Take Your Power Back: Self-Love Month

With all the commercial push to hype love and Valentine's Day spirit, February can pull your energy in a negative direction if your focus is on lack.

Whether you lost a loved one, a relationship, or lost love for yourself, the seasonal depression causes a decrease in your overall confidence and drive, leading to limited activity, ultimately resulting in reduced quality of life.

Taking the time to mourn is very important. Afterall, it's when we go THROUGH the dark tunnel that we make it to the light on the other end. Don't live in the tunnel though. This article is how to help pull yourself into that light.

Notice that regardless of the situation, it's our attachment to ideas (or "distracted emotions," per my Zen master) that causes us to suffer. Attaching to the loss instead of the many gains.

As the Supremes say, "STOP, in the name of Love!"

February is a Self-Love Month for Model CityZens because when we compassionately treat ourselves well inside and out, we're able to internalize life situations in a much more healthy and empowering way.

I want you to try something with me. Look around your room and focus on anything gold in color. Memorize it. Go on. Look all around... I'll wait.

Now I want you to close your eyes and remember everything you saw that was... blue.

It's harder to do, isn't it?

The point is that every situation has good things, "golden things", as well as bad things, "blue things". It's your choice to focus on what you want to experience more of. They're both just as present and your quality of life is up to you.

And there's literally always something to be grateful for. Always.

So the question becomes, "Do you want to be happy or sad?"

It seems like an obvious answer and yet, all too often, people will claim they want to be happy but then actively take steps down the other road. The go-to rationale could sound something like, "I can't just move on, this person mattered." Or "I'll wait until I look better to start loving myself."

Well, check this out!

Shifting from a mindset of lack to abundance, you realize there's a way to have the best of both worlds. Meaning, recognize that you've been focusing on the blue in the room and allow yourself to start noticing the gold.

The primary energy behind that shift is having loving compassion for yourself, and this comes about when you give yourself more grace and and acknowledgment of growth. Instead of allowing yourself to keep wallowing in the hardship aspect, you put the energy in to pick yourself up and dust yourself off.

Self-Love HW

• Make a list of all the "golden things". Whatever serves you best in this challenge.. the things you love about yourself/ are passionate about/ gained from this person/ are grateful for. List as many as possible in 5 minutes, fill a page, or write as long as possible until you have a minute of no ideas coming up. Having all these things centralized in one place makes it easier to fill your mind and focus on the light.
• Rewrite this list daily (or as frequently as needed). This helps take baby steps toward that light by building the internal self-worth muscle that does the picking yourself up.
• Give yourself more grace. Be intentional to do your best each day and don't beat yourself up at the end of it if you didn't make as much progress in your goals as you'd envisioned. A mile is made up of a pattern of taking baby steps.