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- How to Love Yourself
Many of us live lives somebody else decided for them. Human Design offers you a path to yourself and what you truly want. This newsletter is about how you get there.
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Enjoy! - Johanna.
Happy Almost-Valentine’s Day! ❤️
Whether you’re celebrating or not (or whether you think this day drenched in red and pink is commercial BS, a marketing ruse), this is a wonderful time to reflect on what it truly means to love yourself and another.
On the occasion, I’m writing a two-part email series on loving yourself and loving others through the lens of HD.
I’m starting with loving yourself.
Loving Yourself is Hard
Most of us have grown up resenting ourselves. There is so much self-loathing.
Unless you grew up with enlightened parenting and a supportive social and societal structure around you (and how does ?), you likely feel a whole host of things about yourself. Many of them the opposite of loving, appreciative, and good towards yourself.
Whichever your perceived problem is (in HD it usually resides in the parts of your charts that are undefined), loving yourself is the key to loving another.
How can you encounter another person, truly, when you’re consumed by how much you doubt, even dislike, yourself?
Then, any encounters instead of being true moments of connection just become battlegrounds, awkward dances in not showing others our perceived imperfections. More so, we hope that others make us feel loved, finally, since we cannot do it ourselves. For many people, it’s like there’s a bottomless black pit deep inside of them they hope somebody else, the world, a pet will fill.
The Challenging Message of Self-Love
Self-love is a tricky message, though. Especially at present.
You just gotta love yourself.
Easier said than done. For somebody with past hurt from their family, relationships, and society, loving yourself more can sound like mockery. If it were that easy!
Self-love is also more than just feel-good rituals. Treating yourself well is an important part of loving yourself.
No bubble path, spa day, yoga class, or mindfulness workshop will solve the existential matter of self-love.
They can make you feel better – good even. Unless you address self love at its core, they’re only band-aids, though. Temporary escapes from the pit of self-loathing that resides inside you.
Loving Yourself Means Trusting Yourself
So, how can you truly love yourself, instead?
Ra Uru Hu, the messenger of the Human Design system shared this lovely quote on loving yourself below.
Loving yourself, the HD way, has little to do with looking in the mirror and telling yourself you’re awesome. If you don’t believe what you’re saying, affirmations are just empty words. You’re effectively telling yourself a lie, hoping that it will become true through repetition.
Instead, loving yourself is trusting yourself.
Learning to trust in your inner wisdom and inner compass. Gradually sinking into the validity of your personal knowing, like on a soft, velvety couch that embraces you warmly every day.
I tell people every day of my life to love themselves. It‘s a very difficult thing for people to do because if you love yourself you trust yourself. And if you trust yourself you love yourself. Part of following Strategy and Authority is to learn to see that you can trust. You can trust your own authority. And out of that trust really comes a sense of love.
I like the wisdom of this quote in particular, because so often the people around us and society ask us to violate our trust in ourselves. It’s when you feel and know you’d rather do one thing or do something in a specific way and then the world comes along and tells you it’s not possible.
To stick with the norm. To behave as expected. To stop following your dreams and inner knowing.
We’re asked to break our trust in ourselves constantly.
To come back to our inner authority means restoring it. Listening to and following our inner voice. And, if you want to follow the insight of Ra Uru Hu, it means you're returning to loving yourself.
By the way, if Strategy and Authority are new to you or you would like a reminder, here is a primer on it.
Have a lovely day,
Johanna
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