We hear it all the time:

You need to love yourself first. 

Sounds easy enough, but how often do you do it?

It’s easier to listen to the critical internal voice in your head:

“That was a stupid thing to say.”

“Don’t be so lazy.”

“You can’t wear that to the party, you’re too fat.”

Whose voice is it that you hear?  

I’m not sure how old we are when we first hear that voice. 

Mine has been with me for almost as long as I remember. Sometimes it sounds like my dad: “Where’s the other 6%?” on an exam I got 94% on. 

Sometimes it’s my grandmother who always had a comment about my weight. 

And sometimes it’s the boys from my elementary class who called me zitface, an insult I still feel to this day. (My inner parent has so much love for the little girl I was.) 

These critical voices were LOUD and had a BIG influence on how I felt about myself for much of my teens and twenties. By my thirties, they had quieted down quite a bit and I thought I was in a better place. 

I was finally in a relationship that had a future. We were planning to build our dream home in a small, idyllic, coastal town in Queensland. I was finally going to resign from teaching and be a stay-at-home mom. We would happily spend weekends at the beach, building sand castles and swimming in the surf with our kids. I thought life was pretty damn perfect.

But then, as the world shut down, he broke up with me. 

I was devastated. For months I couldn’t let go and was in complete denial that things were over. Desperately (and embarrassingly!) I tried to rekindle the relationship, to convince him to stay with me and stick with our dream life plan in Australia. 

He did stick around for a while (good ol’ friends with benefits—I do NOT recommend this to anyone going through a break-up). We even made plans to do a cold water diving course together as we’d been planning to SCUBA dive in Iceland, between the tectonic plates, before the pandemic started. 

The course was on July 18, 2020, at Lac Beauvert in Jasper National Park. I remember the day clearly because—I nearly died. 

We did one dive in the morning and one dive in the afternoon. My morning dive hadn’t been great. I really struggled with my buoyancy in the cold water suit and had a hard time staying with the group. It brought back all the anxiety I had diving in the first place and I was on edge. 

(Side note: Surprisingly, SCUBA diving for me is an anxious experience. Despite having swam competitively, taught swimming lessons, and been a lifeguard, putting a respirator on makes me extremely anxious, as does the thought of diving deep underwater. I only went to convince him that I was strong and capable and that we could continue to have more adventures together. What a horrible reason to do a risky activity like cold-water diving! I should have cancelled the second dive (scratch that, I shouldn’t have done cold water diving with him), but hindsight is 20/20.) 

My second dive was much better and I was feeling more confident. But…

As we rose to the safety stop, I couldn’t stop and kept rising. My heart started racing, I could feel myself hyperventilating, my mind was a chaotic mess with too many thoughts happening all at once. 

Everything happened so fast, yet I felt like I was moving in slow motion as I decreased my buoyancy trying to rejoin the group, only…

I  plummeted down much faster and farther than I wanted. 

The rest is a blur. As my goggles filled with water, I lost my respirator, and couldn’t grab the spare one. Anxiety and fear had a stranglehold on me. 

The instructor swam over to help, but in my panic, I didn’t take her respirator either. As I desperately tried to swim to the surface, she grabbed me under the arm and dragged me to the top. 

All the while I couldn’t breathe. Water was starting to fill my lungs. I truly felt my own mortality, my life was flashing before my eyes, and as I thought “This is it.”—I peed myself. 

Back at the surface, floating on my back while trying to catch my breath, relief flooded my body. My heart was still racing and so was my mind: I’m alive, I almost drowned, I nearly died, I’m alive, I almost drowned, I nearly died, I’m alive…

Apparently my ex had helped the instructor bring me to the surface, but once he realised I was okay, he informed me he was going back under to complete the course and get his cold water certification. 

I wanted to shout—

“What about me?”, 

but I wasn’t fully coherent, still reeling from thinking my life was at its end and just nodded. Overwhelmed with so many emotions, I had no idea what to say. 

Walking back to the truck—alone—with all my gear in tow it hit me:

He doesn’t love me. 

He doesn’t care that I nearly died. He doesn’t want me. 

Why do I want to spend the rest of my life with this man who only thinks of himself? 

Not once did he put me first and even a near-death experience didn’t change that. 

And that’s when I knew it was over. 

Over the next few months, I realised how emotionally abusive he was (but that’s a story for another day) and how much I let him get away with because I was desperate for his attention and his approval. 

I realised that if I loved myself, I wouldn’t have been with him for so long. I wouldn’t have put up with how he treated me and I’d have recognized the (many) red flags, but I was always in denial. I finally felt like I had a five-year plan (a huge relief as I shared here). I desperately wanted our relationship and our dream life plan to work, and when it didn’t I was inconsolable.

Until nearly drowning. Thanks, universe, for hitting me on the head with something I couldn’t see on my own!

I finally learned that I needed to put myself first and learn to love myself if I was ever going to be in a loving relationship. It was something that had been missing, that I’d always dismissed. 

Besides, how much could it possibly matter?

Turns out self-love matters a lot.

Loving yourself is critical for your overall wellbeing. 

Because loving yourself…

🥰 Motivates positive behaviour and reduces harmful behaviour

🥰 Empowers you to take risks (the good kind) AND to say no to things that don’t work for you

🥰 Helps you take care of yourself

🥰 Protects you from negative thoughts, self-sabotage, and pushing yourself too far

🥰 Allows you to tackle challenges well (sees them as opportunities for growth, or as temporary setbacks)

🥰 Is a powerful source of resilience

🥰 Promotes mental and emotional wellness

And when you don’t love yourself, you…

😠 Suffer from chronic feelings of inadequacy, low self-esteem, and low body image

😠 Speak negatively to yourself, constantly criticising

😠 Compare yourself to others (and never measure up)

😠 Have difficulty setting and maintaining boundaries

😠 Engage in self-sabotaging behaviours

😠 Have fear of failure

😠 Avoid self-care and neglect your personal needs

😠 Tolerate abusive or toxic relationships

😠 Overcommit (you have difficulty saying no)

😠 Seek external validation and approval excessively

Loving yourself is so vital to living a life you love that it’s one of the six non-negotiable self-care practices in Burnout to Bliss.

To really banish burnout and prevent it from recurring, you must love yourself. When you love yourself, you set and enforce healthy boundaries, a self-care practice that lets others know they can’t take advantage of you, harm you, or abuse you. 

Looking back at my relationship with my ex, I should have had clear boundaries about how he treated me.

If we disagreed on something, he would often give me the silent treatment, which could last hours, days, or entire long weekends (on one particularly horrific one). I’d feel awful and try to repair or explain my point of view, but he’d continue treating me like I didn’t exist.

It wasn’t until weeks after my near-drowning experience that I realised the silent treatment was a form of abuse (thanks Mel Robbins!) and that I needed to set boundaries to have a healthy relationship. 

In Burnout to Bliss, we’ll discover what strategies work best for you to silence the critical voice and explore how to nurture yourself through positive self-talk and affirmations, but if you’re not ready for that these practices will get you started.

Simple Ways to Show Yourself More Love:

💖 Accept compliments (a simple “Thank you!” is perfect)

💖 Embrace your uniqueness (and finally accept who you are fully)

💖 Practice gratitude (try being grateful for 3 things daily)

💖 Forgive yourself for making mistakes (it’s human to make mistakes!)

💖 Challenge yourself (go after a goal you’ve had for a long time)

These are just a few of the ways you can start practising self-love. 

In Burnout to Bliss, you’ll cultivate the self-love you need to stop tolerating hurtful communication patterns (like dismissing you after a traumatic experience or suffering through weekends of the silent treatment). So you start enjoying the bliss that comes when you feel calm and secure in your relationships because the lines of communication are open (and respectful!).

Don’t wait until life punches you in the nose with a near-death experience to start giving yourself the love and care you need and deserve.

Start loving yourself today and join me inside Burnout to Bliss.