From Self-Love to Soul-Love

How do you feel about yourself when you are by yourself?  

Self-love is all about exploring yourself within by discovering accord with your inner soul. The horizon of self-love is not limited to solo dates, spa treats, exotic delicacies, mesmerizing vacations, indulgence in opulent things, and high rankings. The journey of self-love to soul-love is something beyond these all. Let's see a few points that can help to trigger an urge to jump-start with the transition journey from self-love to soul-love.  

1. Unfair Advantage - Flaws, imperfections, and weaknesses make you one of a kind. On the other hand, you are blessed with so many things that can patch broken pieces together. Finding your blessings helps to take optimum unfair advantage. Find the variables that will help to supersede your flaws, imperfections, and weaknesses. Unfair advantage is all about finding that one thing you are extremely good at and taking unfair optimum advantage of the same. It could be a skill, talent, or hobby. My unfair advantage is delivering content that empathizes with people, connects emotionally with the readers, touches the hearts of wisdom seekers, and leaves a mark on people's lives. An unfair advantage is not always bad though! 

2. Spiritual Retreat - This purifies the impurity of your thoughts and actions. Anxiety, fears, overthinking, and depression have become a part of life. Listening to mantras, chanting prayers, tuning into your soul with meditation, feeling deep breathing by keeping both hands on the chest, body relaxation yoga, and body stretching exercises help to tap the miracles of spiritual retreat. It is like finding the serenity inside by tuning out of the outer chaos. Spare some time for these divine retreats every day. 

3. Solitude Pathway - Here, suppression gets the way of expression. Sometimes, we choose to keep frustration, agitation, and irritation in our minds by being worried about people's judgments or thinking that nobody is interested in our wearisome life stories. Solitude is a mindfulness practice of having a peaceful inner talk. Only you can solve your problems, others may just help you. Only you can discover what makes your life content, others can only direct you. People are afraid of loneliness but in reality, they are afraid of self-talk that reveals the true core. Not everyone is comfortable with this revelation but without self-awareness, self-knowing and self-improvement are just impossible. Solitude is your time with yourself. Solitude is your company to yourself. Solitude is your alliance with yourself to know yourself better. 

4. What Matters - What matters? Self-knowing is only possible when you decide to be vigilant about what matters the most in your life. Let it be a personal or professional area, you must try to know what serves the best possible purpose for your growth and progress. Asking this one simple question will give an idea of what has to be there in your life and what has to be discarded from life. It is like cleaning the dust and decluttering unnecessary stuff that is there in life. After all, the simplest things hold the capacity to bring a significant change in life. So, what matters?

5. Crazy Bucket - Self-pity, self-blame, and victim mentality shall be trashed in this bucket. There is a story behind this idea of a "crazy bucket". One day, I had a conversation with a 5-year-old kid when I was enjoying my solitude time on the beach. The kid was busy segregating beautiful shells and conchs of different sizes and shapes from the random stones that he had collected on the beach. Due to my curiosity, I asked him why he put aside random stones in the plastic bucket. His answer was, "I just want to trash the random stones in my crazy bucket so I can leave them behind on the beach and I wish to take these colorful shells and conches with me. I am just discarding what I don't need in this crazy bucket. From this incident, I got the idea of a "crazy bucket". Create your crazy bucket and make sure you trash toxic bonds and unwanted thoughts there. Well, this is an imaginary bucket that will help you to be sorted with bonds and thoughts. What do you choose to trash in your "crazy bucket" then? 

6. Energy Supply - Where your focus goes, that thing grows! Most of the time, the mental and physical energy is somewhere in memories of past or future worries. Problems and issues that bother you now may seem ridiculous in the future. Hence, decide the area wisely where you choose to flow your mental and physical energy.  

7. Let Go - It is difficult to let go of the haunting past mistakes, disturbing incidents, awful memories, wrong choices, and decisions. It is difficult to let go of all these because you try to forget them in the process of letting go. Whereas, you just have to forgive. Forgive the haunting past mistakes; forgive disturbing incidents; forgive awful memories; forgive wrong choices and decisions. This makes the let-go journey easy when you simply forgive rather than forget. Forgiveness is not about forgetting but about learning the lessons you must learn. It is okay to have a messy life. It is okay to have problems in life. Learn what life experiences are teaching you. These lessons are the budding flowers that you nourish now to blossom in the future. 

Remember, you know how to plant the seeds, grow your garden and harvest it. Self-love is just a station on the journey of soul-love. Soul-love is the spiritual journey of exploring, knowing, and accepting yourself the way you are. Soul-love journey starts from within that eventually shines outside. 

When you shower your soul with love, empathy, understanding, acceptance, and compassion, the journey from self-love to soul-love begins there!