Fall in love with yourself now

Fall in Love with Yourself

When I tell you hundreds of books Come to my desk every year, I mean it. Staff editors at wellness publications get review copies and manuscripts most selling self-love, Display radical happiness and Hopeful to be life changing every day. Few get read in entirety. None have ever, in fact impacted my life in any significant way until now.

I started reading Jenifer Pastilof’s On Being Human one especially lonely week-end when my friends were partying in an HGTV house we’d leased for a birthday.Instead of reveling in the Rocky Mountains, I was in the fetal position thinking about dying—because endometriosis is murder, and that’s another story. I’d brought home a review copy of Pastiloff’s memoir simply because I’d recognized her name from Instagram. Or maybe it was because magic is real and the Universe was offering me an olive branch. I kind of like not knowing.

Pastiloff’s book brilliantly details her own triumph over anorexia and self-hatred fueled by crippling depression—and the similar transformations of women in her retreats and workshops that she bears witness to as some kind of anomalous yoga teacher/sisterhood guru. Suddenly I was cutting up Post-Its to mark passages, highlighting words I needed to hear and keep hearing, and texting iPhone photos of paragraphs to friends whose very own souls also seemed to be leaping off the pages of a manifesto relishing imperfection and shushing self-doubt. I felt a surge of cosmic connection—of being seen by a stranger. So I did something bold and unusual and a little bit scary. I messaged Jen and told her how I felt like she was speaking directly to me. That I felt a little silly telling her that at all, but fuck it, right? That I’d love to attend, and write about, her On Being Human retreat in France in May. And could she offer a reduced media rate or host a member of the press—a.k.a. me?

A few months later, as I tried to put the beauty and absurdity of her retreat on paper—seven days spent workshopping and laughing and dancing and stargazing and holding hands and hearts at a dreamy 17th-century chateau with some of the most dazzling people I’ve ever met—I couldn’t help thinking: This book actually changed my life.

Besides friendships and precious memories, I’m walking away with tools to make each day a bit brighter, to see the beauty in myself and others, and to quiet that little voice that tells me I’m not good enough—that I should have published my own book by now, that I’m behind or undeserving or unlovable. These are just a few of the ways I learned to open up and love myself more—and you can, too.

Try these practices daily for radical self-acceptance.

1 BE A BEAUTY HUNTER

Beauty hunting means looking around and counting as many gorgeous miracles as you can possibly absorb in that moment. The sound of rain on the roof. Clouds parting in the sky. Puppies. Baby feet. The smells of barbecues and fresh-cut grass and a hoppy IPA. It’s actually kind of impossible to be miserable and ungrateful when you’re collecting lovely things. You’ll be surprised. The more beauty you seek and appreciate about a person or place or experience—quieting the inner monologue about what’s annoying you—the more you’ll actually like yourself, too. Love and compassion are just muscles. Use them on others when it’s too hard to use them on yourself, and pretty soon it’ll be difficult to remember why you were so self-critical in the first place.

2 OUTSMART YOUR INNER ASSHOLE

Your Inner Asshole (IA) is the voice that tells you you’re awful and no one likes you and you’ll never accomplish your dreams and you’re stupid for even wanting them. Or at least that’s what mine says to me. Your IA will never stop trying to tell you what Jen calls “bullshit stories”—messages of self-doubt that are completely unfounded but often paralyzing. In one of her workshops, she asked us each to write some of ours down. Passionate love doesn’t last. I’m not important enough to write what I want. I’ll never find financial freedom.

Then she asked us to close our eyes and think of someone who makes us feel safe, loved, and understood—and write a letter to ourselves from that person’s point of view. I thought of my friend Hannah, who laughs at my jokes and thinks I’m adorable when I’m gross and never judges my questionable choices as long as I’m following my truth. I channeled her and wrote myself a letter of admiration:

Linds, If you could see what I see, you’d know that you are a badass B. I’ve watched you reawaken and take responsibility for your life in a way that is so cool and powerful. I love seeing you realize what you deserve and going for it. You’ve always had a way of making those around you recognize their own light. Yours, too, is so bright: I love seeing you shine. You are strong. You are brave. You are beautiful. Keep going. I’ve got you. I’m walking you home.

3 EMBRACE VULNERABILITY

When Brené Brown coined the term “vulnerability hangover,” the woman had my number. I am the queen of wallowing in self-loathing after a night of putting my true self out on the table (usually thanks to lowering my inhibitions with alcohol, if I’m being honest). A friend of mine in college called it “the Weirds” when I woke up one morning, hungover, paralyzed by fear that no one liked me anymore. “We all get the Weirds,” he reassured me.

And no matter how many times I’ve woken up with said Weirds, no one who’s witnessed me be outrageously myself has ever decided they no longer enjoy my company. As it turns out, I’m the only person who cringes after a night of wearing my heart on my sleeve.

In Jen’s workshop, we were vulnerable from day one. We wrote down our deepest fears about ourselves and read them out loud before we could even remember each other’s names. We read letters to our 16-year-old selves and poems we’d only been given a few minutes to write. We told each other all the horrible self-loathing thoughts our IAs were ramming down our throats. And you know what? It was freeing.

There were no pretences to keep up with. We had come to a safe space without our armor, and we did not die without it. We loved each other more because we could see each other better.

4 GIVE YOURSELF AN F’ING MEDAL

Apparently, at one of Jen’s earlier retreats, there was a woman who was not having all the Kum-ba-yah-ing. As she drove away a day or so early, she told Jen, “I have to go. I need yoga. This is Feelings 101.”

Jen told us she could feel herself shutting down in that moment. She went back to the other women at the retreat and announced that they’d be doing asana for the rest of the day. Later that night, drinking wine with the others, she could feel herself looking for validation. “I wanted someone to appease my IA,” she told us. The other women just listened.

That’s when she had her epiphany: You have to do all the hard work of loving yourself—yourself. “No one was ever going to permit me to be myself. I had to do it,” she says. So on one of our very last days together, we sat baking in the warm sun on a wooden yoga platform in Southern France. We stood up, one after another, and gave ourselves fucking medals. For being a fiercely feminist. For having kids. For not having kids. For telling the hard stories. For surviving. For getting out of bed. For beating cancer. For eating the bread. Moreover, we all cheered and laughed and said, “I got you” and were in awe of each other’s strength and beauty, and we meant it.