always have been and you always will be. This does not mean that doing inner work and pursuing self development is wrong or unnecessary, but you recognize that it is something you do in order to expand your consciousness and ultimately find it easier to realize and embrace the perfection you already are, but not something you need to do in order to bring about that perfection in yourself. This also means that you accept and trust that you are in the perfect place in your life journey at any given time and that you don’t blame yourself for not being “further along” where your ego mind thinks you should be. It means that you shed all guilt, fear, doubt, and self reproach and that you believe in your power to bring about any change you desire in your life and trust yourself to have all the answers within – and this is all by virtue of being born, not something to try to attain or to strive for. Now, since we are all human, we of course have flaws – or at least what we perceive as flaws. We may feel we don’t have the perfect skin, the perfect body, the perfect confidence, the perfect sense of self worth, the perfect skills to succeed in what we want etc. – the list is endless. Self love doesn’t care about any of this. Self love embraces all perceived imperfections and still sees perfection and wholeness no matter what. If you can make remembering and reinforcing this within yourself a daily practice, you will soon start to feel a difference in how you feel about yourself, others, your circumstances, and the world at large. And the confidence, self acceptance, security in self, and desire to take care of yourself will come automatically, along with many other wonderful things.
The question of whether self love is needed to manifest your desires or not is a “hot topic” with many coaches having differing opinions about it. In my point of view, this is a false dilemma of sorts. Here’s why: you don’t actually “need” anything to manifest. Your desires are automatically manifested and the bridge of incidents becomes activated the moment you conceive of a desire. Yes, there are things that can delay these bridges from fully materializing and make them take a more roundabout way. But ultimately, the manifestation of your desires is inevitable, even if it becomes significantly delayed along the way for all the different reasons that are beyond the scope of this post. That being said, a lack of self love – in the form of accepting, believing in, and trusting in yourself as detailed above – is sure to be one of the main factors – if not the most significant one – to delay your desires from becoming manifest in the 3D world, or bringing about incomplete, partial manifestations, or a lot of hot and cold results. You may also find that your manifestation is inconsistent, where you can’t seem to fully keep it in your life, or it manifests in ways that you don’t prefer. The reason is simple: if you don’t believe in yourself and your power, if you don’t trust your inner being to be wise and limitless, and if you don’t maintain the feeling of knowing yourself as perfect and complete no matter what the 3D reality may be mirroring, you are going to be filled with doubt, anxiety, insecurities, fears, and all those unproductive feelings that disturb our inner balance. This is exactly what gives rise to the unwanted or incomplete results I just mentioned since this is where you dominantly put your energy. It does not mean that your desires will not ultimately manifest, but it may be a much longer, more painful, and much less direct way than otherwise, and if the lack of self love continues, it may be mixed with other unwanted results and may never feel quite complete.
Since what we teach on this website is simpler, easier, faster, more effortless ways to manifest our desires, self love as described in this post is essential for a general sense of wellbeing. And having a dominant sense of wellbeing and inner balance is the surest way to bring about your desired outcomes fast and easy, in a way that is effortless, feels natural, is consistent, and actually feels very rewarding. So I would urge everyone to prioritize deepening your self love practice on a daily basis with the main goal of feeling well, balanced, and content within. The results are sure to follow and may be even better than you could have ever imagined.
There is a lot of confusion and misinformation in the manifesting community about what self concept really refers to. Most coaches and manifesting practitioners out there will usually define self concept (or concept of self) as your thoughts, beliefs, and assumptions about yourself. Some will even go a step further and define it as your own set of thoughts, beliefs and assumptions about yourself in relation to another person, situation, or circumstance in your life. This is why most of the time you are being told to affirm for your self concept if there are changes you want or feel you need to make. While all this is undoubtedly true and accurate, it doesn’t tell the whole story. Self concept actually goes much deeper than your beliefs about yourself, and while affirming for it is totally fine, I would argue that self concept actually encompasses your entire view of your entire world. Let’s dive in a little deeper.
Change your conception of yourself and you will automatically change the world in which you live.
Neville Goddard, “Your Faith is Your Fortune”
Neville spoke a lot about self concept, yet always in a broader, more encompassing way than most modern coaches do. Yes, it is all about who you think, feel, believe, assume yourself to be in each area and aspect of your life, but it actually also includes how you perceive everything and everyone else that comes into your 3D experience in one way or another. Let me explain. Those of us practicing conscious creation know that ‘the whole vast world is yourself pushed out’ to use another popular Neville quote. This means that everything and everyone we experience in our current reality is perceived and interpreted through the filter of our own self concept and it actually mirrors back to us a piece of our own consciousness.
Simply put, if I’m dominantly wearing the self concept of victimhood, I am likely to perceive anything my friend, specific person, colleague or anyone else in my reality does or says through that lens and interpret it as further confirmation of my existing victimhood bias, therefore most likely feel rejected, abandoned, unloved, unworthy, or wronged by them one way or another. This will also affect my view of what is or isn’t possible for me in my life, for example I may find it much harder to believe that I have a good shot at a promotion at work and may use my victimhood mentality to further confirm to myself that this is impossible for me because my boss hates me and my work colleagues are against me. Because I see myself through the filter of victimhood, I am also likely to attract circumstances and people in my life further confirming this bias, which may often come not just from myself but from other people as well and their own circumstances. For example, I may have a colleague at work who often complains to me about similar issues as the ones I myself always seem to face – how they are always passed up for a promotion, how the boss doesn’t like them, how they always get the worst shifts because the manager is on a mission to make their life miserable, or how they can never make ends meet with how much they’re getting paid. Over time, and usually without realizing, my concept of victimhood will also extend beyond my immediate life and environment and I will start seeing evidence of it anywhere I look, confirming my bias even more – for example, in the news, in social media, through stories I hear about friends of friends, or even broadly accepted concepts by society which further prove to me that my concept of the world is truly accurate. For remember, everything around us is in reality a manifested experience, forever matching our inner world and providing evidence of who we are within.
By contrast, if my dominant self concept is that of someone who is loved, appreciated, respected, seen and heard in their reality, my experience in life and the world is likely to be vastly different. To take the same examples as above, I probably already have my promotion at work which I got in a shorter time than most other people in my company, and I probably didn’t even think twice about whether I deserved it, or of any obstacles in pursuing it in the first place. I likely thought from the outset that I had a great chance of getting it because I’m great at what I do, my work is appreciated by my superiors and I know that my colleagues love me, just as I love them. Besides, I know I interview well and I further justify this to myself because I’ve been offered most jobs I’ve interviewed for in my career. My work environment is likely a healthy, fun one and I enjoy spending time with my teammates and forming connections with them. I don’t think anyone hates me, and even if I stumble on the occasional hiccup with someone at work, I confidently resolve the issue with them in a friendly and respectful manner, which actually has the positive side effect of bringing us closer as colleagues. I am likely to hear a lot about others’ work opportunities, successes and promotions, and my broader view of the world is also likely to mirror similar incidents back to me, for example my friend posting on social media about her new job offer, my other friend being super excited about starting their own business, and a third friend telling me about their brother moving to another country to pursue an exciting opportunity. I am also likely to think of others as successful, happy with their work lives and always progressing professionally in ways that satisfy and fulfill them. For my consciousness is what creates what I get to experience in my world and the world has no choice but to mirror back to me evidence of who I am inside through personal experiences, but also through other people and their own circumstances.
You see then that self concept goes far beyond who I perceive myself to be and that it actually reflects who I perceive the entire world to be, including who I am in relation to everything and everyone in my world and how the world treats me. It also includes what I feel and believe is possible for me and why, and what I expect to experience in each situation or circumstance involving myself and others – whether they are in my inner circle or whether it’s society as a whole. Simply put, self concept is the identity we dominantly wear in the world that determines what we see, perceive, focus on, believe, assume, think, feel, and ultimately what energy we put out into the world as well as what energy we receive back from the world around us.
