Self-love. It’s tricky. Many of us believe we love ourselves, but do we really?

If you still get triggered by others, there’s a part of you that doesn’t fully love yourself. If you can’t stand your co-worker, there’s a part of you that doesn’t fully love yourself. If you feel like you have to constantly be doing to be considered a success, then you don’t fully love yourself. If you cause yourself to suffer because you’re afraid to make a change, then you don’t fully love yourself.

As you read those examples, are you thinking they don’t apply? That none of this is really about you, because it’s someone else’s fault? They trigger you. They’re so annoying. There are standards you have to meet to be successful. Resisting change keeps you safe.

Most of us have had those kinds of thoughts throughout our lives. We’ve been programmed to look outside of ourselves to find our self-love. We’ve been shown over and over that it’s someone else’s fault. We’ve been conditioned to believe that meeting other people’s expectations is what makes us lovable. Maybe worst of all, we’ve been made to feel unsafe. Unsafe to be who we want to be. Unsafe to make decisions that feed our happiness. Unsafe to just be instead of do all of the time.

We all have a unique journey back to loving ourselves. Each of us has interpreted who we are through the lens of our own life experiences.

I’ve had a long journey back to loving myself so that I could offer love, not as a feeling, but as an action to my collective human community.

You can’t give what you don’t have.

Love Ignites Peace is a journey that begins with you. It is a lifelong road trip of taking responsibility for your own feelings and all of your associated self-beliefs. It is a journey of self-discovery.

As you apply Love’s 6 Actions—Love of Self—in your daily life, magic starts to happen.

When you UNDERSTAND your story, you automatically start offering that same compassion to others.

Choosing to DISCERN instead of judge yourself frees you to offer that same kind of energy to others.

Giving yourself permission to ALLOW growth, creates space for your personal evolution. It also helps you see that everyone else on this planet is learning from their own experiences too.

FORGIVENESS, of yourself and even others, becomes easier now that you understand, discern, and allow.

ACCEPTANCE of what you want, need, and desire informs your actions and your decisions. And because you feel so empowered with self-acceptance, you can more easily offer acceptance to others.

Now that you RESPECT yourself, which is just another way to say that you love yourself, you can offer that same respect to others. You have empathy for their journey. You understand they have gone through a complex set of experiences that shaped how they love, or how they struggle to love, themselves.

Love Ignites Peace begins with you. It is a road trip of self-responsibility, self-compassion, and self-awareness. When your self-love runs strong and deep, grounded in higher vision and expanded self-awareness, you can offer love as an action. First to yourself, then to your human community.