Self-Acceptance & Self-Love

What if you never messed up?

The Chalice Well Garden, Glastonbury, England

I know what you’re thinking. Everyone makes mistakes, right? That’s how we learn, right? All we have to do is see them as learning opportunities, so we don’t judge ourselves. Isn’t that how it works?

Well, I want to talk for a minute about self- acceptance and self-love as I have been thinking about them a lot just now.

I haven’t been posting much. I want to say something about that too as I am touched that some of you continue to pay me every month and I feel the care from that. I plan to be back much more often and right now, I am working on a writing project.

I am quite dedicated to this project and have been working on it for many years. Now I have decided it is time to complete it. So every day I write and I try do so with love.

It has been going great until I got stuck.

For me, “stuck” meant writing, and then trying again. And then again.

And not feeling good about it.

Then I realized, “Terra, the main issue here for you is around self-love.”

You see, I think it is impossible to experience joy, if there is self-judgement in the way and dang, how does one truly escape regret? Those things seem tied together.

Judgement is such a common thing. It swirls around me in my news feed. I grew up learning what was good and bad and then seeing that I “messed up” if I didn’t do something the way I thought I should have, or the way other people thought I should have?

There is a recent moment I have been sitting with for about a month now.

I was in England speaking to someone over lunch.

I had just told her that I was frustrated as I had really had to struggle in the drawing class I had come from. The instructor wanted us to do something and I felt myself freeze up. So I asked for some support, and she told me to just do it the way she had asked. She didn’t understand. So I had closed my eyes for a minute and negotiated with the younger version of me, who was never taught to draw animals out of her head, or really taught any formal drawing at all. I knew that the lesson was headed towards frustration for me and that was not why I was there.

I came up with a strategy that worked for me, after stepping out of the room and offering myself some compassion.

I wished the instructor had understood and been able to honor my request.

“Terra, I had a spiritual teacher once. He told me, when I mentioned something similar, that if he had been that person, who had lived the same life, he would have done the same thing.”

I had to think about that for a minute.

“You know Terra, it really landed for me as then I saw that people are always doing what they do based on their experiences and where they are at with them.”

I realized just now that although that made sense to me and helped me relax regarding the situation in the class, I had not applied that to myself and my past.

There are many times in my life I still feel like I messed up.

And that is just silly as I am also sure that I have always done my best with who I was and where I was at in the moment.

Perhaps right now you are thinking of something terrible you may have done? Perhaps you feel that righteous judgement towards yourself or someone else, or towards a past you wish you could change?

But what if you and they, didn’t mess up?

What if everyone around you, including yourself, is and was growing from the experience. Maybe you or they didn’t like it, but what if no one messed up?

What if?

I don’t think it is possible to feel joy without self love.

You are here, as a creation of the divine, doing your best, even when you judge yourself and tell yourself you should have known better.

In the end, there is nothing to judge. Just a life that you lived and are living, based on where you are at in the moment.

Love is an inside job.

It starts with deciding you never messed up.

It starts with seeing people doing what they do, and knowing that if you were them…not your consciousness in their body, but actually them, with the same experiences and past, you would be doing the same thing they did.

Self love is a big deal.

And acceptance of others where they are at is a big deal too.

I think self-love, which makes space for joy, starts with self-acceptance and knowing that you are a soul, on a journey.

And you are enough.

Best wishes from me to you…and just saying…as the question continues to swirl around me here as well…

What if you didn’t mess up?

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