I often hear: How can I authentically practice self-love if I don’t truly love myself?

In the world of personal development, so much advice is predicated on caring for oneself first.

But what if the feeling isn’t there?

We cannot command self-love to manifest, nor should we “fake it till we make it.” But we can nurture it along.

The key to the practice of self-love is… practice!

Here are three ways you can begin to practice now. And remember, be gentle with yourself.

Tend to your instrument

You are a spiritual being with a desire to be human and not the other way around.

Make a daily priority of nurturing your mind-body-spirit connection by practicing presence and awareness with conscious breath and meditation.

Your body is the instrument your soul has chosen for this human adventure. Be kind to it. Be sensitive to the feedback and power of this incredible spiritual-biological miracle that you ride around in.

Attuned and optimized for the manifestation...

Expressing and actualizing the light of our soul is life-giving. It awakens us, enlivens us, inspires our body and our mind, even when this fire comes up as anger, sadness, or hurt. Interfering with this light as it wants to move through our body, is life-interrupting, it stops creativity and strengthens shame and fear, and it isolates us. My adult brain understands this. But my body tells a different story. Every time I try to go beyond the walls of protection I have built inside, no matter how much I know what I want and who I am, my body holds me back, sounding the alarm: this is not safe?

As very young children, our light moved through our bodies uninterrupted. We existed as one reality, with a beautiful coherence between our soul, our feelings, our thoughts, our words and our actions. One us. We had a reverence for this life-force as it guided us creatively through each moment, we were whole. As we grew up, it became more important to manage our light and control how it came...

When you wake up to your soul and you make the decision to live aligned with the life-force of the universe, the way you used to do things will change drastically. You are now taking your cues from a very different place. When decisions were made from the intellect, now it is the heart and the soul that guide insights and choices. When results used to come from managing your days and controlling your environment, now results come from inviting and allowing the universe to unfold through you. You are the instrument for the god-force that you are. The PERSONAL YOU stops "doing". Instead, you are "being done" by the IMPERSONAL YOU.

This is a huge shift in how you live your life and it requires a whole lot of love, compassion, forgiveness and patience toward yourself. Your personal timeline gives way to the timeline of the divine and sacred intelligence of the universe. The details are out of your personal control and are handled by a much greater force moving through you.

You have to...