Readers Questions: Is Self-Love Important for Successful Manifesting?

In this video, a reader asks whether self-love is really important for using the law of attraction. Is it impossible to manifest if you don’t love yourself?

Self-love is an incredibly vague term, so I will clarify whether it is really necessary, and give four meanings of self-love which do indeed affect our manifestations.

[mbr_is_logged_in]
[mbr_update_contact last_rq_viewed_permalink=”rq6″ last_rq_viewed_title=”Readers Questions: Is Self-Love Important for Successful Manifesting?”]
[mbr_tag assign=”23″]

Topics Discussed

• Question
• Self-Love Is a Vague Term
• Self-Love Doesn’t Necessarily Block Manifestation
• Self-Love Means the Willingness to Forgive Yourself
• Self-Love Means Giving Yourself Space to Be with Your Feelings
• Self-Love Means Connecting with Your Core Essence
• Self-Love Means Listening to Your Soul Urges

Transcript

Hey, everyone. This is Brandon Olivares from Co-Creation Coaching. I am here with another Readers Questions video. The Readers Questions video is my chance every week to answer one of your questions about the law of attraction. If you have a question that you’d like me to answer, please go to darkascent.org/ask and I would be happy to answer it.

Question

Today’s question comes from a reader who is asking about self-love. Before anything, I’m going to read that question. Our reader asks:

Is loving yourself necessary for good manifestations? A lot of LOA teachers seem to harp on the lack of love for oneself as the main block to manifesting. They say you need to love yourself more. Do you think this is true? If so, then how do you love yourself more? I’m sure to people who love themselves a lot, it’s obvious. But to people who do not have self-love, it is not obvious how to do it. Thanks.”

Self-Love Is a Vague Term

First of all, I want to say this might be a slightly longer video than usual because there’s a lot that I have to say about this. It’s something that I really have a very strong opinion on, so I’m going to talk a lot about it. The first thing is, what exactly does loving yourself mean? It’s something we hear a lot in the spiritual community, not just law of attraction, but everywhere in the New Age community, basically, and even in popular psychology. “You need to love yourself.” The common saying is, “If you don’t love yourself, no one else will,” which I don’t exactly think is true.

What exactly does that mean? It’s so vague. As I read this question, I wish I could ask back, “What exactly do you mean by that?” I want to answer in a way that is going to address what exactly you are facing and dealing with. The term “self-love” is so vague that it really doesn’t do a lot of good. I don’t personally use it, but I know a lot of people who do. I think getting clear on that is one of the biggest things you can do first of all, because it really isn’t clearly defined.

Some people might think it means doing nice things for yourself. If that’s what you want to do, that’s what you do. That’s not how I’m going to address it here because that’s not how I see it. If you want to do nice things for yourself, that’s fine, obviously. I think you should. But that’s not really going to weigh in on how you manifest.

Self-Love Doesn’t Necessarily Block Manifestation

I want to say that not loving yourself doesn’t necessarily mean that you won’t be able to manifest well. I’ll get that out of the way before the rest of what I’m going to say because that was one of your specific questions. Does it mean that you can’t manifest well? It doesn’t at all. I will say this. I was actually just talking to a client about this the other day. I’ve had, personally, a lot of issues with self-love.

Do they still persist? Not as chronically as they used to. There are some few things here and there. I think most, if not all of us, have something like that somewhere, something we may not like about ourselves or whatever. But it used to be a lot worse. I don’t personally feel that it got in the way of manifestations. I think it depends where you look. In terms of money, which is one of my main interests in manifesting things, I would say no. It didn’t get in the way. Other things did. Subconscious beliefs, things like that.

In terms of relationships, it absolutely got in the way for a while. The interesting thing is (and this is why I say I don’t believe the claim that if you don’t love yourself, then no one else will) when I met Christine, I absolutely did not love myself. I absolutely was very, very insecure. Nevertheless, we became really good friends. Eventually we started dating. I think she pursued me than anything else [laughs] because I didn’t have the confidence to do that. I’ll come out and say it. She initiated the first kiss. [laughs] I just wasn’t confident enough to go after that. I did ask her out when I wanted to start dating her, but it was super duper awkward. It took a lot of courage on my part to do that because I was really afraid of rejection. Even after we started dating, it was difficult. We both had insecurities. We worked through those together, and we committed to each other. Now it’s a lot better. My point is, those things did somewhat get in the way, but it didn’t outright prevent me from having a relationship and eventually getting married. No, it wasn’t an easy road, but I was able to do it because (I think) of her persistence. [laughs]

I think in that way, depending on how you don’t love yourself, then it might get in the way of relationships. If you already have a relationship, then it might not be a big issue. Sometimes it might. Sometimes the other person will try to give you a compliment or something, and you’ll deny it because you don’t feel like you’re worthy of that. If you’re really open with your partner, especially, then they will see through that and help you through those kinds of insecurities, which is a really valuable thing to have in a partner.

So, in general, no, it doesn’t stop you from manifesting, depending on the area of life. I think relationships is the area most hit by that, but other areas….Let’s say for a job interview, you might need to have some confidence, but confidence can be faked, too. Plenty of people fake confidence and get by with it. You don’t need to be this perfect person. You don’t need to absolutely love and adore yourself in order to start manifesting. [laughs] I have talked about my own chronic anxiety and tendency towards depression, and I still manifest perfectly fine. You don’t need to be some paragon of self-love and self-worthiness to be able to manifest or to be able to get started with the law of attraction or to be able to get wonderful results with it.

The law of attraction does take inner work, but it doesn’t take perfection. If you want a goal, don’t say, “I’m not there yet. I have to work on some stuff first.” No, get started on it. The goal will point out those things that you need to work on in order to get there. Some of those might have to do with confidence. Some of that might have to do with insecurity. Some of that might have to do with how you feel about yourself. But it might not, too. So just get started, is my recommendation.

However, I do want to point out several areas that I think it can affect us. I’m going to use terms that are much more specific than “self-love.” Here are the 4 things I think self-love does mean, at least for me, and how it does influence our manifestations.

Self-Love Means the Willingness to Forgive Yourself

#1 is that self-love means the willingness to forgive yourself. I had a post last week just about this, which is coincidental. It’s a synchronicity that this question came up now, that I happened upon this question. I’ll link to that post in the description in the transcript. That post was how to use self-forgiveness to free yourself from resistance. I would recommend checking out that post. I talk a lot about self-forgiveness.

Basically, if you feel like you’ve done something wrong, or if you’re angry with yourself for being stuck, or if you just don’t like what you’re doing in life, you need to forgive that. I talked about (in that post) not forgiving yourself when you feel stuck like that, when you feel there’s something you’ve done wrong or you feel stuck, that is going to hold you back. You definitely want to work on forgiving yourself for those things.

As I said in the post, it doesn’t mean you actually did something wrong. It just means you’re stuck. It just means you feel you did something wrong or you feel like you’re stuck or you feel like you need some help with something, so you forgive yourself. Forgiveness will free yourself from those bonds and karmic entanglement and stuck energy. You will feel much freer as a result of that. Self-forgiveness, I think, is hugely important. It’s not going to affect every area of life, but if you have something in regards to a job or money, it’s going to affect you.

Let’s say for example that you feel frustrated with yourself or that you are irresponsible for quitting a job before you think you should have. You took on too much risk or something. That’s something a lot of people do sometimes. This isn’t about blame. It’s just about, “Can you forgive yourself for that circumstance?” If you can do that, you can free yourself from repeating that action and from reaping the fruit of that action. If you quit too early, and then a month or two down the line you say, “Oh my gosh, what did I do? I’m such a horrible person. I’m so irresponsible. I’m so rash.”

If you keep holding on to that, you’re going to keep getting those results where things aren’t working out for you. You keep getting reminders that you are stupid for quitting too early. You’ll keep getting that until you say, “You know what? I did what I did. Whether it was right or wrong, it’s what’s done. I’m going to forgive myself for that and move on with life and see where things take me.” Once you do that, you are freed of that karma. I’ve described what karma means before, so you might want to check that out. You are freed of that karma and can move on. You don’t have to keep experiencing the bad effects or negative results of what you did. As soon as you forgive yourself, you free yourself from that. 

A related part to this is forgiveness of others. If someone else did something to you, then you need to forgive them as well, especially if it’s related to what you want to manifest. You don’t have to tell them, necessarily, but you have to do it within your own mind. It has to be sincere. 

Self-Love Means Giving Yourself Space to Be with Your Feelings

#2 is that self-love means giving yourself space to be with your feelings. We block ourselves from our feelings a lot. We hide from them. We hide from facing them through watching tv, alcohol, shopping, eating, all sorts of habits that on their own, aren’t destructive, but as an escape become destructive. Manifestation requires deep honesty with your feelings. It really requires very deep honesty with your feelings on a day-to-day basis.

If you’re not giving yourself that honesty and allowing yourself to be with those feelings without judgment (this goes back to self-forgiveness a little bit), then those feelings can’t be released. That resistance can’t be released. If you have fear about something, and you hide the fear by shutting it down and going to do something else, that fear can never be released. Guess what? It’s going to be manifested over and over and over again. Every time you shut it down, it becomes part of your subconscious. It becomes more deeply engrained in your subconscious, and it becomes more difficult to release. So you don’t want to do that.

I’ve always encouraged mindfulness, which is really the thing to do here to be with your feelings. Just listen to them and give them a space to be. Not identifying with them. Not reacting to them. A good analogy is if your child is trying to tell you something that is really vulnerable for them. You don’t sit there and judge them. You just listen to what they have to say, and give them understanding and empathy. That’s really what your feelings need. If you do that for yourself, then these things can be released and you can move on. It will be a lot easier to manifest those goals.

Self-Love Means Connecting with Your Core Essence

The third thing is that self-love means connecting with your core essence. I had a podcast about this a couple weeks ago. It was Episode #23 of “Co-Create Your Life.” The title was “Why Your Desires Should Resonate with Your Core Essence.” I talked a lot about why it’s so important to be in alignment with your core essence in that podcast. Your “core essence” is just another name for your soul, basically. It’s who you are underneath everything, underneath the ego and all your thoughts and everything.

I talked about this maybe two weeks ago in one of the Creators Circles, also. I’ve been realizing about connecting with my core essence. Taking time out of my day to connect with my own core essence. Saying, “Hey, what’s going on? This is what I’m afraid of. This is what I’m feeling.” Giving that over to your soul or core essence and seeing what happens. It could just be silence. It could just be a peaceful feeling. But you might get a message, too. If you just sit in that silence, you might get a message. Or you might just get a positive feeling of “everything will be okay.”

I started doing this recently, especially when I feel really flustered, or when I get up in the morning and I’m not looking forward to the day because I have to do something I don’t want to do. I will connect with that part of myself and just say, “This is what I’m feeling. I really don’t want to do this. Why am I on this path? What is going on?” Almost always, I’ll get some sort of answer either then or later on in the day. Or I’ll just have more fortitude to deal with what comes.

Not connecting to your core essence, which is how the majority of people live, is like a plant not having water or sunlight. Or a fish out of water, you could say, too. Connecting with that part of yourself nourishes you. It gives you life. The more you do that, the more you will tend to live from that place, the more you will tend to be authentic to yourself, the more you will tend to express and manifest those things that are integral to your soul, why you’re here, and your purpose in life. If you don’t do that, you’re going to be lost without that. Your core essence grounds you. It gives you a foundation to build upon. I highly, highly encourage you to connect with that daily.

These suggestions I’m giving build on top of one another. If you’re not forgiving yourself, then you can’t give your feelings space to be, and then you can’t connect with your core essence. There’s just too much blocking it. If you’re unable to forgive yourself about something or unable to forgive someone else about something, you’re going to be blocked from actually connecting with your core. Your core is a place of nonjudgment and complete, unconditional love and acceptance. If your ego is too riled up with all these other things going on—fears and judgments and whatnot—then you can’t get to that place. You have to take care of each point individually, and then it will be easier to go to the next. So I highly recommend taking a few minutes every day (it doesn’t have to be a 30 minute meditation; it doesn’t have to be some really structured, formal thing), like 2 minutes or 5 minutes in the morning (or whenever feels best to you) and connect with that part of yourself. See what happens. Don’t expect anything. Just see what happens. 

Self-Love Means Listening to Your Soul Urges

Finally, #4 is that self-love means listening to your soul urges. That specific phrase came into my mind when I was outlining what I wanted to talk about today: “soul urges.” I’ve never really used that phrase, but all right. [laughs] This one is especially close to me. I’ll talk about why in a second. Once you start connecting with yourself, you will start to get messages, urges, and calling in a certain direction.

Even if you don’t connect with yourself, your soul, spirit guides, and higher self are always going to try to come through and say, “Hey, you’re going down the wrong path. Why don’t you try this other way?” But a lot of us have this thing about “no pain, no gain,” so the harder it is, then that must mean I’m doing the right thing. So I keep pushing through, and I keep pushing through, and it keeps getting harder, and I keep getting more dissatisfied. “Well, I just have to keep pushing through. That’s how life is.” 10 years down the road, you’re totally deadened and deafened to what your soul is calling you to do. You don’t want that. It will be a lot easier once you connect to your core to listen to what your soul is urging you to do.

One example in my own life: I’ve been very open and explicit about my manifestation of getting off of SSI. That was hugely successful. The way that that happened initially was through getting a job as a programmer, which is something that I’m good at. I’ll say that. When that happened, I wasn’t exactly sure where I wanted to take things. I’d been coaching at that time for almost 2 years. Now it’s been over 2 years. I just wasn’t sure, did I want to keep doing that, did I want to do this programming thing and enjoy the financial reward of that? What did I want to do? I took that. I enjoyed and still enjoy the outcome of that.

But for the past month or two, I’ve been feeling this inner dissatisfaction. I’ve been working with a business coach. I’m working on transitioning to doing only Co-Creation Coaching. But it kind of felt like Co-Creation Coaching was getting my leftover time. I have been posting pretty much almost every day, every weekday at least. That’s big, but it’s taking all of my time. There’s work. Then I work on Co-Creation Coaching for maybe three hours at night. Then during the weekends I really work on it because that’s the only free time I have. Then Sunday night comes, and I didn’t get to rest. [laughs] Then I have to start Monday all over.

After a few weeks, it feels like I’m so worn out. I’ve been feeling this dissatisfaction. I’ve been doing what I said not to do: “I’ve just got to push through it. This is what has to happen.” When you feel that kind of thing (“I just have to push through it. This is what has to happen. This is how life is right now.”), that’s your ego. That’s not your soul. Your soul knows there’s a better way. Your soul always knows there’s a better way. For several weeks, I didn’t really listen to that. Finally, last week I said, “There has to be a better way. There has to be a solution to this.”

I ended up talking to my coach. She’s a business coach, but she’s also a very intuitive person. She helped me realize what my core essences were. She’s super spiritual, which I love. She was the perfect business coach. She’s spiritual and believes in the law of attraction and everything, which is great. I talked to her and said, “There has to be a way to cope with this.” I thought it was something I was stuck with. I have to cope with this.

She said, “Could you go part-time?” I said, “That would be scary, but probably.” The conclusion we came to was that I was going to go part-time. I’m going on vacation in early September. After that vacation, I’m going to go part-time. Then I’ll have work in the morning for the programming job. Then I have the rest of the day for Co-Creation Coaching and what I want to do, what my passion is. I just immediately felt this relief. Fear, from the egoic sense. “What if it doesn’t work out? What if you don’t make up the gap financially?” But exhilaration from the soul level. “This is it. That’s what I was looking for. That takes off the pressure. I don’t mind a few hours a day or whatever.” I can devote the majority of my time to what I really want to do.

Right now, it’s Sunday, so I haven’t actually talked to them yet about this possibility. I think it will go well. By the time this video goes up, I will know the answer. So if you want to know, ask in the comments, or maybe I’ll add a postscript to the transcript. Just check that out. I don’t know right now. [laughs] I’m hoping it will go well. You can ask tomorrow, which will be Monday. I think it will go well.

That was me listening to my soul’s urge and calling, saying, “You need to put more time into what you really want to do in life.” I listened to that. It will be scary. Your soul will not always ask you to do something that’s easy. It will always be invigorating and enjoyable and wonderful, but it will not always be easy, because your ego will say, “What if? What if? What if? What if?” You have to work through that. That’s what I’m doing right now. I’m really sorry that this is an extremely long video today, but I would not cut out anything I said. I think it was all essential to this topic, so I’m going to leave it all. I’m sorry for that. [laughs] I hope that that did answer your question.

Everyone else, I hope that that helps you to know what exactly it means to love yourself and give you some more pointers on what to do to do that better and to help your manifestations along. Once again, if you’d like to ask a question to be answered here, you can go to darkascent.org/ask and submit your question there. If you’d like to get more videos like this and be notified when I post more, you can subscribe to my YouTube channel as well. Once again, I am Brandon Olivares from Co-Creation Coaching. As always, anything is possible.

[ELSE_is_logged_in]

Topics Discussed

• Question
• Self-Love Is a Vague Term
• Self-Love Doesn’t Necessarily Block Manifestation
• Self-Love Means the Willingness to Forgive Yourself
• Self-Love Means Giving Yourself Space to Be with Your Feelings
• Self-Love Means Connecting with Your Core Essence
• Self-Love Means Listening to Your Soul Urges

Transcript

The transcript is for members only. If you’d like to get the transcript, please sign up below and you’ll get instant access.

[mbr_form form_id=”29″]
[mbr_set_custom_field field=”24″ value=”rq6″]
[mbr_set_custom_field field=”25″ value=”Readers Questions: Is Self-Love Important for Successful Manifesting?”]

If you are already on the list, then you may simply not have logged in.

[mbr_dynamic_login]
[/mbr_is_logged_in]