Is Self Love A Prerequisite To Soulmate Love?

Self-love seems to be the hot topic in the personal growth movement these days and when it comes to finding soulmate love, there are a lot of myths that until you love yourself first, you won’t be able to get anyone else to love you.  Can this really be true?

My experience has been that most women (at least in the Northern hemisphere) live with a negative, critical voice in their heads that is often filled with ugly, shaming thoughts, self-doubt, and brings with it feelings of never being “good enough.”

And, I began to wonder, do you really have to eliminate that persistent voice in order to find true love?

Do we really need to be 100% in love with ourselves to experience Big Love?

I don’t think so.

What is required is to learn how to “talk back” to that voice and create strategies to love yourself more and better.  This includes a big dose of self-awareness so that when the “voice surfaces” you kick its butt!

For instance, you walk past a mirror and immediately react by thinking “God, you look like a total piece of $#it today.” Immediately stop. Walk back to the mirror, give yourself a big smile and blow yourself a kiss and say something warm and loving to your reflection.  This is called self-care and self-soothing.  Over time, you can change your habitual negative thinking by in-putting loving and uplifting thoughts and beliefs about yourself. And, please, never forget that just because you have a thought does not make it true!

Now, as for soulmate love, one of the greatest, most awesome things about living your life with your soulmate, is that you begin to heal each other in unimaginable ways. When you spend time with someone who loves all of you – the good, the bad and the ugly – you begin to love yourself even more.

So many women are “waiting“ to actively seek their soulmate because they feel stuck in how they feel about themselves.  This is a very selfish thing to do.

Why?  Because, just as you desire to spend your life with your soulmate, they are also seeking you.  And if you are holed up at home, on the couch, watching the Kardashians or the Property Brothers, they can’t find you!

Now, while learning to love yourself a little bit more and more, it’s also important to know that once you do manifest the love of your life, you teach them how to treat you by the way they witness how you treat yourself.  I learned this from my husband Brian. Once we got married and began living together, I noticed how he always prioritized his health and well-being.  At first, I made up stories about how selfish he was because he wasn’t always flexible about the time he took to meditate and exercise.  When I finally asked him about it his response floored me.  He explained that by sticking to his personal care schedule, he was able to fill himself up so that the rest of the day he had more love and more energy to give to me and the rest of the world.

Wow.  What an insight that was for me.  I soon began to follow in his footsteps.

Self-love is important and please know that if your soul is calling for a soulmate, the voice in your head shouldn’t be a barrier to love.

Wishing you love, laughter and magical kisses,

Arielle