Love Yourself Into It

A lot of us look at achieving our dreams and goals as something far off in the future... As something that’s going to require us to become someone else in order to reach them. And we consciously, or otherwise, delay them for when we’re “good enough,” “smart enough,” “strong enough,” etc., instead of looking at what we can do now to inch closer.

We end up stuck in judgment and inadequacy, never moving toward what we want for ourselves; and because of that, we end up affirming our negative self-perception.

But the only thing ever stopping us from getting what we want is us, and our lack of belief in what we can truly accomplish.

We compare our day one to someone else’s day one thousand and immediately perceive it as unattainable, because we don’t give ourselves the patience and grace we deserve while learning how to become a better version of ourselves.

We get frustrated when we don’t see overnight success or immediately grasp something that would typically take months or years to master, and then we give up - surrendering to what already is and locking ourselves into lives we don’t feel good about.

Then resentment builds. It becomes harder and harder to be happy for others, harder to be happy at all, harder to look at ourselves, and harder to be honest about our reality; because deep down, we know we aren’t showing up for it. But life doesn’t have to be that way. We don’t have to imprison ourselves in things we don’t desire or punish ourselves for not reaching unrealistic standards we’ve set solely in our own minds. We can instead love ourselves into becoming who we wish to be.

And I know that’s not necessarily as easy as it sounds - especially if we’ve been conditioned to do the opposite (which most of us have). But it is possible. And if you can let that be enough - that it’s possible - you can get to your desired goal.

Take one of your goals, big or small, and really look at it - hell, write it down. Then take the time to consider what it would actually take to get there. It may appear daunting and far off in some make-believe future, but nobody is expecting you to transform overnight like some sort of Marvel character. And honestly, nobody even needs to know what you’re working toward at all until it’s done, or until you want them to know.

It can be your little secret. Your personal win.

You don’t need the external validation anyway, you just need to be happy with yourself and the life you wake up to each day - and I promise that once you’re there, that personal happiness is more than enough.

Now take that goal you wrote down, and beginning with the end in mind, think about all the steps it would take to reach it - working backward from the goal itself to where you currently are. This is a method I’ve picked up from a few different places, including my own experiences, and it works.

A lot of the overwhelm we feel comes from stopping at the vision.

We see the end result and freeze there, stuck in comparison and self-doubt, instead of taking the time to meet ourselves where we are and mapping out a path forward; and that’s what makes the goals feel far away - and what makes the inadequacy feel so deep.

But if we say we, for example, want our dream body and expect overnight abs, of course it’s going to feel impossible. Versus in comparison - simply committing to ten minutes of movement a day - something that builds consistency, discipline, trust with yourself over time, and leads you straight toward your end goal.

If you can allow yourself the grace to start where you are, and the patience for things to unfold, you can do anything - and will often gain more than you were even hoping for in the process.

All your dreams truly require is consistency and loving yourself enough to give yourself a fighting chance at reaching them. The time will pass anyway, and only you get to decide what to do with it.

Will you repeat the cycle of punishing yourself for “not being enough,” or will you love yourself into the change you want to see?

The choice is yours.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMTAMWkIF7A