In our last post, we talked about the definition and the importance of self-love. The relationship that we have with ourselves determines how we view life and the relationships we have with others. For a lot of people, self-love is connected to shame, guilt, sadness, and even anger. With the series ‘The Self-Love-Sofa’ we want to support you on your journey of loving yourself. So you can enjoy the process and let go while trusting the knowledge that all it has to offer is a sense of finally coming home.

“To love yourself right now, just as you are, is to give yourself heaven. Don’t wait until you die. If you wait, you die now. If you love, you live now.” 

-Alan Cohen

What is the Self-Love-Sofa?

Instead of always filling your calendar with appointments with strangers, friends, and family it is time to finally date yourself! The idea behind this concept is to make time for yourself. Time that you pay consciously to your own wellbeing. So you can reconnect with what is really important to you. This routine helps you make a date with yourself so that these meetings take place regularly.

What You Need

This step helps you arrange the date. Find a cozy spot. This can be a sofa, on a cushion, on the carpet, an armchair. It doesn’t really matter what you choose, but make sure it is peaceful and you feel comfortable. It shouldn’t be an object or place you use every day especially not if it’s connected to certain tasks and patterns like for example your desk chair. Make sure that there are no distractions. From now on this space is your own Self-Love-Sofa.

How does it work?

This series will include a couple of practices you can use in this safe space you have created for yourself. They don’t need to be performed perfectly (exactly as written down) and they are not supposed to create extra pressure, but rather a sense of kind guidance. Subsequently you can find our first practice. Consider it to be a present we want you to have and give yourself one by practicing it right now: your first date – with yourself.

The First Date – Getting To Know Each Other

Make sure you are undistracted. Maybe you like to light a candle or switch on your aroma diffuser with a delicious scent like lavender, vanilla, or sandalwood. Now take three deep breaths. With each inhale you take in the calmness of your space and with each exhale you release a little more of your worries, stress, and tension. Really enter this peaceful moment. Now start to connect with yourself. Dare to get to know yourself as you are in this exact moment. View yourself like you would look at a stranger. Free of all perceived prejudices and deadlocked ways of thinking about yourself. Maybe you want to start out your inner dialog by giving yourself a smile and welcoming all that you are. Don’t assume that you already know everything. Be curious and interested, because there is still so much that you can teach yourself, there is still so much you have to tell yourself and there is still so much to feel. How would you like to continue this date? Is there something that you would like to say to yourself out loud? Do you want to dance with yourself? Do you want to look deeply into your own eyes using a mirror? Or do you just want to continue sitting in this peaceful and maybe even totally quiet moment? Whatever it is that the ‘two of you’ would like to do is lovely and a good choice for spending the first conscious time together.

Working on the relationship you have with yourself will free you from your dependency on others and create an honest feeling of liberty.

When you come to the end of your date there is one simple thing you need to make sure of: make an appointment for the next date regardless of how the date went. This is important for a couple of reasons. Maybe you were nervous and wanted to impress yourself so badly that it kind of turned out weird. Maybe you were still stuck with something else on your mind so you weren’t really the most attentful interlocutor. Give yourself the benefit of the doubt that you are capable of more than what you saw and felt on this first date. Or maybe this date turned out so perfectly that it seems like you found the one. In this case, the second date will help you rediscover your whole self with all your quirks and you will learn to see the beauty in that. And maybe you just found this meeting interesting and are not sure about how you feel yet. Going on a second date will help you to get to know yourself better. So whatever your conclusion of this first date with yourself is – it is necessary for you to meet yourself again.

Malaise – Unease

Since you can’t run from yourself anyway why not make sure you befriend yourself?

If this practice triggered you we want you to know that we are proud of you and you should be too. A trigger simply is a detonator for an explosive that is already there. By confronting yourself and daring to look at this trigger you actually looked at a deeper level of yourself and uncovered a mine in your subconscious, which until now may have influenced many aspects of your life and maybe even sabotaged them. By uncovering – it actually gives you the chance to disable the bomb, before it can actually cause any extreme damage or can’t continue to do so. We want to congratulate you for meeting that part of you that somehow feels off when giving attention or even affection to yourself. By sitting with this part and welcoming it you actually create huge potential for discovering patterns that no longer are useful and for creating a peaceful, nourishing soil where new behaviors can grow and thrive.

Will I See You Again?

Don’t turn yourself down. Invite yourself again and find the joy of having found someone that you can be totally authentic with and may even love you for exactly that.

This ‘Self-Love-Sofa’ series will continue with our next blog post. If you want to make sure you don’t miss out on this exciting adventure and want to receive a reminder for your second date subscribe to our newsletter at the bottom of our homepage.