Love is Not What You Think: The Art of Loving Yourself

There was a time in my life when I did not like myself much.

I judged almost everything I did as wrong. An unforgiving nagger seemed to live inside my head, spoiling each moment with rotten commentary, demanding attention. At that time, I argued with every thought I had, was unable to relax and just let things be. I was plaintiff, defendant, and judge all at once in my mental puppet theater. 

I truly believed that I was my thoughts and had zero contact with my body. 

One day before I was booked to fly to America to start yet another corporate job, I laid on the floor. I was unable to move. My body literally gave up. I could not take it anymore and needed a break. Yet I tried to fix the problem with more thoughts; tried to override my body with willpower.

As soon as I could move again, I went drinking. And then upgraded my flight to business class for more comfort. And then lived a dulled-down existence for months, feeling out of place and powerless. The nagging went on: “You can’t even make a decision.”

A friend then told me: just love yourself, dude.

But how CAN I love myself? 

And so I read books, listened to all the motivational programs, and tried to reprogram my thinking.

But nothing stuck. 

The more I tried...

… the less I loved myself.

But how was that possible? 

All my life, I thought that failure is the result of not trying hard enough. I thought everything could be fixed with a little more control and effort. In this case, each new attempt at loving myself more just seemed to recreate and perpetuate the problems I was trying to conquer. 

By trying to love myself more, I fostered the idea that I did not do so already.

My underlying assumption was that I lacked something and had to get it.

I tried to find an error, but the mechanism I used was the error itself. 

It’s like trying to play guitar with a piano: it’s never going to work, and eventually you’re probably going to have two totally fucked-up instruments.

And so, my thoughts were the wrong place to look. 

Ideas about love are not love

Thinking that you love yourself and actually loving yourself are two different things. Pictures of Jamaica are not the real Jamaica. Porn is not sex. One is the conceptualized, romantic idea about the thing, the other is the actual thing... beyond concepts and ideas. 

And often, a rigid concept gets in the way of experiencing the actual thing.  

If you really want to avoid experiencing love, become a true believer in the idea of love. Write a book about love. The stronger our belief, the less we experience. You’d better believe that. 

That was certainly the case when I tried to love myself more. 

All the trying and fixing kept my focus in the wrong place: on the content of my thoughts.

But genuine self-love can’t be found within your stream of thoughts. 

Just like the real Jamaica can’t be found on Google Maps. 

Seeing through the game

You might reprogram your language. Or tell yourself more pleasant thoughts about yourself. This is probably better than thinking that you hate yourself. Yet it’s only a plateau. Lasting self-love lives where it does not matter whether you think that you love yourself, or want vanilla ice cream. Working with your thoughts can be a good intermediate step though.

It was for me.

Maybe the intense trying and working within my mind eventually led me to realizing it’s limitations. The breakthrough came when I sat down at the desk in my lifeless NYC apartment and wrote in my journal “I have to love myself” I understood that the “I” and “myself” in that sentence are actually the exact same thing: concepts. 

Who was the I? And which myself was I looking at? Both were static snapshots of my existence. Ultimately, this revealed the game I was playing inside of my head. I created new problems so I could fix them, then fail at fixing them, then keep judging myself for not doing a good enough job. 

And who says you don’t already love yourself? 

Exactly. It’s just a thought. 

Yet, to experience loving ourselves, we need to get our attention out of our heads. 

True Self-Love

Is learning how to leave your mind alone.

You already love yourself, unless you are trying to in your mind. You will likely never catch yourself in the process of loving yourself, just like you can never see your own eyes. As soon as you think about it, you give energy to a game that can only lead to more thoughts.

So we need to learn to get our energy out of our thinking minds.

Now, this can’t be done like in school. Approaching this like an exam is bound to fail. So is trying to get better at it. So is comparing yourself to others. Maybe learning is already the wrong word here. Technically, you already know. You were born loving yourself. 

This is more like quitting an addiction: the addiction to thinking and figuring stuff out. 

And your sober buddy to support you in the process is called noticing. 

Noticing is the effortless act of simply observing what is there, right now. Noticing has no goal, no agenda. Noticing means to apply no doing. Impose no will. As soon as you use noticing to get somewhere, you just think that you are noticing. It’s the easiest, most difficult (no)-thing.

So, your simple note is to simply notice what comes to your awareness.

Your awareness itself is love, not the content of what you are aware of.

You may notice thoughts, or sensations in your body. You might notice sounds. And then some more thoughts. See, without force, if you can’t just notice thinking without arguing, attaching yourself, or trying to change what comes to you. This is practicing self-love. 

If you are like me, you will first get this intellectually.

And then this will be too boring. And you will probably go on with your world travels, or take some psychedelics, or become an Extinction Rebellion Rebel. And what then? Your awareness itself would still be untouched. But you can travel the world and all this reality’s forms with the self-love of awareness.

I guess we can say that your true nature is love, regardless of what you think.

Ways out of your mind

Over the course of my life I had invested a lot of energy into my mind. 

I created a strong fortress of ideas and beliefs, guarded by an army of fearful thoughts. 

The way out for me was–and still is–gradual.

I know that technically I was never trapped inside of my mind. I held the doors closed from the inside. But arriving at this understanding was a path for me, not a magic revelation. 

Your path might look different. What helped me were simple practices like meditation, yoga, silence, nature, fasting, walking, hand-writing. And yes, some amount of traveling and psychedelics too. All practices that forced my attention into the present moment helped. 

Not that I live a purely present life, but I definitely live less for my mind.

What had the biggest impact for me was interpersonal honesty. 

I think that honesty is the quickest pathway out of thinking. It’s a direct route back into the experience of the moment, which, ultimately, is the experience of love. Telling the truth also means confessing lies from the past out-loud, and taking responsibility for your current experience. Sharing opinions is what most people consider honesty. It goes way deeper.

You can learn more about this here and here.

Let’s wrap this up:

I imagine that loving yourself is the state in which you don’t think about it. If our attention is captivated by thinking, you don’t do any good by more thinking. Imagine throwing a stone into a pond and seeing the ripples. How would you calm the pond down?

Let me know if you found this article helpful or join one of my free online sharing circles or Radical Honesty community events. I’m looking forward to seeing you there!