Becoming Well With Liz Tafadzwa

Hello BW tribe. Today we are going to be talking about self-love. A necessary conversation in our healing and wholeness journey. What comes to mind when you think of self-love? Solo date? Solo trip? Purchasing the thing you have been saving up for such a long time? Calling off work because you are unwell? A spa date? Affirmations? We all have pictures that come into our head each time we think of self-love and there is no right or wrong answer to that question. The picture you see is often a reflection of your personality, background, desires, and dreams and less about the mainstream perception. 

Unfortunately, pop culture has done a great job at deducing self-love to experiencing, and accessing material possessions or luxury experiences. Most people think if they can’t take themselves on vacation to a trendy destination or restaurant, go for a spa date, or get themselves the latest iPhone they possibly can’t show themselves the love they desire. This has forced some people to embrace self-love in ways that are not authentic and resonate best with themselves. For one person self-love could be reciting daily affirmations in front of a mirror while for another it is ensuring they get enough sleep every night. For others, it looks like patience and kindness to themselves or even a blend of all three. 

Ask yourself, “What would loving myself authentically look like?” You would be surprised how your perception has been influenced by what media and those you spend the most time with say rather than what you inherently desire. As believers, we do have boundaries that govern what self-love should and can look like. If you are not a Christian I want you to ask yourself, “Do my perceptions of self-love align with my core values?” 

But what if you don’t know how to love yourself? What if you think you are not deserving of love and care? What if you have been indoctrinated by religion or culture that it is a selfish concept that should never be explored or trauma has shattered your sense of innate value? I wrestled with all these mental and emotional cages for over a decade so you are not alone. 

I didn’t love myself until my early twenties. I envied people who I perceived loved and cared for themselves because I didn’t know how to love myself. I didn’t think I was worthy of love and care much less that I even mattered. I was also trapped in religion and shivered at the concept of self-love because I was convinced it was a selfish act. I remember back in 2019 contending with God about what was wrong with me. Instead of singing along to my depressive song, he breathed life into me and opened my eyes. I realized I hated myself not because I was a bad person, but because I didn’t know myself and what I carried. 

I was controlled by comparison and hyper-focused on what I didn’t have, so self-hatred bubbled within me longer than it needed to. When you discover who you are, what your gifts are, how God wants to leverage your weaknesses, and are awakened to your God-given purpose, authentic self-love is a natural consequence. It’s impossible to know who you are and also hate yourself. Inner security protects you from perpetual jealousy, envy, succumbing to chronic comparison, and feeling inferior when exposed to people you perceive to be more and better at what you desire. Jesus and Paul are great examples. 

That lightbulb started turning on for me halfway through my 23rd year of life. I had already done a decent amount of therapy and come to terms with my self-limiting beliefs, but it was only when I started reading love-centric Scriptures and reading in context did I realize self-love is God’s command. Matthew 22:39 says “A second and equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ This was Jesus’s response to Pharisees who had asked him “What is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?” The danger with this verse is that it has often been quoted by many Christians who feel guilty about loving themselves.  Whenever guilt is in the picture,  interpretation of scripture is often understood and applied out of context. 

If your idea of self-love makes you more impatient, proud, rude, unforgiving, jealous, intolerant to the different ways people are wired, hypocritical, and chronically believe the worst in people that’s when it becomes destructive. For Christians, this is what guides our expression of love. We aren’t called to love ourselves and others only when we or others behave, look, feel, and think the way we want them to, but who we are. Messy, complicated, obnoxious all of it, we are commanded to love without conditions. Why? Because that is the only way you and I respond to love. When conditions come wrapped up in the love offered to us, we malfunction. Every human being heals, grows, and flourishes when they are loved entirely not conditionally. That’s what makes God’s love so potent and transformative when you fully receive it. 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 says “Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.”

 I celebrate your ability to invest in the finer luxuries of life to show yourself and maybe others that you love yourself, but what good is it if it makes you an unloving person in the process? God is the author and originator of love, not humans and we often get into trouble when we approach love our way and demand God to make it work the way we want it to. Love has principles and when we violate those principles, we experience the consequences of our man-made interpretations. Most of the trauma you faced likely came from someone who loved you conditionally or eliminated love. In the absence of unconditional love, people become dysfunctional because love is the oxygen we need to not only survive and grow but also thrive.

“Love has principles. When we violate those principles, we experience the consequences of our man-made interpretations.”

How To Move From Feeling Unworthy to Worthiness of Love?

Conditions that came with the love that was modeled for you is the number one reason why you feel unworthy of love. Whether it was a parent, guardian, friend, romantic partner, sibling, boss, coworker, child, social media, ads, etc, conditions automatically make you think and feel that you are only lovable when you meet those conditions. This is why temporary solutions don’t work because it’s a deeply internal hole that was drilled into your heart and mind. 

In a very practical sense, you simply have to open your Bible(the source of timeless truth), read, memorize, and repeatedly think about Scriptures that unpack God’s love for you and the value you carry. If the opinion of someone who didn’t create you made you believe and feel unworthy of love, imagine what would happen when you discover what God feels and thinks about you. Truth not ignorance liberates. Think and say those verses out loud as often and as long as you need to until you believe them. I know you want a step that gives you a kick and a temporary high, but if the modern-day avenues helped you love yourself the way God wants you to love yourself they would have already worked by now. 

 People often think that if they take a vacation or go to the spa monthly it will help them love themselves. I hate to break the news to you: you can’t fix internal problems by addressing external issues. On top of that, you carry YOU wherever you go. If the internal you is broken going to another location may temporarily help, but once the stay wraps up you carry you to the next place and the brokenness goes with it. 

Now, I don’t say this to suck hope out of you and neither am I attacking vacations, spa dates, or aesthetic solo dates. I love comfort too, but I realized that I could spend all the money in the world to try to get rid of my inner brokenness, but my refusal to take those holes and voids to my creator and fully feel everything to heal would greatly inhibit my ability to fully love myself. I want you to learn to love yourself without any conditions or synthetic environments. That’s how your creator loves you and how you ought to be loved. Your problem may not be that you can’t receive God’s unconditional love for you. The real issue is that you have believed a lie that is now expressing itself through your emotions and behaviors. 

For practical people here is a quick guide:

1. Identify and acknowledge the lie: I am not worthy of love/I am not good enough 
2. Confess it to God: (God I confess my sin of doubting your love for me. X caused me to think I was undeserving of your love. Thank you for being patient with me until I discovered the truth. The truth is that you love me as I am and nothing I have done, am doing, or will ever do will make you stop loving me). 
3. Confess to at least one safe and trusted friend: You don’t have to tell the whole world. You just need one person who you can be fully honest and vulnerable with. This is important because God is notorious for revealing root problems vertically but administering healing horizontally. He wants you to do life with people just as much as he wants you to have a personal relationship with him. Relationships are often sources of great pain in our lives, yet God has also set it up in such as way that healing is initiated and completed in a healthy and safe community.
4. Embrace the truth: You cannot replace a lie with another lie. Only truth is solid enough to uproot the lie if you stay the course of reminding yourself of that truth. Verses you can start with include Romans 8:38-39, John 3:16, Isaiah 54:10, 1 John 4:18, and I John 4:9-10. I spent months reading, memorizing, reciting and thinking about them and I still do that same routine whenever I begin doubting God’s love for me. Memorize, think about them, and say them out every day until they become part of your belief system. It may take you years to get to this point and that’s okay and normal. If you could do self-affirmations by your favorite Instagram influencer, you sure can memorize one verse a week on love. You won’t be able to receive whatever else I say here until you find freedom here if that’s where you find yourself. 

For those who have gone past this stage and are fully convinced of God’s love for you, you most likely have a healthy belief that you are valuable and worthy of loving yourself. For many of you, the question could now be how do I love myself practically? I think 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 best defines love. I already mentioned it, but It’s a brief breakdown of how God loves us and since he is the author and originator of love taking those same principles into your self-love journey is just as effective. 

Practical Ways To Apply Love Principles To Your Self-Love Journey:

• Spend lots of time in solitude to discover who you really are. Uninfluenced by your surroundings or social media. Myles Munroe said, “Self-love is a result of self-discovery.” I have found this to be true in my self-love journey
• Choose to be patient with yourself as you unlearn and break habits and mindsets that contributed to self-hatred, 
• Speak life in kindness to yourself( no more talking down or ill of yourself by yourself or with others), 
• Let go of the irritation when you fall short and revert to your old bad habits, addictions, or disorders(remember patience). Let go of all the times you let yourself down or did something that was damaging whether yourself or others. 
• Forgive yourself and clear the records of all the wrongs you have done. 
• Bring the shame to the surface and wash it off with God’s forgiveness, acceptance, mercy, and grace for you. This is big because shame remains one of the top causes of addictions and a key source of self-hatred. You cannot love what you are ashamed of. 
• Celebrate when you discover and unearth a truth you discover about God or yourself. Instead of judging or punishing yourself, welcome what that realization is trying to tell you. 
• Decide to never give up on yourself. No matter how long it takes you to become who God called you to be(often it will take the rest of your life) commit to will always believe in yourself the same way God believes in you. 
• Remain hopeful and faith-filled, especially on days when it feels hard to love yourself. If it feels impossible lean into your community or that safe person to remind you that you are loved by God with that thing you are struggling with. Again, this explains why community is important in your self-love journey. 

Tribe if you do this important work and understand that’s how God loves you, loving others the same way will finally feel and look possible. The good thing is that you won’t have to love yourself or others on your own if you are saved. Holy Spirit will help you when your flesh is saying otherwise. In those moments your only job is to yield not resist by trying to do it with your strength.

The most selfish thing you can do is not love yourself the way God loves you and the most selfless thing you can do is to learn to love yourself the way God loves you. Why? You can’t give what you haven’t received and also when we violate the order of love you get into trouble in the end.

First, you have to receive God’s unconditional love for you, then you offer that love to yourself and that overflow should naturally be given to others. Most religious people who claim that self-love is selfish have either never fully received God’s love or are mixing up the order of love. I can appreciate people’s concerns about the world’s idea of self-love. The world’s idea of self-love often focuses on the externals and God’s idea of self-love ALWAYS starts internally. I love you tribe and I will see you on the next one.