​Consider first what unconditional love could look like directed toward the self.

Below, I offer a list that contains two components followed down the line. We begin with a) a possible thing that makes you feel good about yourself and automatically creates a sense of self-love, followed each time by b) the flip side of that, which you generally don’t want and feel bad about—the stuff that stirs up self-disapproval and that sense of being wrong, unworthy, not good enough.

Which can lead to all manner of what is not self-love, from walking around feeling subtly off and not quite up to par (without even verbalizing it, but it still feels bad, and it’s unfair to yourself) all the way to pure self-loathing and vicious self-talk (which feels rotten).

What if you FULLY, equally, loved yourself in both the wanted & the unwanted aspects of your behavior? Of how you feel? Of how others see you? That’s unconditional self-love. Make it about others, and you’ve got unconditional love as directed to others.

Want to love unconditionally? Notice the conditions that get the inner or outer critic in motion. INTERRUPT THE CRITIC. Drop into love for what’s here right now, the good, the bad, the ugly. Consider whether you might at least try saying (writing!) that you love yourself on each end of any spectrum, and all the way across.

I love myself when I feel great & strong in my body.
I love myself when something hurts or feels tender, off, painful, fragile.

I love myself when I’m strong & stable.
I love myself when I’m wobbly.

I love myself when I’m kind to [my mom] & soothe irritation that arises without expressing it.
I love myself when I notice I’m being critical, unkind, mentioning what doesn’t need to be mentioned. I love myself when I’m inappropriately instructing & suggesting.

I love myself when I feel the love & joy flowing effortlessly.
I love myself when I’m not in the vicinity.

I love myself when I show up to do processes (like inquiry, focus wheels, EFT), getting out ahead of old negative thought patterns before they can build momentum or wreak havoc.
I love myself when I reach for those processes after I’ve reacted or thrown myself off in some way or even after I’ve gone wayyyy down the rabbit hole and must walk myself through the whole climb back to ground zero.

I love myself when I’m happy & appreciating others & all of life.
I love myself when I’m sad & full of discontent.

I love myself when people hold up beautiful mirrors telling me I’m great, brilliant, talented, loving.
I love myself when someone looks at me funny or declares everything they think is wrong with me.

I love myself when I pause and choose a kind, calm, clear response.
I love myself when I’m reactive or triggered and don’t even know I’m puking on someone till the mess has already dropped.

I love myself when I [do qigong] and grow the practice.
I love myself when I skip it.

I love myself when I’m [do qigong] in presence, consciously growing my relationship to presence.
I love myself when I phone it in, just do it to get it done, call it good enough.

I love myself when I just simply and easily say what’s true for me.
I love myself when words get stuck in my throat or I tiptoe around the issue.


Hey, to be clear, the idea isn’t to condone or excuse what feels off to you. It’s to love what’s actually there, reject no part of yourself. In fact, when you’re loving yourself in any current condition, you’ll be much more able to swiftly course-correct. You’ll feel what’s off and head toward alignment fast. Getting out judgments and filling the space with love makes thing clear and more spacious. There’s room to shift.

Maybe you can see that better with others, and it’s just as true for yourself.

I invite you to make your own list. You could approach it from either direction: instead of what I did above, you could start with a statement of loving the least-preferred part (especially if it’s present here & now) and go from there to the stuff that easily feels good). You could also sit down on a day you notice you’re carrying around a critical play-by-play narration of yourself or another or your day, job, whatever, and write out both parts.

Get yourself squarely situated in the acceptance that you’re not your idealized self, and you don’t need to be. Love yourself (or another) in writing, and you’ll be able to love yourself (or another) in talk, in actions, in the day-to-day now-now-now of it.

It’s always helpful to write your thoughts down on paper so you can see what they’re up to and write out what you prefer to think to support really taking it in. Writing helps with focusing. Focus yourself into unconditional love.

Love & blessings, Jaya

​Start with believing you’re worthy of thriving. Your worthiness is not earned. You’re here, so you’re worthy to be here. Human beings can thrive, so as a human being, you’re worthy of thriving. You have this one brief life in this form, so what if you kept testing your worthiness to thrive, instead of collecting evidence you haven’t thrived, you’re not thriving, and you probably won’t thrive. Please interrupt that useless waste of your time and energy.

Let go completely of whether others are thriving or not. If part of your mission is to support other individuals or groups to thrive, you will do that, you can’t NOT do that, and you will do it best when you’re thriving.

Abraham-Hicks points out that you can’t get sick enough to help others be well, you can’t get poor enough to help others have more wealth. So how 'bout you thrive as much as you can and from there … the best of what you’ve got (which, BONUS, will keep evolving as you keep thriving) can bolster others to thrive.

Interrupt all comparisons to others. They’re neither here nor there—just a royal distraction that keeps you from walking yourself toward what you want to be, do, and have. All comparisons among human beings are apple-and-orange comparisons. Seriously, what does it matter what or how anyone else is or isn’t doing? What matters is what you’ve got, what wants to come through you, what you’re passionate about, where you trip yourself up, what you’d like to try next, what you can do right now to meet yourself kindly and walk yourself toward thriving.

Go ahead and make this all about you—because ultimately, you’re in charge of your own journey and your own thriving on that journey, and this has nothing to do with anyone else.

Catch any whiff of punitive mentality toward yourself and keep releasing it. If you’ve done something that feels off to you or that makes you disapprove of yourself or feel shame or go into self-castigation—pause with that. Be still with that. Breathe it. Let the part of you that still thinks it deserves to be punished come forth. Be with that one. Love them as they are. Love your own humanity. Love that you’re on a journey. Appreciate anything that makes you let go of idealized self-image, self-righteousness, or foolish thoughts that you should be beyond this.

I sat with someone recently who was being very hard on themself for something they’d done that violated their own ethic and shattered their sense of well-being and worthiness. I heard myself say, Well, unless you want to walk yourself now to some special little corner in hell that’s been rightfully reserved just for you, you could consider this too—and literally everything that unfolds in your life (even your missteps)--as your next opportunity to heal and evolve.

Your best and worst moments, and everything in between (especially if you’re not making identity of them) can all be part of the natural evolutionary thrust toward thriving. I believe that life wants to support you to thrive, constantly. Would you like to play with believing that? You do already? Cool, now what if you found the topic or realm of life that you keep excluding from that concept—because you tell yourself that here, in this special case, you really don’t deserve …?

Releasing identity will support you to thrive. Who are you anyway? What if you’re not the one who fucked up? Just like you’re not the one who’s right or who shouldn’t be talked to this way or the one who created that brilliant art or said those wise words or anything else. Practice being nobody more often.

(Hint: play with presence outside of thought. What is revealed to you right now by your five senses, and the grounded sense of being in a body, and the felt sense of your own breathing in this moment? Not much room in there to tell a lot of story and craft much image or make much identity. And not much room to keep yourself from thriving, either.)

I recently got thrown off by something that passed between me and another human beings. After a number of clarifying and clearing processes, it’s dissolving and releasing. It was one of those episodes that hit with a wallop, so every once in a while the ego-mind will grab it again and start to present a case for how mad I should be and what they violated and blah-blah-blah. It would go on ad nauseam, but I interrupt it. Lately I’ve been able to just look at it and say, This isn’t even real! And this has nothing to do with who I (really) am and who they (really) are. This doesn’t need my attention.

And giving it my attention does not promote my thriving. (To be clear, I gave it the attention of processes when that was needed, and will again as and if the need arises.) We think we’d thrive better if they didn’t do this or hadn’t done that, or if they did do XYZ. Nope, it’s all in our own hands—how we choose to make our interpretations, what we hold on to and release, what we choose to give our focus to. Want to give more focus to what makes you thrive, and to thriving itself?
​

​Have more fun. Feel good more often. Laugh more. Focus on what’s fun, what’s easy, what feels good, what you’re proud of, what makes you laugh, what brings pleasure. Cultivate all of this. Make it a project. Oh wait—was the whole start of this paragraph in a recent mailing (on being your own best ally), exactly in those words? Um, yeah. Because that, my friend, is how we believe we’re thriving, want to thrive, practice thriving, get used to thriving, and call forth more thriving.

Love & blessings, Jaya

​Sometimes someone tells me they were having a hard time with something, and nothing they did worked. Or they speak more generally about stuff they try and … it doesn’t work. And if you were ever the one to say that to me or if you’ve witnessed me talking to someone in a group who said that, you know this is when I hit the pause button.

So I’m going to tell on myself here and then lay out what we really mean when we say it’s not working and then offer something bolstering and supportive and kind. Here goes.

I bumped into something rough in the past week in the form of someone I love and respect speaking to me in a way that I don’t typically receive from anyone these days. And it THREW ME OFF. The ego-mind would not shut up about it. (I love not to identify with the mind. The thoughts were thinking me, as Byron Katie says.) The whole thing took much longer for me to move along than usual.

I want to tell you about this and invite you not to give up on yourself, and to keep reaching for the right tool in the moment, and to keep tossing out any thoughts that you should be beyond this, and just do your work and soothe yourself and take care of yourself until you’re back in alignment.

Because you will come back to alignment.

Nothing in the Universe cares a bit how long it takes or how many processes. Your job is to not give up on yourself. Keep interrupting the preposterous (defensive, counter-attacking, victimized, offended, self-righteous, other-correcting) thoughts. Reach for the right tool in the moment and keep reaching. And do not say It’s not working.

Here’s what I did right, which I tell you in the spirit of inviting you to stop putting the focus on what you’re doing wrong or even worrying about whether you might be doing it wrong or exhausting yourself with the belief you need to figure it all out.

• I turned the arrows of attention around (oh, I’m thinking about them again; let’s come back to me, back to what needs soothing in me).
• I did focus wheels.
• I used EFT tapping (Emotional Freedom Technique) to say the negative thoughts and drum in some kinder, truer, soothing, healing, bolstering thoughts.
• I brought it to NOW; I called myself back to presence with the task at hand.
• I reminded myself of all kinds of wise things.
• I caught myself judging myself and interrupted that fast. Went back to soothing and witnessing.
• I caught myself taking their words personally again and declared again that I understand it’s not personal and I still see myself trying to make it about me (and what’s wrong with me, and therefore what needs to be defended and objected to and resisted …).
• I did not allow myself to think and figure at night, so I spent any awake time just breathing into the tight, painful spot just under my diaphragm.
• I called forth the younger versions of me who had felt just this way (with no review of their stories) and just held them and breathed with them and told them I accepted them fully and thanked them for getting me to where I am now. (There were 7 of us in bed together one night.)
• I talked about it very little and did so only with a couple of wise, clear supporters who weren’t even thinking about joining me in any of the wackiness (but who also held space lovingly and didn’t rush me in my process).
• I caught myself in my Enneagram programming (in my case, a revolving door from sad, misunderstood Four to after-all-I’ve-done-for-you Two, to railing, self-righteous One) and just reported the number I was in out loud just to remember that I’m not in truth and not fully present when the program is running me.
• I countered thoughts in real time or just told myself something simple like, That’s not actually true. Or, That’s not all true. Or even, That could be true, but it’s neither here nor there.
• I got out of head altogether again and again, back to body and breath.
• I did qigong and breathwork. Including meditative, mind-clearing qigong.
• I processed the heart on its own terms without head-center intrusions (just crying or breathing emotion without analysis or figuring anything out).
• I thought about things I loved and appreciated, caught sunrises and sunsets, savored flavors, focused on work and remembered I loved it, took care of the nuts and bolts of life, watched stuff for entertainment to look away.
• I could go on. I did all the things.

​I did NOT believe that these things weren’t working. I definitely noticed that this wasn’t moving along as fast as usual. I reminded myself that this meant an old wound had been reactivated and that this was a chance to heal it. And I believed it, even though that didn’t stop the mind or make me feel better. (The kind mind really can bring the heart along, even if the heart isn’t there yet right now. So I plugged away, calling in the kind mind.)

If you believe It’s not working, that usually means things like this:

• I don’t feel better, this still hurts, I’m not at peace
• The mind is still going strong and keeps reasserting the same thoughts
• I haven’t (fully or sufficiently) stopped believing those thoughts
• My idealized self doesn’t think I’m handling this well
• I’ve lost contact with my best self; I’m out of alignment
• I’m judging the process
• I’m worried I’m getting it wrong
• I’m feeling stuck and thinking I’ll get stuck here
• I want this to be going faster, which puts me in resistance and slows me down further

So this is what I want to tell you.

You’re fine. You’re doing fine. You’re enough. You’re doing enough. The revelation wants to come. This is only happening for your healing and evolution. It’s really okay.

It’s okay if this takes awhile. The timeline isn’t your business. What is your business?

• Reach for the next tool
• Meet yourself in this moment
• Counter this one thought or spoken declaration right now
• interrupting, interrupting, interrupting (DO NOT FOLLOW THE THOUGHT THAT YOU ALREADY KNOW ISN’T TRUE OR THAT TAKES YOU FURTHER DOWN ANY KIND OF RABBIT HOLE)
• Make a choice right now (and just for now) to aim toward what could feel better or create even a little scooch toward something kinder and truer
• Do not give up on yourself (self-abandonment no more)

You’re either going with your negative (stressful, painful) thoughts or you’re interrupting them and reaching for something else (see my first bullet list above). You’re either going further down the rabbit hole or you’re heading out. Got something big, bad, deep, and ugly going on? No problem. You’re equipped. Keep scooching. Don’t give up on yourself. DO NOT SAY IT’S NOT WORKING. Or hear yourself and say something else. Like:

• Whatever it takes, I’m here for it
• I’m willing
• I’m guided
• I’m equipped
• Everything’s always working out for me
• This too shall pass
• I can walk myself through gently

Love & blessings, Jaya

​Warning. This is an invitation to self-love. I promise not to get weird about it. I’ll make it actionable and invite you to keep it up. Now & now & now.

Sometimes someone I’m working with tells me they don’t know how to get through some specific moment and actually apply the things we talk about.

I then typically give them a few simple reminders. I invite them to simplify things. Just remembering a few simple things, you can learn to walk yourself through KINDLY. As in, ACTUALLY, be your own best ally and make yourself feel better instead of worse.

That’s a great start right there. To simply value feeling good so much that you’re committed to catching yourself feeling bad, interrupting it, and quickly pivoting to walk yourself toward feeling better. That’s already HUGE.

I love to remind folks to BRING IT TO NOW. The now part is crucial.

Don’t try to figure out how to fix everything or fix something in some done-with-it-once-and-for-all forever sort of way. That dip into everything and forevermore is overwhelming and feels bad. (It also puts you in the Universe’s business, which you’re not qualified to manage.)

Don’t do a quick, warped scan backward over the past. You might mistakenly grab the lens that makes it look like you’ve never gotten it right and it’s not getting any better. (And, yup, you’ll be in the Universe’s business again.)

Just RIGHT NOW. What would feel kinder, truer, better now? Do that.

And keep doing that. Now and now and now and now. Do not ALLOW yourself to sink down into the worst of what you’re able to believe about yourself. If you stop walking yourself kindly toward what feels better, that probably means you’re using a bunch of NOW moments to accept being mean to yourself. And just to accept feeling bad (which is not that nice).

I’d like you to HABITUATE to walking yourself through as if you were aware of your younger selves that need and deserve to be gently guided along. That, my friend, is self-love in action.

At some point in my growth journey, when I was having some obvious successes and actually feeling better a lot of the time, and I was ALSO feeling bad or impatient about what I wanted to manage better or have success with faster, I started thinking in terms of NOW much more.

Right now, am how am I walking myself through? Right now, how am I talking to myself about what's happening? Right now, am I making myself feel worse or better?

3 directions to focus how you walk yourself through
Here’s a great clue about what to do for yourself, your entire self, in any NOW moment you realize things aren’t feeling good. Know and remind yourself that you’re a 3-centered being. That is, you have

1. A body
2. A heart
3. A head

They all three need tending kindly. And they all three have wisdom and guidance for you (that comes in NOW, in the actual moment you need it). And if you’re stuck in one center, either tend it, or GET OUT. Reach for one or both of the others.

Body tending
Ask yourself, Right now, am I even in my body? Am I taking in that my body is tense, contracted, agitated, overrun with adrenaline [whatever it may be]? Am I moving nervously or frenetically, or am I going frozen or stagnant and need to rev things up? Your body wants you to tend that, soothe it, calm your nervous system. There’s also simple stuff like HYDRATE. EAT GOOD FOOD.

Back to body basics: ground; connect to the felt sense of the breath (and stay with that a while, even as you go about your business); connect to the five senses (or however many you’ve got).

Do something that feels good physically: Move, dance, exercise, stretch, do yoga or qigong, walk. Take a bath, take a nap, take yourself to a natural setting where your senses will be filled with life-giving, soul-soothing stuff.

Take an action: The realm of the body is also the realm of action. Is there one thing I could do right now that would feel good to do? That would make me feel good about tending any corner of my world? That would move something forward and potentially start some momentum toward what I actually want to be, do, have? Find your point of least resistance and do one thing.

Heart tending
Right now, as I notice I feel bad emotionally (frustrated, angry, sad, discouraged, scared, disappointed), am I making room for it and soothing it, or am I judging it or evaluating how I’m doing or telling myself what I should be feeling itself? Heart tending isn’t about thoughts, so stop analyzing or evaluating or explaining your emotions. Maybe stop talking (to yourself or others) about them. FEEL THEM.

If you must bring the head in, then notice whether you keep going from one thought to the next to keep matching and probably revving up what feels bad. And could you instead tell yourself kind things that are likely to make you feel better?

The heart wants you to ground yourself (see body tending above), feel the feeling in the body, breathe it (make room for it with the breath), allow it. Just let it be, let it have its life, and give it 2 things:

1. Awareness
2. Breath

How simple is that? That’s it folks. Your heart space, when in pain or discomfort of any kind, wants those two things. Review them: awareness & breath, awareness & breath, awareness & breath.

Head tending
Right now, am I believing and carrying on with thoughts that feel bad or interrupting them? As you notice that thoughts are making you feel bad, consider some version of this: maybe they don’t match what your Inner Being knows to be true; or they don’t match the way Source gazes upon you; or they represent an assessment that isn’t useful and isn’t coming from the part of you that’s seeking to believe in yourself and step consciously toward your full potential, or the best you’ve got right now, or the truth of who you are.

You can simply reach for better-feeling thoughts. Just tell yourself or write down one thing after another that makes you feel better instead of worse. Go general at first (I don’t have to figure this out right now, I’m okay and my needs are met, I’ve gotten through worse before and other human beings have too). And go from there.

You can do a focus wheel. (I just did one this morning when I noticed I felt bad about something and wanted to clear that up before I moved anything else forward!)

You can do some inquiry (including a short-cut version of processing unhelpful thoughts).

You can check out whose business you’re in and then look for what your actual business is here (where you have agency and what’s yours to manage). (Hint, it’s always your business to soothe yourself and to shift your state if you don’t like the state you’re in—or, to keep it simple, if you don’t like how you feel.)

Bring it to now, and walk yourself (all the parts of you, body, heart, and head) toward what feels better right now.

My intention for myself and my ongoing practice are to keep going deeper with this, keep getting more subtle. I invite you to it. You are worth your own kind, gentle, patient walking-yourself-through. You are worth feeling good much more of the time. You are worth interrupting quickly what doesn’t feel good and responding kindly to what feels bad. Take care of yourself, body, heart, and head. Walk yourself through, lovingly. Then you can truly feel good much more of the time.

Love & blessings, Jaya

​Want fewer than 11? Skim the list (bold print is here to help) and go in where you see a spark of something that would represent you showing up for yourself. It could be game-changing.

1. Clean up a stupid little pile somewhere, on a wrongly used chair or stagnating desk corner, that’s really not hard to sort through at all but you keep acting like it is. ENJOY DOING THIS. Notice how easy it is to make something right.

2. Clean the bathroom mirror. That’s it. That does something. Harness the symbolic value, if you want more, and tell yourself, I’m clearing things up. I’m seeing more clearly. I love a clear view of things. (Apply this harnessing and naming of the symbolic with anything you do. It adds layers of meaning otherwise lost on you.)

3. Move more slowly, not just in your walking gait, but in your gestures. Do this especially if you typically move fast; especially if you think you have a lot to do and you need to get it done. Move slowly. Move deliberately. Feel yourself moving through space, through time, through your life. (Note this is a presence practice, a SIMPLE trick to be more conscious.) Feel that your life matters, this moment matters. Your life is not to be rushed through.

4. Talk to yourself out loud (double-duty accomplished if, as you talk, you’re walking the dog or watering plants or wiping surfaces or stretching your amazing body) and give yourself a whole bunch of good and real and true LOOK AT ME messages, just between you and you. Here’s a brief audio example, just between you & me.

5. Pause with every apology you hear yourself make (until you can pause it before it gets stated out loud, until you break yourself of this habit), and consider whether there was actually something to apologize for. You’ll mostly find there wasn’t, so take it back. I mean this: quit apologizing for little stupid things like not responding to a text when you think someone wanted you to. Categorically DO NOT APOLOGIZE WHEN YOU’VE DONE SOMETHING WRONG. Or hear yourself and take it back (at least between you & you). Learn to say I’m sorry only when you’ve actually violated your own code of ethics, when your own integrity feels affronted by your own actions. And then it will mean something, and you won’t be walking around apologizing for your existence, for taking up space, for being a human being born onto this planet. Here are some examples of sorry apologies if you want more guidelines for that.

6. Have more fun. Feel good more often. Laugh more. This does a million times more good than a gratitude journal, so if you like things like that, like this too. Feel good about whatever part of current conditions you can feel good about. Focus on what’s fun, what’s easy, what feels good, what you’re proud of, what makes you laugh, what brings pleasure. Cultivate all of this. Make it a project.

7. Get faster & faster at interrupting trains of thought that don’t serve you. That means anything about what’s wrong with you, how you’re not doing enough, how you’re doing it wrong, how this isn’t good enough, how this isn’t okay. That means interrupt it as it comes up, now and now and now. IMMEDIATELY give yourself kinder and truer messages, as many as you can string together. Ideally, do this out loud or in writing.

​8.Deal with something, one thing, that’s kind of big and pretty much ignored. Lighten the thing that weighs you down. You know what’s waiting for you. Just start it. And then do another bit another time, soon. Go in via your point of least resistance, just to show yourself you can. Do on bite-sized piece until you’ve found your inner pac-man that can gobble up anything. (Is pac-man still a thing?)

​9. Go to bed feeling good about the day. Appreciate all it held and all you did. If you can’t feel good about today, for some reason, at least be done with it. Put it down fully. Be done with today. You did enough. You did well enough. LITERALLY NEVER GO TO BED CARRYING WITH YOU A SENSE OF AN UNFINISHED NOT-ENOUGH DAY. Never. Never. Just quit it.

10. When you go to bed, tell yourself, Tomorrow, All things new, All things possible. If you want or need help to really set yourself up for letting go of today and looking toward a tomorrow full of possibility, go to sleep listening to affirmations or soothing music. My current favorites are from Crea tu frecuencia. Yeah, they’re in Spanish (I personally think this beats Duolingo by a long shot). Lots of people provide them in English. Try Jason Stevenson, if you like Aussie accents & a soothing male voice.

11. When you wake up, do things INSTANTLY to set yourself up for a good day. Do not start the day telling yourself awful things or cultivating things like fear and dread and sorrow. If you wake up already feeling some kind of way, DO NOT JUDGE THIS. Be sweet to yourself. Get curious. Greet  whatever it is with curiosity. What’s this, sweetheart? Do anything to soothe it, soften it, give yourself kind messaging that counters any thoughts that come hand in hand with this feeling. If you’re not sure what they are, write down, “I feel [whatever it is, as best you can name it], and that means that …” Getting your thoughts on paper will point you to the turnarounds that will counter them, and often will start to shift how you feel. Value, at the very least, that you’re not just going with the thoughts that reinforce bad feelings. Because that, my friend, is NOT being your own best ally.

I start most days with focus wheels these days (a process from Abraham-Hicks). Try it, you’ll like it. Whatever you feel a wobble about, write into the hub of the wheel what you want to feel or believe, and then stay put till you’ve filled the wheel with 12 reasons you can actually believe—you actually do believe—that center statement. My website has a whole page that illustrates and explains how to make a focus wheel and offers kinds of statements to reach for.

Love & blessings, Jaya