"Love has the shape and feel of water. It is simultaneously flexible and powerful. It can adapt and roar; it can also be silently nourishing." –Yung Pueblo, How to Love Better

We know we need to heal when we slip into being defensive, reactive or regress into any self-protecting behavior - anger, aggressiveness - passive or active. When we cling to perfection at all costs, avoid emotions especially during difficult times, have co-dependent relationships (i.e are unable to be alone for any duration of time), agree to whatever is asked of us whether we are truly able to or not, crave external validation, are highly self-critical and never feel we are enough, the list goes on, but these are many of the more common everyday signs to take note of and thus feel a nudge to discover how to heal. (check out the full list here)

The love we seek, love that is liberating and simultaneously instills a feeling of being at home within yourself, feeling accepted for your full and amazing self that you are. A feeling of both being safe and also energized to explore, grow and discover new ahas, begins with being loving to ourselves.

Without loving who we are, which requires that we truly know who we are, we cannot build a loving relationship with others, any type of relationship, not just romantic.

Today's episode is inspired by a new book written by Yung Pueblo, How to Love Better: The Path to Deeper Connection Through Growth, Kindness, and Compassion. A book that he shares is about romantic relationships, but all that he shares can be applied to any relationship. Knowing this, I began to read it, and the first half of the book, ironically and wisely, is not about other relationships at all. It is all about the relationship between yourself and you, how to thrive and thus how to heal so that you can be loving to yourself and then loving to others.

If any of the items in the list shared above spoke to you or you recognized them in your patterns of how you live life currently and you want to change, you want to grow out of them and understand why you default to them, then this is the episode for you. Let's heal, and then let's learn how to assess whether we've healed or not.

Find the Show Notes for episode #405 on The Simply Luxurious Life blog - https://thesimplyluxuriouslife.com/podcast405