Appreciate: 4 Ways to Fall in Love with Yourself by Forgiving Your Body - Part 4
Step 4
Photo by Markus Spiske
My Body
I keep a list of commitments that are the guiding light of my life. I do this instead of setting goals. Fuck goals. One of my commitments is that when I hit an upper limit, I breathe, feel my feelings, move my body, speak my truth, and expand my nervous system's capacity for aliveness, love, intimacy, vulnerability, and connection. Part of the way I do this is through self-appreciations. I have an inner critic that is a nasty motherfucker. Nothing is ever quite good enough for him. This part of me kept me from being able to accept myself, much less fall in love with myself. If I can't love myself in a clear and clean way, I can't authentically love anyone else either.
This step on your body forgiveness journey truly is modern-day magic.
Step 4: Appreciate Yourself and Fall in Love
Provided you've been following along and doing the work outlined in Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3, you've reach a state of body value acceptance. You'll have learned how to sink deeply into your body. And, you’re practicing regular forgiveness of your body.
Now, you get to build on top of your new foundation. You are about to develop a deep appreciation for yourself; body included.
If you follow the appreciation steps below every day for two months, you will be transformed. You will become the source of your own love, attention, and even sex. You will never lack for any of those again. Not only that, but you will also be overflowing with the same. Get ready to fall in love with yourself.
The practice is so simple that any child could do it, but it is not a quick-fix. It requires daily practice. I learned this practice from my mentor Katie Hendrikcs, and it's called the Appreciation Challenge.
Why Appreciate?
Research from John Gottman shows that to have a good relationship with a partner, you must have a 5:1 appreciation to criticism ratio or higher. With a 1:1 ratio, the relationship is destined for failure, with you and your partner going separate ways. Similar research was done in 2004 with a focus on teams instead of romantic relationships with similar results.
The same is true of the relationship with yourself, except you can’t get a divorce from yourself. My dear, you are stuck with yourself.
Do you have an inner critic? Most people do. It’s that voice that is always putting you down and complaining about how your current life situation is not good enough. You’re too fat, too slow, too dumb, too angry, not pretty enough, not charismatic enough, not living up to your potential, and you make too many mistakes. Sound familiar? Yeah, me too. Your inner critic is more than an annoyance. If left untreated, it can take you down the path of mental illnesses like personality disorders, addiction, and even suicide.
“If you want to create vital, long-lasting love, you must become a master of verbal & nonverbal appreciation.”
Consider how many criticisms of yourself and your life situation come up for you per day?
Got that number?
Okay, now consider how many self appreciations you give yourself per day.
Which is bigger? What is the ratio?
If you are like most people, your self-appreciations are near non-existent, while your self-criticisms are numerous. Maybe 1:5 instead of 5:1 even as low as 1 appreciation for every 100 criticisms.
My dear, this is no way to live. It’s a personal prison that holds you back from being your best self, from accepting your body, and from falling in love with yourself!
Don’t worry, you can change this pattern with a bit of discipline around appreciation.
Just like as mentioned in the research linked above, sharing appreciations will dramatically transform a relationship with someone else, self appreciations will radically transform the relationship with yourself. The shift allows more love, attention, and even sex to enter your life.
Starting today, do the following activity every day for the next 66 days.
Transformative Activity: Write a F’ing Self-Appreciation
Photo by Carrie Beth Williams
Step 1
Find a quiet place and something to write with.
Step 2
Write down, type, or record five self-appreciations. A self-appreciation is a statement in this format:
I appreciate myself for <something you did, or some innate quality you have>.
Be specific. Don’t just write some lazy-ass appreciation like “I appreciate myself for being nice.” Instead, be specific like “I appreciate myself for the way I smile and say hello to my barista Nichole every morning.”
These are a few of my own self-appreciation from 2019:
In my interactions with others, I really appreciate the way I look them in the eye.
I appreciate how I’m getting better at accepting compliments.
I appreciate the ways I create beauty in my life when I fold my clothes and stack them in my closet.
I appreciate how I solve problems by asking for help.
I appreciate that I’m becoming more aligned with my inner and outer purpose.
It really is this simple. I know it might not be comfortable at the start 💛. Stick with it! This work will dramatically transform your inner experience of life, and maybe your outer experience too. This process of self-love and body forgiveness starts with your inner work first.
When you fill your own cup and overflow the brim, it becomes easy to share your overflowing joy with others. And, you will find that it attracts the same.
Extra Credit
After you have been doing self-appreciations for a while, you can try on some extra credit. This is next-level shit.
Extra Credit - 1 : Say your self-appreciations out loud into a mirror.
Extra Credit - 2: Recite your self-appreciations to people who know and love you.
Extra Credit - 3: Make a stranger smile by responding with a self-appreciation when they usually ask you, “How ya doin’?”
Extra Credit - 4: Sign up for my mentor Katie Hendricks’ 66 days of self-appreciation challenge
Extra Credit - 5: Record a video and post it on social of you appreciating yourself.
This work really does work. Fuel yourself first until entirely full, and the same will be reflected back to you from the world. You need and deserve love and attention, and the secret is that you can create it for yourself. And, when you do, you will be overflowing with all the love and attention that is attracted back to you.
Photo by Charry Jin
Bonus: Find a Mirror and Fuck Yourself
What would it be like to really be your own source of sex? What if you didn’t need to look outside of yourself to get your physical needs for touch, connection, and orgasm? How much time do you spend searching, swiping, texting, and hinting & hoping?
“Repeat often: I am the source of my own sexual pleasure.”
You can. You can be the best fuck of your life and so overflowing with creative sexual energy that you manifest creativity, joy, and sexual connection into your life.
I want to connect with you. I want to hear about your thoughts, critiques, stories, and experiences in the comments section below. I want to reach out to you with new content as I create it. Go ahead, make a new connection 💛.
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My shoulder will eventually heal
Only Love Is Left in the End
In Part 1, you learned about how your body is connected to the millennia of your ancestors. In Part 2, you got in touch with the sensations of your body. In Part 3, you found a bit of self-forgiveness. And, you learned how to silence your inner critic with self-appreciation. You may have even rekindled a love affair with yourself by unlocking my activity Find a Mirror and Fuck Yourself.
No matter where you are on your journey, learning to love your body, precisely as it is, will have dramatic effects on your life. Your inner experience will start to shift. Your external experience will be formed by the way people sense your brightly shining love of self. Your body is fucking amazing!
Hmmm, I wonder what it would be like to start a torrid love affair with yourself?
xo
—Jason
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