426 thoughts on “Loving Myself and My Choices”

1. Esoteric healing sessions are amazing, but it is how we implement what we have felt and understood in the session that is the key to turning a page and changing the quality in each cycle. The healing sessions then truly applied become a marker of growth and progress.

2. Feeling the body, I mean really stopping to feel all we are feeling and all we are feeling within the body, is not that easy when we have had a habit of thinking our way through life. Ironically, feeling is very simple to do, just not easy when we allow the mind to take over and control things. The mind is keen to keep us in function, whilst the heart is that crucial part of us that brings us back to the being and the feelings and the honesty of what is needed next.

3. This stopping and listening to yourself is so so important and you discovery what is supportive and what isn’t. You know once I spent thousands of pounds going on a pilgrimage to India, only to find my exisiting life was still waiting for me when I landed back in Australia. All I had done was go on an expensive illusionary holiday/trip.

   Within all us we have the ability to stop and make those loving steps. They are at your doorstep, and it is a matter of choice as to which way you go. Loving yourself is the first step towards this and being consistent with it, the rest will follow.

4. Building a connection with our body and observing how we live, noticing how every choice affects the body are key steps in becoming more aware and more loving, ‘It’s not a quick leg-waxing fix, but about building a long-term connection and commitment to myself. Asking myself if what I am doing is really supporting me, listening to my body and then responding to it.’

   1. That building connection to our body is so important, it is the exact thing we need to answering to all our woes and illnesses. That’s where our healing first begins…

5. A beautiful sharing of your unfoldment that is inspiring for others.

6. I’ve recently been accepting exactly where I am at, particularly when I am not doing well, it brings such an ease and simplicity to accept and work with what’s happening, and not add another layer of distress by thinking “I should not be like this…”

7. Could it be we also get stuck on what is good and loose sight of Truth as bad seems to take the flack? As True Responsibility delivers us into the wisdom of knowing we are nothing less than a divine vessel, and life become our learning so we can have expansion, so good and bad are simple learning exercises to expand and not react.

8. Through learning to love myself, I am learning a different way of doing thing – one that does not come with a how-to or a goal and it is impossible to be making ‘mistakes’ as I knew it (i.e. almost criminal), and it is a beautiful process of accepting and surrendering.

   1. Loving ourselves definitely includes accepting, and no self-judgement, ‘ I worked on ‘loving myself stuff’ I began to try a different way: not rushing in like some kind of panicked person mopping up a disaster, not trying to fix everything and everyone in sight, not stage-managing the situation, but just noticing. That’s it. Oh, and dropping that whole self-judgment/loathing thing. That little thing.’

9. Loving ourselves and taking responsibility can be quite simple and does lighten the feeling within the body. It also highlights the lie we have agreed to live up to and the enormity of that lie.

10. I had no idea how to love myself, we are not taught any of this as children in fact quite the opposite.
    For me the biggest step to self love was first to forgive myself and at the same time relearn to trust what I knew to be true again.

11. Allowing oneself to acknowledge how one’s body feels and to then respond with honesty to the feeling and not how one thinks one should respond is to regain truth.

12. “What if, underneath everything else and deeper within myself, I already know how I want to live and the love that I am?” Definitely a question to ask ourselves at least once, and for me a question that I know have the answer to – and that is, yes, I had always known that there was another way to live, I just had no idea of how to access what I felt to be true. That was until I met Serge Benhayon and finally had the truth of life confirmed

13. We are humans and we are not perfect and we all make mistakes and do and say things that later we regret. If we allowed ourselves to be open to question why we did something we may get to see that there is a certain pattern that kicks in automatically. When we can understand there is a pattern we can start to unpick the pattern and in the unpicking comes the healing.

    1. We are forever students, always learning, becoming more aware, and discarding behaviours and patterns that are not loving.

14. I love the humour in your blog! How it debunks the craziness we buy into when we want or know we need to bring change into our lives! We really don’t have to walk away from everything, what we do need to consider is how everything we have committed ourselves to feels in our body and if it drains us or not. That way we can choose afresh whether we want to commit to it or not.

    1. I agree Lucy, I really enjoyed the humour in this blog, it makes it so much more relatable and allows me to be more accepting of what’s being shown to me in my own life to look at.

15. Yes feeling ourselves again is a matter of letting go of what we have accumulated that is not us rather than putting on more layers that we think we ought to have or be.

16. ‘I also realised that I don’t need to wait for stillness and space to start making changes and be more loving towards myself.’ It is all in our own hands from the start, waiting for anything has never worked and will never work, we are the ones we are waiting for.

17. “Being honest. This also means asking for what I want and need instead of pretending “I’m so flexible, lucky me for having no needs, and being so ‘un-needy!”” I love this. Being honest is often first seen as admitting all our wrongs but what if it is also about feeling that we are in fact amazing, deserve love and care and yes also need support at times and are not the ‘I can do it all” persons we thought ourselves to be.

18. I love your humorous way to reflect upon your life, you show that there is much to appreciate and that unraveling one’s own drama can be delightful and fun.

    1. Yes, the humour brings in a lightness, it is lovely, ‘Thinking, my cherished number one pastime, had led me nowhere except the repeat button on a broken CD player, playing out the same patterns and cycles but never moving on to the next song, let alone a different album.’

19. I had a laugh about your lighter bookshelf now that you no longer have the self help books on it, as I too had hundreds of self-help and New Age books and it was a great feeling to come to when I could let these go as I began to develop self-love for myself.

20. The lack of an image of how to move to get to a deeper place within ourselves may at times be paralyzing. It may stop us even before we move. This is part of the process of discovering that what is needed lies inside you but you have to relate to yourself in a different way to access it.

    1. So true- when we try to think our way to a connection with our body, we’re even more disconnected from it. The only way to access the qualities we hold within is through building a connection to our body, observing how we live and how every choice affects the body, and slowly making different choices. When we start to pay more attention to what and how we feel, the changes we need to make become more starkly felt and obvious.

21. So light and unimposing approach beautifully expressed, Bryony. Deepening one’s truthfulness, honest and transparency are key.

22. What a beautiful, fun, and joyous expression of the path back to love. I could really relate to placing conditions on life, “I kept thinking about how great I’d feel if only this, that and the other were different.” It’s a great reminder for me today that love, stillness and joy don’t need any outer box in life ticked first, they are there waiting for me to connect to experience within myself and express in life unconditionally.

    1. Love it Melinda – how we are on the inside in terms of our connection to our being and our essence is really what determines how we will then experience and handle things on the outside.

23. I know so well that not knowing what to do, feeling stuck kind of place. But it is just like I am saying I want love but refusing to surrender to it. We actually do know, but we are so skilled at doing the exact opposite to the point we fool ourselves that we know nothing.

24. I love your practical approach to life, I think the concept of self love can come across as a little airy fairy sometimes but you’ve made it super easy with these tenants – the philosophy of just be honest and take it a day at a time and begin with the little things makes it very simple – it takes time to build but it’s a rich and amazing process of discovering more and more who you are.

25. It’s interesting that there is a perception that you are narcissistic or selfish when you are being self-loving to yourself, the world needs to see people who are living their life with true self-care and self-love as it is key to greater health and vitality.

    1. Yes, when we try to push on through and just do ‘whatever it takes’ to get something done, we disconnect from our bodies in the process. Big deal, we might think, but in that disconnection we choose not to feel the consequences of our choices and the impact they have on our bodies, to not truly know ourselves and connect to what is needed next. The ripple effect of our choices is often more far reaching than we think it is.

26. The more I listen to my body the less sense the mind makes.

27. As we are humans with human imperfections we are going to make mistakes and choices that are not so supportive of us or maybe even others but the trick is to just learn from them – don’t put ourselves down or berate ourselves, just learn.

28. “I also realised that I don’t need to wait for stillness and space to start making changes and be more loving towards myself.” This is a beautiful realisation, that we do not have to wait for anything but can start now.

    1. Yes.. no matter how off track we’ve been, or diversions we’ve taken, every moment holds the potential for a new beginning.. starting again, with a greater commitment to love every part of the process and to feel the bigger picture and purpose, than ever before.

29. What a joy to read Bryony, thank you for sharing all about this loving yourself stuff.

30. Behind the layers there is only beauty; an amazing one,

    1. Yes, there is so much beauty in every single one of us and no outer layer can in fact hide that we can only decide not to see / show it.

31. “Having fun, actually allowing myself to feel tender and delicate but strong and powerful.” A commitment to being all the love that you are is no weird recipe for a way to live.

32. So great to read this again, thank you Bryony! This is so true “I already know how I want to live and the love that I am”. This is what restores the simplicity to the ‘whole self love thing’, thanks for the great reminders and for the opportunity to laugh at the brilliant and very gorgeous way you express things.

33. What if the love within me already knew the next steps in life? What does that feel like? Hmmm..

34. It is interesting to observe that when we initiate loving momentums we then become acutely aware of the unloving momentums we have created and been living in, which no longer fit or feel true and in fact now feel harmful or abusive. Our bodies are attuned the movements of love and the more we move with love the more we become aware of what is not love, and has no further place in our lives.

    1. Yes.. this is my experience – that the move lovingly I live my life – the more loving choices I make – I start to feel that love within my body so that anything that’s not of that same quality really stands out and feels awful, and the less I want to make choices that are unsupportive and harmful. The harmful and abusive choices start to fall away by themselves as they become less enticing options, and it becomes ever- clearer that nothing can match the feelings and known qualities of gentleness and deep love that we all hold within.

35. The last paragraph feels like a very beautiful way to start a stocktake on life.

36. I loved reading this blog in its lighthearted and honest style. It brings me back to the point that we can never exhaust approaching any situation from the basis of how our bodies feel and understand life.

37. The benefits of loving yourself first are huge as you point out, ‘The benefits of this loving myself approach so far have been interesting:
    All the money I’ve saved on not flying to India to find myself.
    A lighter bookshelf now that they aren’t groaning with the weight of self-improvement manuals.
    Not having to quit my job, dump my relationship and abandon my entire life to live in a cave.
    Closer relationships.
    Having fun, actually allowing myself to feel tender and delicate but strong and powerful.
    Feeling myself again. What a relief!’ And I am sure you have found more benefits since writing this blog.

38. Beautiful sharing Bryony, it really does start with loving ourselves first, I have just posted a blog on that, http://www.lorrainewellman.com/blog/the-first-relationship incase anyone is interested.

39. “It starts with me”, how true your words. Bryony I loved the humor in your blog, pointing our the honesty within it all. How easy it is to say just be yourself, when I feel being myself is so not myself at this point in time. However I await the real feeling of actually being myself in every aspect of my daily life.
    Yes it start with me!

    1. I enjoyed dating myself and actually asking myself what I liked and what I didn’t like. I got to feel what I valued and where I wanted to put my energy. I highly recommend it! It really does start right here with ourselves.

40. Bryony I really loved, this, I had some laugh out loud moments as your humour is very relatable. It’s great timing for me to read this as I have recently been caught in my mind through pictures and ideals of how life “should” be, and as a result my body was not being listened to. Now that I have the awareness I realise that my body was communicating that there was an issue, but I’m still used to disregarding it in my drive to meet an outcome. How “right” the mind feels in its follies, despite the body communicating the harm of such activities.

41. You make a great point Bryony we know what to do and fully equipped in each moment to do what is needed. When things are hard and feel like a mountain it is that worth to break that old momentum into the focus of the smaller moments and the simplicity of just the one task and completing with care and quality of one small task at a time.

42. Super-great blog, Bryony, spot-on and a nicely dry sense of humour to boot : )) Wow, and I wish I’d read it before I started on my numerous (and costly) healing and spiritual boot-camps! Finding Universal Medicine and the simple truths presented therein have done what all those fruitless investigations could not – returned me to me.

43. Yes, I remember the early days of returning to starting loving myself, and wondering what this would look like- wanting someone to tell me what to do, haha, ‘I couldn’t understand what practical steps I needed to take to get back to being and loving myself again.’ Seems crazy, but many have been puzzled by this.

44. I love the freshness in which you write and see life, and the practicality you allow yourself to live life with.

45. Gorgeous sharing – real, raw and honest – love it. You give us the understanding of why ‘fixing’ doesnt work, and what is actually a loving support to do. For me which very much supports me is doing the Esoteric Yoga, that allows me to feel my body instead of being all the time in my mind. From here I then have a recipient point in my day, of then where to draw my energy from. A connection with me (my whole) body instead of just a part (my mind). And trust me , it is worth doing, as it brings your days to a whole more quality of energy.

46. Feelings of being “disconnected” are normal when we live with not being focused on the way we express and move, and by being focused we should be with what ever we are doing while we are doing it. This sounds easy but in absolute honesty it takes a lot of practice to bring a level of dedication to the true purpose of being connected. So what are we talking about when we say connection or disconnection? Could it be that our focus on connection starts with our breath? As breath is the movement that starts out the rest of the ways we move, so the way we breathe sets the tone for every other movement there after. Inspired by the Gentle Breath Meditation as presented by Serge Benhayon. For more on the GENTLE BREATH MEDITATION go to;
    http://www.unimedliving.com/search?keyword=gentle+breath+meditation

47. Having attended many spiritual practises and spent a shed load of money, never was self care, let alone self love ever mentioned as being important or even slightly considered. It was all based on finding solutions without any true evolution.

    1. In my experience Julie of the spiritual New Age many of the practises led me to being even more disconnected to my body and unable to cope with the practicalities of life, and I felt further removed from dealing with the difficulties life and relationships presented. Unbelievably, there was never a mention of self care and the only practices that claimed to be “self love” I came across were to change beliefs about the self, but there was no reconnection back to the love within. It was just more thinking.

       1. Melinda, I would have to say the same. I became more withdrawn from people, and life, as the more I meditated the less committed to life I became, and looking at it from where I am now, I would say depressed. I attended many different types of modalities but soon realised that what I was searching for would not be found within these practises. I would now say that since attending the Universal Medicine presentations, retreats and workshops, that I have a commitment to life that I have never had before, and that there is a huge difference to what is being taught within the spiritual new age arena.

48. I too have a much lighter bookshelf and have saved a shed load of money on not going off to find myself on endless meditation and yoga retreats, and I’m actually enjoying the same job that I left believing that I hated it and I would never return. There are certainly lots of plus points to truly committing to loving and taking care of myself.

49. Self-love has not a narcissistic bone in it. Self-love requires a deep honouring and love of self, so the beauty of who you are can be shared with the world.

50. I like how you write just as you mean it, and that it is so clear, raw and straightforward. Knowing what you express and not holding back on how it comes out. I find this very inspiring as I have been used all my life to conform my speech, way of acting, behavior, voice, sound, body posture and out based on what others wanted to see or handle (maximum).
    I can tell from +- 20 years of experience. It is exhausting, I do not recommend it to anyone. And so, I prefer now to speak from the heart, straight away and not manipulate anything that I say – as it needs to come out as to how it was received in the first place. I am learning this now, and it is brilliant and very freeing!

    1. This is great Danna, maybe there is a book in explaining how living from the heart how life can change at any age?

       1. I love that Greg.. Yes very true. Will ponder on that. Thank you

       2. Inspired I am for sure !

       3. An inspiring inspiration for so many for sure!!!

51. Loved reading your blog Bryony, choosing to make more self-loving choices, and actually allowing yourself to love yourself, sounds crazy that we have to change our choices in order to love ourselves because it really is the most natural thing to do, yet we bury ourselves in protection and in doing so, we stop being the natural love that we are.

52. To me articles like this are poetic in their own way. This is a completely different spin on what life offers us, “What if, underneath everything else and deeper within myself, I already know how I want to live and the love that I am?” We have walked so far away from this that some would even deny it exists or brush it off as some type of confusing rubbish. What is being said is true and the fact we already know is littered through our past. We choose not to see things like this because of how we choose to move in the world. The world takes our focus to other things, deliberately so we don’t see the movements we make which then either supports us to see deeper or steps us back onto the merry go round. Whatever life is throwing at us holding true to the feeling that under that is more you brings forward what is needed to get there or more, exposes what is in the way.

    1. Well said Ray. We are already everything we need to be, we have found ourselves in the tricky position of having to admit that we have buried under layers and layers of “I must do better” and or “if only I had…”

53. This is a simple yet powerful blog Bryony that highlights the importance of loving ourselves and learning to accept and appreciate ourselves. I often wonder why we aren’t taught this as children or in schools, there are not enough role models reflecting this is life so it is beautiful when people such as yourself choose to live this way as it inspires and support others to choose this as well.

54. Love to return to this blog…. all the benefits of this loving myself approach that you have listed is also my experience. All my relationships have improved because the relationship with myself has deepened and I can appreciate all the changes I have made and continue to make as my self-love expands. Self-love has ripple effects in all areas of my life!

55. Yes, imagine accepting ourselves for all we are and letting go of the judgement, the beating up, the drama of how we are going to take the next step. So much of what you share here is familiar! The humour is what means this does not take itself to despair. Somehow there is a connection within that says I am with you all the way, I never left and I am here for you the moment you choose to connect again. Taking stop moments really help to allow that connection to be felt from the body.

56. I love returning to this blog for the lightness and humour that is shared…. and for all the little gems of wisdom.
    Healing and changing our old unloving ways/patterns and behaviours may be challenging at times, but well worth the benefits, as listed here.

57. Bryony, this blog is open and simple and says to all that read it that what we already are is all we need – very simply to start to listen to our body and the rest will be taken care of. No overwhelm, no rules, no comparison, just being honest.

58. Love the humour in your blog Bryony – it cracked me up! There are so many benefits to taking more responsibility for my life rather than blaming things and people outside of me.

59. This loving yourself business really works…. it is a great medicine and it is up to each and everyone how much of this medicine we allow, the more we love the more we can share with others.

60. Such an awesome blog Bryony – it really does begin with us and our everyday choices and our willingness to be honest and face the hard stuff, and I love how you point out this is a life-long commitment and one we can never drop our responsibility on – what a fantastic way to live life.

61. I could so relate Bryony, especially to this, “After all, I didn’t want to give myself some kind of ‘weird diet’ and another excuse for my perfection-striving brain to go into overdrive.”, my mind loves to have something to focus on so I don’t have to feel anything else… especially quick fixes that don’t actually fix anything but bury what is there to just come up another day. When I first started any form of healing, I remember wanting everything out straight away, and I would say I didn’t care how much it hurt just as long as it was out… this was totally from my unloving mind at the time that didn’t care about the body.

    1. What I’ve come to feel lately is what a harsh taskmaster my mind is, compared to my body which is so infinitely delicate, wise and patient. The more I listen to my body instead of my mind, the more easily life flows. I could not have written that a couple of years ago- I was so attached to my mind and my thinking brain that I couldn’t imagine being able to function without being driven by it. It’s not about not using or reacting to the mind, but understanding how to use it, and not using it in a way that compromises the body.

62. I love, love, love this, Bryony. Make me really wonder why we wouldn’t do this ‘loving myself’ stuff more often.

63. ‘Being honest. This also means asking for what I want and need instead of pretending “I’m so flexible, lucky me for having no needs, and being so ‘un-needy!”’ This has taken me a long time to stop being the o so flexible un-needy me which in truth led me nowhere than terrible headaches and migraines. And sometimes I find myself back in letting things slip because of not being honest towards myself and not wanting to become aware of the feelings I actually had while pretending I did not.But at least I catch myself and come back to the truth of my being.

64. I loved reading this again Byrony as you share the power that honesty has in our lives. I have discovered how honesty is one of the greatest medicines that is readily available to us all. For through honesty we come to know the truth, we can feel it in our bodies, all that is needed is the willingness to go there. When we do we are then empowered to know if the choices we make are true, loving and honoring or not. From here we are much freer to make a choice that supports us to be who we truly are.

65. I just love your sense of humour Bryony – it is wonderful gift to be able to laugh at oneself.

    1. I loved the lightness and humour Bryony wrote this in to Tamara… it shows we don’t need to take ourselves so seriously or when we make mistakes.

66. “As I worked on ‘loving myself stuff’ I began to try a different way: not rushing in like some kind of panicked person mopping up a disaster, not trying to fix everything and everyone in sight, not stage-managing the situation, but just noticing. That’s it. Oh, and dropping that whole self-judgment/loathing thing. That little thing.” This is hilarious Bryony – you have painted a very familiar scenario – one that many of us can recognise and relate to oh so well!

67. I love that you have shared the things you have learnt in your commitment to loving you and the powerful affect these have had. The analogy of the wall paper is perfect, for so many of us live behind a facade, keeping all the cracks hidden and yet addressing them lovingly as you have found, can be the most healing and transformational thing to do.

68. I have made many choices in this life that have turned out ones that in hindsight I find it hard to accept that I made, so choosing to live in regret, and often giving myself a hard time in the process, which of course just added to the weight of the issue I was continuing to create. I realise now that a lot of those seemingly ‘wrong’ decisions were made in reaction to something in my life and not from a loving and wise response to the situation I was facing. These days I take the time to feel into any confronting situation and most of the time – I’m not perfect! – I am able to respond and not react; it’s certainly a lot more enjoyable to live this way and “loving myself and my choices” is definitely a whole lot easier as each day goes by.

69. It’s amazing how we conjure up an image for anything and everything and set ourselves up for an inevitable failure. It just reminds me how beautiful the word esoteric truly is – the inner-most. Connecting to that place can take care of everything and we don’t even have to worry about what it looks like because the quality is already guaranteed.

70. I love this. If we can be humble and honest enough with ourselves to admit that what we’ve been trying doesn’t work – however many times we might try it – then we realise we actually have all the wisdom we could ever need, right here in our own bodies.

    1. It is so true Lucy – honesty is the gateway to knowing the truth of who we are resides within us all. Being ourselves is what brings greater love to the life we live and share.

71. Hi Bryony, reading your article is so timely for me this morning, as the quality of the relationship with ourselves determines everything

72. ‘I also realised that I don’t need to wait for stillness and space to start making changes and be more loving towards myself.’ I love this line – how often do we say ‘I’ll make that change WHEN…’ we’re always putting stuff off instead of just going for it now.

73. “And how would I feel if I actually accepted, as part of my development, ALL the choices I’ve made so far, even the ones I’ve judged as ‘bad’?” This acceptance opens the door to the realisation that the life we are living and its quality is the result of our choices – that is freedom.

74. ‘Loving Myself and My Choices’ is a powerful way to live. I am experiencing this as I am learning to love myself and my choices more and more. Even some of the unloving choices, I look at them and can appreciate that they too offer me an opportunity to learn. With this I am less likely to beat myself up and put myself down but instead lovingly look at what I can learn from all my choices.

75. Thanks Bryony, the big point that stands out for me in this article is the ability to accept all the choices we have made without harsh judgement

76. Through your simplicity and honesty, Bryony, you clearly and practically share how, although not quick, listening to and honouring your body builds a true foundation of self-love, bringing true profound long-lasting change that no quick-fix ever achieves.

77. “And how would I feel if I actually accepted, as part of my development, ALL the choices I’ve made so far, even the ones I’ve judged as ‘bad’?” Bryony I love this question as for me to stop my internal judgment and self critic was the best medicine I have ever found so far.

78. What stands out for me is how simple it actually is to self love by choosing to connect with our bodies first and go from there. We have our own inbuilt deep and wise counsel absolutely free and on tap 24/7. How amazing is that, and yet we have ditched it for books, shrinks and others opinions. Go figure.

    1. Yes, ‘connecting with our bodies first and go from there’ is so simple yet it is so empowering and rewarding.

79. The one thing that sticks here for me is building the long term loving commitment with ourselves that gives us a solid foundation to build from.

80. “What if, underneath everything else and deeper within myself, I already know how I want to live and the love that I am?” The more I accept my true amazingness that knows this so I am finding that I am making many different choices in my life and that they are way more self-loving and in consequence more loving for others.

81. Love your article Bryony – love the way you are so playful with a serious subject. “It starts with me” So true.

82. Bryony, I love these lighthearted benefits of loving yourself, there is so much to appreciate about us, where we come from, and the true Love we are.

83. Bryony I had to chuckle at a couple of those points, only because they so related to me too. Your point on honest is very true. It’s actually ok (well more than ok) to say what we do and don’t want in our life rather than tolerating behaviour or compromising ourselves. This is where I have compromised myself big time, because I want myself to be seen and easy going and flexible. This I am now going to commit to work on. The other point was about going to India. Having been there I can confirm that you don’t find yourself in India. It’s certainly a challenge and an experience and a half and depending on the nature of your travel you can face quite a lot of adversity. But really with all of that I couldn’t wait to get home.

84. I love your down to earth style of writing, it’s like a breath of fresh air. What I am getting from your article is that waiting for this ‘moment’ to change, never works, it’s now, it’s tangible, not a ‘when you get to the top of a mountain’ or ‘when you have the right job’, it’s immediate and it’s powerful in its simplicity.

85. Bryony, awesome honest sharing – there are no short cuts but boy oh boy is there an awesome unending amount of love there for us if we choose it. Yes it is not always going to be easy as we have to face our bad and wreckless choices but the key is to stay with the love we are otherwise it is all too easy to get swept in bashing ourselves. Love does not judge it just asks us to be and more we can be the more we notice it is there giving us more support than we could ever think possible.

86. “It starts with me.” So there is nothing or no one to blame. The choices we make are all reflected back to us in every move we make.

87. The turn around from finding solutions and fixing oneself to truly connecting and loving oneself is profound and it is the sweetest, loveliest thing we can offer to ourselves – something worth cherishing and fostering for a life time!

88. Bryony,
    I love how you bring the conclusion of your article to being about accepting all of our choices. It really is astounding me that the more I do just this and fully understand the choices I have made the more I am able to choose differently.

    1. It is amazing what happens when we lovingly look at our choices, by accepting them and take responsibility for them. We then begin to learn from our choices and this supports us to made more loving choices with more clarity and understanding.

89. Choosing self love is a constant choice – I noticed this morning I actually didn’t leave much time for myself to get ready and out of the house. So I rushed through and my movements around different rooms felt careless and stressed. Once that was clocked I chose to move differently and my whole mind set changed, it no longer became about time but the quality of how I was moving – and that felt so beautiful and caring. And just for the record – I wasn’t late for the day anyway 🙂

    1. When we shift the focus to our movements and the quality of those movements and how we are, the quality of the whole day changes and I feel less exhausted at the end of it. I’m noticing more and more that when I do this often there’s actually more space in the day and everything that needed to get done, gets done- but without the rush and stress.

90. It can feel overwhelming, once that choice is made to connect and explore within what is the true us and what is not. But the overwhelm is also a choice in itself and another way we can distract ourselves from the simplicity of evolution and what each moment offers us in way of presence and love. We are so supported to be who we are, nature is reflecting it all the time, it’s just up to us to make the choices.

    1. .. And such simplicity in that choice to be who we truly are: a surrender to what is already there within us. Nowhere to get to and no striving necessary!

91. So fantastically down to earth and practical, Bryony. I know where I am at. Trying to act like I am somewhere in my own development when I am not is a massive con game that I am playing with myself, which only helps to keep me exactly where I am: struggling to be somewhere I am not. Acceptance of the choices I have made and appreciating even the little ones I make to care for myself every day is all about building the love for me!

    1. Appreciation also keeps it real: when we appreciate all that we bring and the choices we’ve made it totally takes away any need to want to be somewhere we’re not.

92. Its so easy to blame other people, or to blame the situation. Its when we take personal responsibility that things start to change!

93. I always enjoy the honesty and true expression of your blogs Bryony. I can also relate to “It’s not a quick leg-waxing fix, but about building a long-term connection and commitment to myself.” I have a bit of an attitude still of depending on support, when I’m actually my own most powerful supporter. A rather large “note to self” in that one! Relying on others to “fix” me just leads to more desperation, because it’s up to me in my every moment to support and love myself.

94. I really enjoy reading your blogs Bryony- they are so straight and down to earth. Like you say- making the simple choices isn’t some big escape trip thing, it just comes down to how we are living each day.

95. Its funny isn’t it – we can spend so much time, effort and money on trying to keep the fake wallpaper in place – patching it up here, making excuses there. Yet if we just trust in ourselves and let the fake-ness fall away, we get to see the gold that is lying just beneath.

96. In amongst the stresses and strains from life there can actually be a way of living that can still make it all such that it is not a drain but a joy to live life. This is Gold! And so simple too. Compared to the amount we invest in trying to find the answers and cures to lifes woes, is the simplicity of just loving ourselves!

97. Dammit I’m not there yet either! I particularly enjoyed these last few sentences “What if, underneath everything else and deeper within myself, I already know how I want to live and the love that I am? What changes and choices can I make to the way I’m living now to better support me and how I want to live from now on? And how would I feel if I actually accepted, as part of my development, ALL the choices I’ve made so far, even the ones I’ve judged as ‘bad’?” – Many thanks Bryony it is great to not get stuck in the seriousness, I will get to deepen my relationship as I trip smile and appreciate all that I am. Not just the bit parts!

98. I enjoyed reading your light-hearted approach to understanding yourself and the process of deepening your self-love Bryony. In the past I used to have a seriousness and a ‘needing to get it right’ attitude when I wanted to make changes in my life, of course nothing ever changed and took me further away from love – now I know it is about building a steady and consistent foundation of love as you so beautifully have discovered for yourself.

99. Bryony, great honest sharing. I can so relate to the self love and care possibility idea, and the how too get there? When all we actually know is the old path that we have always walked. I loved reading your journey of evolution. I recognize this transition well. Beautiful.

100. “how would I feel if I actually accepted, as part of my development, ALL the choices I’ve made so far, even the ones I’ve judged as ‘bad’?”. Holding onto past choices and judging or even punishing ourselves for them is the easiest game to play to hold ourselves back from truly being ourself in full. It’s an easy choice when we see it as a game.

101. I love how you so honestly take responsibility for putting into practise what you have learnt through Universal Medicine, taking it from knowledge to action. It certainly does start with us taking responsibility as you have done;
     “It starts with me. Not in a narcissistic way, but in a way that recognises that I need to look after myself before I can be of any use to the rest of the world”

102. I’ve been at this point many times, where I feel stuck in what to do next to move out of the mess or loneliness or lovelessness that I’ve felt, or the poor choices and the consequences of these choices. It’s something that comes up from time to time when I am asked to go deeper within myself. Reading this I see the feeling stuck is actually my own resistance, it’s a behaviour that is chosen to not go deeper. If I choose this behaviour and react to what I’m feeling needs to be truly let go of then I go into a whole lot of doing, doing the healing I need, doing the rhythms I need to get out of what I’ve felt, saying the right thing and exposing what needs to be exposed, but all from a doing. This not only leads me no where, it also puts up a wall to the healing that is truly needed. More and more I am learning to actually stop everything, including the reactions to what has been felt, and be extremely tender and understanding with myself, then let what ever needs to come up and out out, by surrendering deeper into my vulnerability.

103. ‘What if, underneath everything else and deeper within myself, I already know how I want to live and the love that I am?’ – we underestimate ourselves and the wisdom we hold in our body and by judging others we underestimate the wisdom they hold in their body. Trusting is very big in my life and I am feeling that living with judgement in my life happens only to the degree that I do not trust. I love this question you have posed Bryony, it opens the way to trusting self and trusting others.

104. Choosing to express whatever is there to be expressed has been fundamental to loving myself more and developing more intimate relationships.

105. ‘Loving Myself and My Choices’ sums it up so well. I too struggled to get out of my constantly whirring mind and believe that I really could feel in my body. Choosing to take responsibility for my choices and starting to build a self-loving foundation has transformed my whole life and key to that has been accepting past choices and letting them go rather than continuing to beat myself up.

106. “I don’t need to wait for stillness and space to start making changes and be more loving towards myself”. This sentence is so empowering and allowing; allowing ones self to expand and learn at the same time.
     A beautifully honest and inspiring blog, thank you Bryony.

107. I love how you render all the mush that we indulge ourselves in to some simple and basic principles – listen to the body more, make yourself the priority, honour your feelings and don’t do a guilt trip on the past.

108. Great blog Bryony, it is beautiful to read about self-love, and what it means to you. I can feel how it is about letting go of the thoughts, and feel our way trough life. In love with ourselves, letting go of the hardship and claim what is right for us.

109. Thank you Bryony, your blog is a joy to read, and brings a smile to my face, in your down to earth style, you simply tell like it is and what you have come to understand about your life by making more loving choices. ” I also realised that I don’t need to wait for stillness and space to start making changes and be more loving towards myself. What if, underneath everything else and deeper within myself, I already know how I want to live and the love that I am? “

110. Bryony I love what you’ve written. Really get the pattern of fixing things and going into my head to solve the situation. Now I’m feeling more, dropping the thinking and listening to what’s next rather than planning with an end goal that sets me up for taking me further from me. I’m finding this a little challenging but each time I surrender and trust I discover it’s all ok. Some complications I’ve created are taking a little while to redress and that’s ok.

111. What you have learnt and the benefits of loving yourself are very beautiful Bryony; what you have presented is very honest and self-loving. The way you are learning to appreciate yourself is awesome and very inspiring.

112. I love the honesty in this blog. The healing process for me is an unfolding, going to deeper levels of understanding and appreciation and letting go further of ideals and beliefs. There is no quick fix here but taking true resposability.

113. I absolutely loved reading this Bryony! The last paragraph is an absolute pearl of wisdom too. ” What if, underneath everything else and deeper within myself, I already know how I want to live and the love that I am? “. What if indeed! This sentence alone shows me that I know exactly what needs to be done, the truth is I actively sabotage myself in order to ‘stay small’. It helps to get honest about what I am doing as this allows me to make a true choice.

     1. It is so true, we know what is needed, but choose so many kinds of sabotage to delay the process, as we can’t do much more than that. It is inevitable that we will eventually return to who we truly are.

114. That was a really good article on the basic foundations of looking after yourself and practical tips on re-connecting to your essence.

115. Bryony – I am feeling to appreciate my past and not go in to resistance around it which sets up self judgment. This allows release for what has been and a beautiful new template in order to find my way back to the essence of who I truly am. I love your simple points of calling ourselves out, Honesty and making choices that support a new loving way with self and all others. Thank you for your honest blog and for putting in print all the questions and early confusion that comes up when we realise what we have been doing isn’t working and how to change it.

116. Thank you Bryony for a delightfully inspiring blog, I often get caught in my head, having lived there for most of my life, with the old patterns playing out. How different my life becomes when I am with my body listening to it and making more self loving choices, life has with it a flow, an ease fullness, worlds apart from the anxiety that the head chatter brings. It is simply, all about choice.

117. When I was in search of how to heal myself I desperately wanted some kind of way that told me exactly what I had to do. e.g. a diet or an exercise regime. But now I see that in this way I was giving my power away to think that a book or person could tell me what was best for me. It was also a way of avoiding responsibility for taking control of my life and really feeling the choices I had made until then. Now I know that we are the only ones that can truly heal ourselves.

     1. I couldn’t agree more Eleanor, having also searched high and low for the answers to my ill health and then finally discovering the answers were there all along, within myself.

        1. Julie, won’t it be truly amazing when all of Humanity gets to this level of understanding that where we are is because of our choices?

118. This is such a great blog Bryony. So playful to read, and so real! It is true that it is all about feeling, instead of thinking, our way through life. And then making the necessary steps, one by one, to become more loving to ourselves. If we look at everything, and try to change it all at once, then we are just ‘thinking’ it and not allowing our healing process to be an unfolding one whose pace is set by our body instead of our minds.

119. Really like what you’ve said about saying out loud what it is we’re feeling. I’m noticing that it has the power to break the strength of the monologue I’ve not realised I’ve been running inside my head. Because that unspoken monologue suddenly becomes real, physical – a delivered sentence of sound which in breaking the silence also breaks the thought’s spell. It’s then I realise the preceding thought content has actually been just as real, as impactful on me – only I couldn’t hear it so it didn’t appear real. So it was as if it wasn’t happening – and yet it absolutely was. It’s crucially important to clock the power of our silent meandering thoughts and call them out for what they are.

120. I loved reading this blog and the wisdom and humour shared with us Bryony. This line really stood out for me – ‘I also realised that I don’t need to wait for stillness and space to start making changes and be more loving towards myself. What if, underneath everything else and deeper within myself, I already know how I want to live and the love that I am?’ – What a great question to be asking.

121. Bryony this blog is absolutely so amazing!!!! Thank You so much for expressing this so clearly and making it all so real and accessibel – with lots of love Nadine

122. This blog is so supportive to read. I get sometimes get caught up in ‘being perfect’ and trying to not show my imperfections in the world yet this is exhausting. I can feel how I have a picture of how life should be, how I should feel to be content with myself. It is refreshing to just be real and let that go, I know I am amazing and ok with all my imperfections phew.

123. Thank you Bryony. I can feel from my own body that I am being asked to deepen the love and care I have for it. Some things that I used to do just don’t fit anymore. A great reminder to honour my feelings and support myself in a true way of being. Your blog is a lovely confirmation of this way of being.

124. “The benefits of this loving myself approach so far have been interesting: Having fun, actually allowing myself to feel tender and delicate but strong and powerful”, I can relate to this, I have really begun to feel,my tenderness and it feels so beautiful especially from being a person who was so controlling with a hard body, also feeling powerful and strong, but with the strength from the inside not from my physical body, which looks tender and delicate.

125. It is really about taking responsibility for one self, making loving choices that open up many doors, in taking responsibility for the self it inspires others too.

126. Bryony like you it took me a while to understand what looking after myself meant and felt like. I had such a heavy baggage of ideals, beliefs, ingrained attitudes that I thought I could never understand let alone get to the stage of caring for myself. Of course I’m still learning but life now is definitely easier, playful and yet somehow imbued with a new responsibility towards myself and the world.

127. Beyond, this is a great blog. It takes some time and true feeling to get out of those old ways and old patterns of doing things. It’s really important to be gentle on ourselves because despite what we may have thought of ourselves in the past, we are amazing.

     1. Indeed we are amazing Amanda, and if we can get really honest with ourselves when there is resistance or reaction, that very fact is right there for us to feel and know.

     2. How different life would be if we were supported from birth to accept our amazingness rather than constantly being asked, even imposed upon, to be something more than we already are?

128. I love the cheekiness in the blog… and yes always a relief when you save the money from a wasted trip to India!. I liked the sentence “How does one begin to let that tired and fake wallpaper fall away to expose the beautiful real person, including those ‘cracks’ that you’ve been trying so hard for so long to paper over?” which so perfectly describes the pretending, the falsity and the nice that we use to paint a picture of what we want our lives to look like, rather than truly looking at ourselves and being willing to see that we are actually pretty gorgeous as we naturally are.

129. Living a life of appreciation and love for ourselves is easier thank we think. The tension that we feel when thinking about how to let go of patterns or anything else from our lives, for example certain foods that do not 100% support us, is but an illusion we create in our minds to not let go. Once we really feel a deep love and appreciation for ourselves this letting go will be the most natural thing to do. How can you love and appreciate yourself and at the same time do things that harm your body?

130. I can very much relate to the panicking and doing-modus to fix “it” – like waxing legs – as you wrote so humorously – with even not allowing me to feel first, what “it” is… In some movies there are scenes when someone is in an artificial parallel-world but don’t consciously realize it, because it feels and looks so real… Then the key is for example to jump from a skyscraper to come back to the truth… Sometimes, while introducing self-love and deeper nurturing and being then met from the patterns of protection and separation in between the collected layers, I feel like those persons in the movies. I have to do something seemingly irrational to come back to my true being. Beautiful, how you have shared your way back here, including the teething troubles.

131. This is a blog I can really relate to Bryony… I have previously spent a lot of time thinking, over-thinking and making choices based on the same – and found this stressful and exhausting, and complete with its own drama! What a difference it has made to begin taking responsibility for my choices, and to begin making choices from what I can feel in my body, rather than from my head!

132. What struck me this time in re-reading your blog was your wisdom about not needing to wait for stillness and space before starting to make changes and being more loving towards ourselves. We can procrastinate too easily with, ‘Once I’ve cleaned the house, finished Project X, got through Christmas, bought the new car, changed my diet, I’ll…’. We do know how we want to live and we can start whenever we want – even right now. It’s just a simple choice. The point is, do we want the responsibility that goes with it?

     1. Absolutely Cathy – and I’m struck by that decision point… is it made absolutely and completely, or is it a bit wishy washy, half made, with plenty of scope to snap back into the old pattern?

133. In the past my behaviour has been to give myself a hard time for things I have done or choices I have made that have not been supportive. Now I am learning to enjoy more being tender and understanding with myself, this is a huge change, it requires a dedication but it is much more loving.

     1. Thank you Kristy, this is what I am learning too, I felt how I resisted this tenderness and became frustrated and harsh on myself because of this resistance, so my reaction made it even worse and caused a lot of pain in my body. When I surrendered by accepting my choices and nominated it without judgement I could feel my body released this tight feeling of frustration and hardness and I was able to come back to understanding and tenderness and felt my own joy again.

     2. I feel it can be easy for me to sometimes go into self criticism when I can see a choice that i’ve made or a way of living that was not in truth. When I can be really gentle with myself and make the choice to feel when things come up to be looked at I now realise that this is is the way though to true healing.

134. This is a beautiful and powerful sharing Bryony. I too have realised that the more we surrender to the Love that we are in essence, we become more and more aware the layers we chose of who we are not. As you say – ‘the more I noticed, the more tender, raw and exposed I felt.’ – this is true for me also. As we begin to see this truth we can then choose to live from the light of who we truly are, rather than live through the layers of the dark veils of who we are not. And through choosing to nurture and be loving with ourselves we develop and deepen our connection to All that we truly are within, Divine Love.

135. Hi Bryony, what I take away from reading your blog is taking full responsibility for your life and also making commitment to self and life.

136. “And how would I feel if I actually accepted, as part of my development, ALL the choices I’ve made so far, even the ones I’ve judged as ‘bad’?” Yes Bryony, I have recently adopted a beautiful new way of beginning that acceptance, and it is to say “Whoops” or “Ooopsy” if I make a (supposed) mistake and leave beating myself up out of it. There is a gorgeous new book out for kids, aged from 0 to 100, which supports this: http://www.sunlightink.com/store/c1/Featured_Products.html

137. I like that Mary, going on a treasure hunt to find ourselves. I can now feel how limiting my way of thinking was and especially with regards to the persona I had created in order to protect myself.

138. Bryony, writing this blog will sure have supported you in accepting all the choices you have made so far. Writing can be such a healing process and much cheaper than going to India or buying self help books. And it is a truly inspiring read, I know I applied self love at first as a way to be seen by others instead of doing it for me, to feel me and to love myself and put myself first for me. That has been and is an interesting learning which will never be ended but will be continued my whole life.

139. Symbolism speaks to everyone and you have chosen some fantastic examples Bryony, which are so practical and enjoyable. I love your light and easy approach to accepting responsibility and making the changes in your life that you wanted to make. Returning to who we truly are is amazing, life giving, heart-warming and as you said ‘A relief’. Re-connecting to self does not need to be this big, heavy, therapeutic passage. This blog is fun, thanks so much for sharing.

140. A gorgeous blog. This could support so many people who are looking to find themselves. I feel to post this more widely and will. Have you done this yet Bryony?

141. “I don’t need to wait for stillness and space to start making changes and be more loving towards myself” – this really stood out for me. This ‘waiting’ that we do, making everything conditional – feels so limiting and binds us to our past choices. I really love your style, Bryony.

     1. I love this line too as I have in the past many times said to myself ‘I’ll do that when..’ which just justifies and is an excuse for staying where I am and not actually making any changes. I love your ‘real’ and raw style of writing, Bryony, thank you.

     2. Yes, this art of procrastination and delay I know very well. I won’t do something because I am not perfect yet. So what! So much fresher to just begin wherever I am beginning and accept wherever I am because it is from here I build – not from procrastination.

142. It never occurred to me the importance of loving myself, I didn’t see the point, until I started to attend the presentations by Universal Medicine, but slowly I am finding there are many ways to do this and it continues to deepen. Having spent so many years looking after others and putting them first, now it’s my turn to give myself the same consideration.

     1. Ahhh, jaaaa! Now it’s my turn to give myself the same consideration of looking after myself. With that decision I am giving everyone this opportunity to notice that and to take it on board for themselves or not. At least they have, with me, a choice to choose from.

     2. I can relate to this Julie, I spent many years feeling unworthy of giving myself any care or self Love. Through a gentle healing process I now feel how the more I Love and Appereciate myself the more I feel expanded and have more space for Light.

143. Awesome Bryony. Love your Joyfulness with the way you write. It is a huge revelation to realise that no one is going to fix us but that it is our responsibility to choose to live more lovingly with ourselves and with others. I know in the past I was willing to blame others for my unhappiness because I was not wanting to look at my own issues which allowed me to remain in my misery. Once we realise life is about reconnecting back with ourselves and feeling the love, joy, harmony that is naturally within us and dealing with our hurts and issues the misery slowly disappears.

144. I love your light-heartedness and am very glad you wrote this blog instead of ‘flying off to India’. The great reminder that stood out for me was “…. I need to look after myself before I can be of any use to the rest of the world.” I have spent so much of this life trying the save people from themselves at the expense of myself. Now that I self-care, self-love and nurture me, I am able to make true differences in the world and let go of any need for others to change.

145. An awesome piece of writing , I loved your light hearted way of you learning to understand how it all starts with you and your list of the benefits cracked me up.

     1. Yes, making light of situation is a great way to get things moving and not get bogged down in the details. Playfulness is such a beautiful quality.

146. Thank you Byrony for bringing humor and joy to the world through the lightness of your expression as you deliver your lived wisdom – ‘underneath everything else and deeper within myself, I already know how I want to live and the love that I am’- a gorgeous universal truth. How through building self-care, self–love and honesty with ourselves we can connect to this truth more and more. And that it is a truly beautiful and fun journey discovering how our choices determine the quality of life that we are living.

147. Joyful Bryony it was a joy to read your blog. I love your last question very much:”And how would I feel if I actually accepted, as part of my development, ALL the choices I’ve made so far, even the ones I’ve judged as ‘bad’?” I like to extend your question – how would the world would be if we all ask ourselves this question? Would life not be even more joyful without all our judgements and self loathing? Perhaps it is worth to ponder on this.

148. Bryony, fantastic blog, I smiled knowingly to myself as I read, there was so much of what you said that was like a mirror for me. I feel that it’s that simplicity you talk of, taking it step by step, and accepting where we’re at, and that one is huge, and most of all not being hard on ourselves. We would never talk to others in the way we talk to ourselves, so being tender – I’ve just put myself on a programme here, lovely.

     1. I also could so agree with what was written here, very much a mirror. Accepting where one is at is quite huge. I feel for me, even though I have been focussing on building a relationship with myself, I am going deeper and feeling more exposed around how much I have been avoiding ‘really’ feeling where my body is at. My choices are being also exposed, that there has still been a momentum, a drive that I go into that I am now feeling deeply in my body the result of those choices. So it is taking it step by step, and to not be hard on myself in this process. Putting myself on a program that is self loving and appreciating all the loving choices I am making for myself.

        1. Raegancairney, that is so true, when we get to feel our bodies and the results of our choices – the choice then is to feel it and not judge but be honest and observe and celebrate that our bodies are so honest and loving that they show us how we’ve been very clearly, and they never stop.

     2. Two keystones on the path to love – the honesty to be willing to feel what is really going on, and keeping things simple.

149. Not only accepting ourselves but appreciating ourselves too, loving ourselves even and not just when it’s easy but making a commitment to do this regardless of how we feel – or think we feel. Great blog, and love how you pose questions for us to ponder on for ourselves.

150. Great blog Bryony. All roads lead back to self care. It is super simple when we realise that taking care of ourselves takes care of many other things and even dissolves some of our so called ‘issues’. Yes, we can so easily make it about our job, living situation or the weather, but the clarity and joy that comes with taking care is well worth the effort.

     1. I like this Matthew; the clarity and joy that comes with our loving choices is well worth the effort. So true in many ways and again the simplicity of it is so divine.

     2. I vouch for that Mathew. The joy that comes with celebrating yourself through simple self care acts is felt to the bone.

151. Bryony such an amazing read thank you – there is much power and wisdom in what you share.

152. Bryony this is a golden piece of writing. It is so real and everything I needed to hear and receive today. I can relate to “wallowing on the floor” and going into “healing bootcamp mode”, trying to “mop up the disaster” and swimming in self-judgement and loathing, wanting someone to fix me etc!
     You have offered so much truthful reflection in asking these questions… “What changes might take place within and around me, if I start truly committing to loving myself and looking after myself? What if, underneath everything else and deeper within myself, I already know how I want to live and the love that I am? What changes and choices can I make to the way I’m living now to better support me and how I want to live from now on? And how would I feel if I actually accepted, as part of my development, ALL the choices I’ve made so far, even the ones I’ve judged as ‘bad’?”
     Thank you for sharing this wisdom with us all.

153. Bryony, I love the the light hearted way you write and related to so much of what you said including my initial resistance to this ‘loving myself stuff’ and the realisation that perhaps ‘I don’t have to wait for stillness to start making changes and be more loving towards myself’. I had the same realisation and when I finally started to make more loving changes I noticed the difference I felt was profound.

     1. I agree, it was fun yet very relatable to read about the “loving myself stuff”. I can get quite heady about that, but it really is about keeping it very practical to bringing love into my day to day living.

        1. This is what I’ve found too Annie – the simplicity in the practicality. Ive found that as soon as I start over thinking and going into my head about it, it makes things complicated and gives me the perfect excuse not to commit to myself. But all it really requires is the beginning of more conscious presence with my body and whenever I bring it back to this, it becomes simple again, regardless of how much I need to do…

154. This is priceless..” I began to try not to think my way through things, but to feel it. Thinking, my cherished number one pastime, had led me nowhere except the repeat button on a broken CD player, playing out the same patterns and cycles but never moving on to the next song, let alone a different album.”

     This is such a lesson for me in self-acceptance…”What changes and choices can I make to the way I’m living now to better support me and how I want to live from now on? And how would I feel if I actually accepted, as part of my development, ALL the choices I’ve made so far, even the ones I’ve judged as ‘bad’?” Awesome questions!

155. A beautiful sharing with us all Bryony and one that I can certainly relate to. To bring self love into my life has opened many doors. Even the ones that I felt would never be opened because I was far too busy to even notice opportunities just waiting for me to be still enough to observe/feel that I am enough just for being me. Starting with being really honest with myself and whatever choices I make had to be about love first otherwise I would be back in the miasma of life, getting in the fast lane again and wondering off into comfort, a well trodden path which no longer serves me or anyone else. No more papering over the cracks. Your sharing really made me smile – adding humour and fun into the mix makes for a lighter journey as to the seriousness we can step into at times when ‘things’ get a little hard to accept.

     1. “To bring self love into my life has opened many doors.” I’d never thought of it this way Marion, but can definitely say it’s been the same for me. Not only have many doors been opened, but ones that were open have been opened wider and I’ve also found many new ones, as well as noticing that the doors of others are also opening!

        1. Angela I have felt the same. Working on bringing more self love has a ripple effect.

156. Thank you Bryony, quite a lighthearted but real approach. Change made from the body not the mind and cutting the ‘Rules’! And not trying to get/be somewhere before we can make change. And being real! It was great to read how this can be an everyday possible choice, which we can fight or let flow. The body already knows how to live truly, we just need to accept and allow it like you say.

157. We can forever look to the outside to ‘fix’ us, but its always short lived. To connect with yourself and live with that connection, now that’s true healing. Thank you Bryony

158. I love the way you have written Bryony, It has brought a smile to my face, and yes we do know deep down what love really is, we just have to feel what our body already knows, that we are love.

159. An absolutely delightful blog, Bryony, full of so much insight, wisdom and incredible honesty. I particularly love this question: “Asking myself if what I am doing is really supporting me?” For me, in the past the answer was more often than not, no, but these days, now I choose to take much more care of myself, the answer is usually yes, and is always echoed by my very appreciative body. Such a simple question, full of common sense, but very rarely asked, but one that is essential to ask if you are ready to turn your life around.

160. Great blog, it is not about the doing but feeling what we truly are and need to live a more self caring life.

161. I really love this blog and the way you write Bryony. I could so relate to ” I wanted the practitioner to tell me what to do”….he he..I’ve done that before (and occasionally still do – to which I NEVER get the answer EVER no matter how hard I try 🙂 ). I love how you share how you switched from the head to the body and moved onto another CD! Gold!

162. Learning to truly love ourselves is an ongoing process that is forever deepening on many levels. This blog has shown us the way with such playfullness that it is hard to resist the challenge. The question ‘What if, underneath everything else and deeper within myself, I already know how I want to live and the love that I am?’ is one that I have pondered on for awhile. If we all pondered this question and lived from what we already know from the love that is within, how soon would we return to living the joy of who we truly are! Every day we have the choice to say yes to what best serves us, and no to the things that no longer support us. Self care changes our lives completely and it is awesome to embrace it wholeheartedly.

163. Self-love really is a game changer. I just realized what a difference it makes if I stumble when taking new steps and, instead of beating myself up for not being perfect and spiralling down even more, self-love will allow me to hold myself with understanding, just observe why I chose that which resulted in stumbling and then work on the root cause. No drama, no frustration, just love and ease. Amazing.

164. Bryony I forgot that I read Your blog, this one already, without knowing it I read it out loud again and then saw that I already wrote a comment and that also last time I read it out loud…this is so powerful…I still have a hard time, when I am making so called “bad choices” I am still too much focussed on the hair in the soup which annoys me so and then I am hard on myself again when I actually want to be tender..getting back to playfullness and humour as You did with this article is the best way – getting out of this circle – I will sing a song now 🙂 shake the seriousness and heaviness off me, taking my power back – thanks again for writing such great blogs. With love Nadine

165. I really like Briony that you are finding your way, and claiming it. You are risking feeling and making choices YOUR choices, and your awareness is growing in the process.
     I had to laugh with the leg waxing analogy, how many times have I wanted that fixing from a session, and that is actually when the sessions are not as great…

166. Bryony this is a knock out sharing. I love how you have playfully shared how you have gone from having no idea how to self-love to just beginning to trust how you felt. There are no quick fixes just a willingness to begin to make more loving choices and learn from the not so loving ones.

167. Love it Bryony, thank you! ‘Accepting all my choices’ – most certainly is an ‘album changer’. The moment I begin to feel the tempo dropping I can turn to DJ – ‘Honesty’ to check I am hearing whats actually being played. Honesty has the uncanny way of keeping me in step!

168. A great blog Bryony. I know I have read it before but coming from a different place on my path of self-love it had so much more meaning for me this time around. Your opening paragraph is gold and I can definitely relate to feeling “so uncomfortable with the way I’d been living as not myself, but I had no idea what to do about it.”. I love your simple long term steps.

169. It is such a joy to work on self-love. The confirmations that I can give myself is the best food I ever had.

     1. Love it Felix, yes I have found appreciation and confirming myself has been invaluable to building my self-worth and self-love.

170. Hi Bryony I think you have highlighted the ease we can have with self development. It isn’t a one day disaster clean up but a continued commitment to improve our well-being every day.

171. ‘Having fun, actually allowing myself to feel tender and delicate but strong and powerful.’ Love how you mention ‘having fun’ something that’s easy to loose when we’re working on ourselves. Life can become too serious. Feeling the joy adds a spring to our step and a lightness to the day. Thank you.

172. The title says it all – Loving myself and my choices. Whatever they have been. I know for me, i have felt grief at times over past choices, what if i hadn’t don’t this or that. Which I have stopped myself now, because whatever choice i made in a given moment it was made then. What i have control of is what choices i choose to make today and today only. This is what responsibility is about and being loving also. These are daily choices I am now making, being loving and responsible for all that i do and say.

173. I can read your blog over and over again- so much fun to read your lightness in their…Yes, no matter where you are coming from or what you have done, you can now make a different choice- the beginning of probably many following..

174. Bryony your honesty and humour are awesome! Throughout reading this I heard the three A’s. Awareness, Appreciation and Acceptance. All very powerful for me at this time. Thank you.

175. I have found accepting the choices I made a great starting point, it is impossible to undo them and impossible to change them, and from that acceptance it has allowed me to start making more loving choices for myself.

176. What if ‘I actually accepted… ALL the choices I’ve made so far, even the ones I’ve judged as ‘bad’?’ This is a great step Bryony, which brings us back to accepting this moment as it is and does not project us forward or back to some ideal way that we feel we should be. In this acceptance of what is, we develop an understanding which accepts others exactly as they are and therefore does not impose anything on anyone – it just recognizes the love and beauty that is within us all waiting to be seen and brought forth.

177. This is such a playful approach to this “loving yourself stuff”!! Thank you, Bryony, for this wise and lovely entertaining article.

178. Building a long term connection and commitment to myself. Great way to describe where it is all about. Not a quick fix by getting external help by making loving choices on a daily basis. This is a process I have discovered, where it is all about outcomes but loving yourself in each moment. Even if the choices are not loving all the time, because I slip into an old pattern, still this does not hold me from loving me all along.

179. I really understand what you share Bryony about ‘my perfection – striving brain’ going into overdrive. This has led me a merry dance for decades. What a difference in allowing ourselves those ‘stop moments’ and to really feel and work with what best supports us.

180. This is great Bryony. I liked how you said “not rushing in to fix everything straight away”. This is something I learned to do lately because I didn’t want to feel something. Its quite imposing of me to try and fix things for others, because it is me not wanting to feel a mess that another is in in the first place anyway. So thanks for sharing. I always seem to get anxious when things don’t go to how I’ve planned them, especially when others mess things up that isn’t in my plans haha. But I really have no control over others, I can only control how i deal with my own reactions and accept what is in front of me or not.

181. I love your humour and honesty Bryony. I can tend to get quite hard on myself at times and that’s when I know my head has taken over. When I allow myself the space to simply feel what my body wants to share with me things flow effortlessly. For me it’s about remembering to be playful and light with the unfolding of many years of unloving choices and the return to the love I have always held within.

182. I like your writing Bryony; a funny look at self care stuff and that it can be daunting at first, when you decide to look after yourself after what was probably a lifetime of disregarding choices. I remember not quite knowing where to start too, as I thought in my head that I had been taking care of myself. The turning point for me was to start to feel. My head couldn’t help me, but my body could for sure…and it did 🙂

     1. I like the point you make Suzanne “My head couldn’t help me, but my body could for sure… and it did” That’s the trick, isolating all the chatter from the brain and go with our bodies feelings. It takes discipline, but we are sure worth it.

183. Feeling myself again. What a blessing this has been. Feeling the joy and ease of the five year old boy again who just lived unto the day, without getting lost in planning and organizing. Taking this as an inspiration has brought the most beautiful changes to my life.

     1. Wow, Michael. That sounds beautiful.

184. Beautiful piece Bryony, I love your raw & open sharing. Just so true, we know how to be loving underneath all those unloving ways. It is a matter of connecting to it, then we find ourselves and so our love – connection with all.

185. I have fallen into ..’I felt stuck. I kept thinking about how great I’d feel if only this, that and the other were different.’
     Surly i’ll be able to love myself IF I get a haircut, buy new clothes, change my style etc.
     I find this is such a quick fix, much like the leg wax, a bandaid for not looking at my self-worth stuff. Also, like you’ve so beautifully exposed Byrony, it’s not about waiting for the stillness or the space, it’s about changing what needs to be changed to live the life I want now. Love this.

     1. thats true Rachael! Those quick fixes sure don’t work, they just distract us for a while.

        1. The quick fixes and having a session to fix it all. We are the only ones that can heal ourselves. It is our responsibility. Yes we need support with sessions and to do loving things for ourselves such as getting a haircut, but they will not do anything if there is not a deep commitment. They can serve as distractions and box tickers so that we think we are working on ourself when in reality we are just playing a game.

186. It is indeed a long term connection and commitment to ourselves. Building an intimate relationship with ourselves first and establish a consistent foundation. That I can trust myself with myself. We are always focussed on others, but it is truly about ourselves, about me with me within.

187. I loved your blog Bryony and the relevance to everyone in the question you posed yourself “What changes might take place in and around me, if I start truly committing to loving myself and looking after myself.” The true power of self love will be revealed.

188. Honestly looking at what I was really up to has helped me to finally find an understanding and loving approach to myself and with that to everybody else and life.

189. Thank you for this very refreshing guide to this ‘loving yourself stuff’. It is so automatic to look for the quick fix. But as you have found its actually a lovely process just observing, dropping the criticism of self and being honest. There’s no magic pill and I am finding layers of ways to avoid surrendering to love to get through but feeling and observing me is a great way to be more honest, My body loves it when I do.

190. This one gave me a big smile ‘Being honest. This also means asking for what I want and need instead of pretending “I’m so flexible, lucky me for having no needs, and being so ‘un-needy!”’ I do know this one so extremely well, I can manipulate myself into this kind of behaviour while I feel it is not true. Great to call it out in the way as you have put it, thank you Bryony, I always enjoy your blogs!

191. Learning to truly love ourselves is an ongoing process that is forever deepening. It does bring a lot of things into question, but never should it be about giving ourselves a hard time for choices we have made in the past. Every day we have the choice to say yes to what best service us, and no to the things that no longer support us. Self care changes our lives completely and it is awesome to embrace it wholeheartedly.

     1. This is the part I have found challenging. As Bryony mentioned, it can be uncomfortable to when you feel how you have been living as the not-you. In that uncomfortableness it can be so easy to beat myself up. But that gets me nowhere. I’m learning to feel what is the me underneath the uncomfortableness.

192. ” And how would I feel if I actually accepted, as part of my development, ALL the choices I’ve made so far, even the ones I’ve judged as ‘bad’?” Thank you for this line Bryony, I feel that acceptance brings compassion and understanding to any situation. I loved your humorous expression, we don’t have to be heavy and serious, we can enjoy unfolding our true way to be in the world.

193. As you ask Byrony, ‘What if, underneath everything else and deeper within myself, I already know how I want to live and the love that I am?’ If we all pondered this question and lived from what we already know from the love that is within, how soon would we return to living the joy of who we truly are! Thank you for the reminder.

     1. Beautifully said Anne and a wonderfully empowering point to repeat. I am beginning to understand that I do already know the level of love I can live and how to take care of myself, deeply so.

194. I really like the humour and honesty with which this article is written, thank-you Bryony. And there is plenty for me to reflect on in what you have written also.

195. Thank you Bryony for sharing your way! To choose love requires practical know how. Otherwise is simply an abstraction that is difficult to relate to. It is very important to establish a relationship with loving yourself and be open to learn what happens in that process. I love the CD metaphor.

196. It is absolutely up to us and our commitment so ‘what changes and choices can I make to the way I’m living now to better support me and how I want to live from now on?’ is an awesome question.

     1. I absolutely agree! Awesome question to ponder in my life.

197. I’m so glad we can start from exactly where we are and not purge everyone from our lives. We can be gentle with ourselves and still come from love and truth. Thanks Bryony.

198. Re-reading this blog, and knowing you in person, lets me enjoy your blog even more. Thanks for the smile I had 🙂

199. “Instead of prescribing myself some kind of healing boot-camp, I decided to try to just stop and listen to my body more often” haha this is great. And that sounds like a very gentle start. It is so rewarding to give ourselves the space to be honest and gentle with our bodies and not expect too much of ourselves.

200. Bryony your sense of humour made me smile. It’s fascinating that once we bring self love into our life that it sets a way of being in motion that then seemingly seems to propel itself forever forwards. Having a concrete perception of where we’re heading is not necessary as the ride is just so enjoyable.

     1. I like this playful comment Alexis as it brings out how playful we can be with all our daily tasks and not just the ones that are obvious.

201. Thank God for Bryony! Felt like this entire blog was speaking directly at me with my kind of humour. I very much enjoyed ready this and feeling exposed by your awareness’s and equally inspired by your revelations and self-loving practices.

202. Dear Bryony I’ve just read the article out loud for myself and it just could be the absolute same words…wow what a power through expressing…I love the way you expressed…it is so simpel and so powerful…with love and deep respect…Nadine

203. Feeling what my body is saying is work in progress for me – giving myself the space to feel is a daily choice I am allowing to connect to me and to be able to bring more of me.

204. A joy-full insight Bryony, to begin and develop the way to self-love and to realize and release all the choices that were not love.

205. I like Bryony what you have said here about being gentle with yourself and making it about deepening your awareness rather than just applying strict solutions. In my experience solutions can seem like tempting quick fixes and disaster relief but any changes made do not stick unless we have truly accepted where we are at in life and just steadily make adjustments according to how we feel in our bodies not what we are told to do from outside of us.

206. Great, inspiring blog Bryony – I had the same wallpaper for 50 years! – Such a relief to stop being something for everyone else and hiding under the title of wife, mother, gardener, cook etc. The many layers accumulated over the years are gently coming away purely by connecting back to the real me.

207. ‘What if, underneath everything else and deeper within myself, I already know how I want to live and the love that I am?’ – great question. We already are everything that we need to be, we already have everything we need to live a life of love and harmony. All we need to do is connect back to our inner selves, to tap into our own unique exquisiteness.

208. Beautifully put Ariana: ‘we run screaming to be fixed.’ We all want another to tell us what to do and take away whatever we don’t like. And Yes:
     ‘Taking responsibility for our choices is definitely a step in the right direction. With honesty, to stop and take stock as you have done here Bryony, is a great call and one that is much needed by us all.’

209. A refreshing and light approach to a subject that obsesses millions of people, and if they could just read Bryony’s blog, so many would have the opportunity to recalibrate their life, just as Bryony has done hers.

210. Bryony, re-reading this blog I could feel how exhausting and counter-productive all the trying and striving to be perfect, to be somewhere we perceive we’re not, can be. I’m letting go — slowly I have to say – the parts of myself trying to be ‘good’, perfect and not make mistakes and get approval. The more I let go, the more I feel the real me who is pretty yummy and doesn’t need approval from anyone else for simply being so yummy!

211. I’m feeling here the depth in which we have made ourselves need to adjust to certain situations and change how we are instead of just being truthfull 24/7.

212. I love your funny blog Bryrony and its great advice.

213. So a key to self-love seems to be to do less, not to do something to reach self-love. Since the love is already there steady and still, it just needs to be observed in presence.

214. Fabulous Bryony. Felt like you were writing my story. I remember the revelation also of not trying to think my way through anymore but to feel it in my body instead.

215. Rereading this Bryony has been so much fun. I love how you have used humour and playfulness to share what you have come to understand for yourself.

216. Hi Bryony what a great blog – it reminded me so much of the things I’ve done/thought but it was humorous whilst bringing us a reminder it all starts with me and there is no quick fix – its about building, commitment and love.

217. With a great smile I end reading your blog, down on my knees thanking you for this absolute brilliant picture of you and within that giving that reflection back to us! This one should go out to the world with the headline: “If you are trying to find yourself: it’s not just a quick leg waxing” 🙂 I made myself a marker on this blog to read it again as a morning lecture***

218. Thank you Bryony, for a sharing that is so light-hearted, honest and real. No navel or cloud gazing but looking deeply into ourselves, taking care of our bodies and taking the pressure off to be something we’re not.

     1. And what a waste of time the navel and cloud gazing was! There are so many ways we can fool ourselves into thinking we really are working on ourselves. But it’s the inward movement and looking deeply within that reveals all.

219. “Being honest. This also means asking for what I want and need instead of pretending I’m so flexible, lucky me for having no needs, and being so ‘un-needy!”. Thank you Bryony, with this sharing you have made my day as it helped me realize that this is what exactly I need to look at this moment to truly support myself.

220. I love your playful way of writing. Great choice to let thinking drop on the list and put connecting to your body on top. Also the accepting of your choices without any self beating is the way forward.

221. Your blog made me laugh and crinch at the same time in realising how easy it still is to fall back into the trying, working hard and fix it mode. While reading your blog I was lovingly reminded that it is about letting go of the hard work, about surrendering and just being with whatever is there. Whatever issue may come up it is always infinitely small compared to all that I am. And, in dealing with it I can actually have fun!

     1. Well said Carolien. “Whatever issue may come up it is always infinitely small compared to all that I am”.

222. Thanks Bryony, I had a good laugh reading the benefits and I too loved throwing out all the books both metaphorically and practically!

223. I loved re-reading your blog Bryony. Great fun and super insightful. How liberating to accept all our our choices even the ‘bad’ ones as learning’s to grow from and letting go of the bashing and beating ourselves up.

224. I love the questions you’ve raised Bryony! I look forward to the sequel to ‘Loving Myself and My Choices’. I have an inkling your living the answers now.

225. Thank you Bryony for sharing that to make real changes in one’s life it is not about getting ‘fixed,’ either by oneself or another, but by taking responsibility for ones choices and to gently choose loving ones.

226. I love the way you wrote this Bryony, so playful and light! Amongst all the learning we go through, we must not forget to always have a sense of humor. It has always helped me so much and this is a great reminder. Thank you Bryony, I very much enjoyed (and laughed) reading it.

227. There is so much love in and for ourselves. I experience that it is a forever deepening process, realizing Love is there already. Just by making supportive choices it naturally turns into a huge appreciation for Life and all in it.

     1. I agree Caroline, “a huge appreciation for Life and all in it.” When I love myself and feel love within me, I can feel this love all around me and equally for all others. I also absolute love life and appreciate everything, from the tiniest little details to the biggest and grandest thing.

228. Gorgeous Bryony and very inspiring. I can’t relate to many of these points but mostly with a lighter bookshelf, having more money since I’m not flying to India and not upending my life and constantly moving! It was a big shift for me to shift the focus inwards – truly inwards and not rely on a leg wax solution (love that!). To allow the support of the practitioners but to actually make the changes myself was a big change in my life. Your blog has inspired me to take this further.

229. Pingback: Loving Myself and My Choices – A lighthearted look at self care and detox |

230. Awesome blog Bryony. As I was reading your blog I recall last week trying to explain to a friend what self love and commitment to more loving choices mean. Your blog just sums it all. I love it. Thank you.

231. This is a very insightful blog, I enjoyed the humor and the honesty. Thank you Bryony.

232. Bryony expressed with such playful honesty. Love it. We can spend so much time, money etc on searching outside of ourselves for answers but if we just stop and feel our bodies, the answers is there, ready and eager to share.

     1. Kelly I agree, the answer is in our body, just only if we stop to connect this feeling. We would stop searching outside of us.

233. Got to say, I loved this line…”life sorted and bursting with love and low-fat hummus forevermore”…the ‘drive’ to get life fixed from living with so much drive… classic.

234. I love the humour in your blog Bryony and can relate to much of what you have written. Especially looking outside of myself for the answers which always brings complication – great reminder to keep it simple.

235. It was great to read this again Bryony; you have such a playful way with your writing, it lightened me up!

236. Brilliant article Bryony. I definitely relate to what you have written with my confusion and suspicion of ‘all that self-love stuff’ that Serge presents. I had to accept that I had very little self-love and it took me a long time to know what this meant and to feel it in my body. Love is the ‘stuff’ we are made of.

237. Thank you for writing such a simple “How to” or “where to start” with your self care blog. Reading it, is a great reminder of how to change unloving patterns, as self love and self care are forever evolving.

238. “As I worked on ‘loving myself stuff’ I began to try a different way: not rushing in like some kind of panicked person mopping up a disaster, not trying to fix everything and everyone in sight, not stage-managing the situation, but just noticing. That’s it. Oh, and dropping that whole self-judgment/loathing thing. That little thing.” This is awesome, dropping the self-judgement thing and not trying to stage manage the situation was my speciality, i’m glad I have decided to give that up as well! I am working on just saying whatever I feel comes up and not holding in no matter what, even if im ‘wrong’. I’m interested in exploring the idea of being wrong for once so I can learn and know what is true.

     1. Good comment Harry, especially the ‘just noticing’, and dropping that whole self-judgment and loathing. Being more aware and self loving. Thanks.

239. I love reading this blog Bryony. It’s lighthearted with a powerful message.
     ‘Thinking, my cherished number one pastime, had led me nowhere except the repeat button on a broken CD player, playing out the same patterns and cycles but never moving on to the next song, let alone a different album’
     Around and around we go …… when we think.
     Perhaps it’s time to stop and connect with the body and then we can choose to change songs, albums and even supplier. 😊

240. Beautiful funny blog Bryony and deeply insightful – how something so simple we make into a such a trial. I found it doesn’t work to try to think, angst, stress my way into finding that inner connection, although I tried for ages… , nor striving to get something from the outside that would swing it… but it was a great reminder that none of that is necessary because it is already there within, you just have to allow the space to know it.

241. Bryony that’s a great blog that I can totally relate to. What an amazing path of self love we have chosen. You have shown how we already hold everything inside if we take the time to look, and if we are gentle on ourselves we can create space to see this truth.

242. I love this blog Bryony. I love the playful an very practical approach you have expressed.
     “Instead of prescribing myself some kind of healing boot-camp, I decided to try to just stop and listen to my body more often. What changes might take place within and around me, if I start truly committing to loving myself and looking after myself?”
     Awesomely shared.

243. I love the light hearted way you have written this blog Bryony, it was fun to read. I could see myself in so much of what you said, it’s crazy really all the things we do to avoid listening to our bodies.

244. Such an honest, open, refreshing and playful blog Bryony I really enjoyed reading it as it showed how simple we can make life by feeling what is true and seeing who we really are without the need to throw out everything and start anew.

245. I also love the final sentence you are writing… So true – “acceptance is everything”. Accepting, that all is there – no search! Great blog – I like the lightness in it very much – thank you!

     1. Yes – no more searching! Just an allowing and a bringing forward into our lives everything that we already are, and ditching the tiring self-editing for different situations.

246. Bryony, this was such a light and fun way of looking at life.
     This sentence really hit home also for me.
     “And how would I feel if I actually accepted, as part of my development, ALL the choices I’ve made so far, even the ones I’ve judged as ‘bad’?”

247. I love your point – “It’s not a quick leg-waxing fix, but about building a long-term connection and commitment to myself”. I too can go into fixing, rather than being with my body and feeling what I really need… but the ‘answer’ is always in feeling my body and what it needs.

248. Its lovely and refreshing to feel the way you have had fun with this. Its easy to get too serious about things when attempting to live a life more loving for oneself. I’ve ‘been there, done that’ myself. A sense of humour can break down what isn’t so great so much more effectively than the ‘beat up’. Well done.

     1. Very true Jeanette. I often feel a little embarrassed by some of my silly past and choices. The lightness and joy in this blog takes that away. Having a laugh about it does break it down more easily and lightens it up instead of the heaviness that drags when we give ourselves a hard time.

249. I can relate to your story so well, it could have been my own. I love how you don’t take it all too seriously, great for me to hear and realise this isn’t a quick fix. Thank you for taking the time to share – much appreciated.

250. The way you describe it, makes one word come up: simplicity. Life becomes simpler. Only it doesn’t make this process of self care easier. But it is worth it all the way.

251. Thank you Bryony, ‘I also realised that I don’t need to wait for stillness and space to start making changes and be more loving towards myself’ This is a trap that’s very easy to fall into! Been there done that. Love the joy and humour you bring with your sharing. So important to be able to laugh with ourselves along the way.

252. Goodness I enjoyed reading your blog. It made me smile seeing some of the things I did and what I can remind myself of when I find myself pulled into ‘fix it’ mode again! I could really get a sense of what you have walked so far, and it is inspiring.

253. It’s kind of laughable all the outer things we think we have to do to find ourselves, like go to India for example, even though we may go to India only to be told it’s all within you by some guru and yet another distraction. And funnily enough it’s not until you begin to practise self-love that you start to really feel what all those false gurus and teachings were on about (apparently but not really) but this time it is real.

     1. the thing i realise though Jospehine and Bryony is that all the spiritual go to’s out there all SAY it is all within yourself yet all that is being offered is still somehow something outside of us. This is why so many just keep chasing the next thing and the next thing. Nothing until Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon actually TRULY stopped me, turned me around – in the direction of myself – and said stop looking it is ALREADY there.

        1. Exactly Carolien, the spiritual words, although seemingly so close to truth, are empty because the energy of true transforming Love is not behind them. Therefore they do not have the power to allow us to STOP and begin our journey home.

254. So lovely and playful Bryony! It really is just taking one step at a time, one choice at a time, to start making a change in our lives – and how bit by bit they form a different way of being that kind of sneaks up on you because it’s been so slow! Here’s to not living in a cave! 😉

255. “What changes and choices can I make to the way I’m living now to better support me?” I love this question Bryony, and I added for myself ….to support me consistently in feeling the flow of love through my body and from that meeting every person with love and truth.

256. Thanks Bryony for a great read. The journey of self-love and the ever-expanding awareness of self.

257. I can so relate to this Bryony. I too was looking for the quick fix, the one of solution that would get rid of all the ‘bad’ things about me and make all things right. Needless to say years of doing this did not change anything. Now that I have come to accept that there are no ‘bad’ things about myself just results from choices I have made. From this I am now able to do what is truly needed to support myself in the further development of self love and self nurturing.

258. I love the “loving myself stuff”! Great blog that inspires to just get on with it. No need to wait, – like you say: “I don’t need to wait for stillness and space to start making changes and be more loving towards myself.” Every moment is a new opportunity to do just that. Thank you.

259. Oh Bryony, I can so relate to your analogy also, “thinking, my cherished number one pastime, did lead me nowhere except exactly what you say, round and around and going nowhere. That mouse on a wheel existence can be so debilitating and disempowering, when all the while, just under all of those thoughts is the real and true you, just waiting for you to stop, feel it, and then choose it as your natural way.

260. Awesome blog Bryony. I was a bit reading on auto-pilot until I read this paragraph: “As I worked on ‘loving myself stuff’ I began to try a different way: not rushing in like some kind of panicked person mopping up a disaster, not trying to fix everything and everyone in sight, not stage-managing the situation, but just noticing. That’s it. Oh, and dropping that whole self-judgment/loathing thing. That little thing.” I can relate so much to this especially the rushing in and mopping up a disaster instead of just noticing what happened. I am very much learning to not do that anymore too. It is so freeing to see that what ever happens it does not change my loveliness inside.

261. Thank you so much Bryony, I learnt lot from your blog. I really liked the analogy of “Thinking, my cherished number one pastime, had led me nowhere except the repeat button on a broken CD player, playing out the same patterns and cycles but never moving on to the next song” I can really relate to that, and how thinking keeps me in the same patterns.

262. Brilliant Blog. I love it!

263. Lighthearted and oh so honest. I love the bit at the end about also learning to accept all the choices we’ve made in the past without judgement. I’ve found this to be so important in learning to love myself, otherwise it’s a bit like the CD has got stuck. I’ve also learned how important it is to not back away from the tender, raw feelings that come up throughout this ongoing process. It’s like I’m remembering what it’s like to feel again, just as I did as a child. From here the love just flows.

264. Dear Bryony you said it so well ‘not to think my way through things, but to feel it’. I was so good at analysing, dissecting, pondering why I should or should not do something. Not so many self-help books for me but comparing myself with others and trying to work out what worked for them. It did not get me anywhere. However listening to my body and allowing it to feel, that yes is bringing big changes in my life and my relationships with others. Thank you.

265. I giggled out loud whilst reading this- it probably sounded a bit funny but that’s okay. Was awesome blog to read…super cute and funny. I love how you have explained everything and related wanting a practitioner to “tell me what to do”.
     Low fat hummus style 🙊 haha.
     The loving myself stuff and not needing everything to be fixed sounds like a good way to go- just accepting everything as it comes … I’m on the band wagon for that one.

266. Bryony, I love your blog. It’s very honest and real. I can relate to approaching my own healing with a mission and drive, and thinking the way through, rather than allowing this to be a process of feeling and deepening my awareness. I am currently finding the Ourcycles App very helpful with this. It is showing me where I am still driving and pushing myself, rather then approaching my days in acceptance of who I am and life, and coming from a place of knowing that I am enough, that I don’t need to push through. The drive stands out like a sore thumb leading into my period – it’s quite amazing how loud the body can be when it tells you it’s had enough of the old patterns of self abuse.

267. Great blog Bryony I love your humour and writing style and look forward to reading more from you in the future

268. I love the light hearted way you have written. Yes it starts with looking after yourself first and the acceptance of all the choices you have made and having fun in the process.

269. “Thinking, my cherished number one pastime, had led me nowhere except the repeat button on a broken CD player, playing out the same patterns and cycles but never moving on to the next song, let alone a different album.” So true!
     I so love the simplicity and the fun and the truths in your writing Bryony. You must be very rich by now, not just because of all the money you have saved 🙂 but within yourself because of all the beautiful choices you have made!

270. Love your writing Bryony – it is so refreshing and real!
     Such an honest account of where we can be at with ourselves, wanting ‘out’ from it all, and neglecting what and ‘who’ is right there with us (ourselves) – that we may just even consider truly caring for and loving ourselves back into a potentially far lighter way of being. Most definitely worth a go, and I love the money and potential of further arduous struggle you have saved yourself.
     More blogs please 🙂

271. You make practicing self-care and self-love sound like fun, which of course it is.

272. I love what you share about stop thinking and start feeling, and live the true you. It’s really a great experience how quickly things can change when you start making loving choices and building relationships.

273. “Instead of prescribing myself some kind of healing boot-camp I decided to try to just stop and listen to my body more often” This is brilliant. How many of us have put ourselves on strict regimes and intense work outs only to find that they don’t work. It is not necessarily easy to follow through with what our body is telling us but what a difference it makes when we do.

274. Thank you Bryony for this honest and inspiring and playful blog.
     When starting to read it I just started laughing, because all of this felt so familiar. I especially remembered the moment where for the first time I really could feel that loving myself was the key to everything on earth and how I thought at that moment “Well, but how on earth shall I do this – as obviously I have never done this before!”.
     There were ups and downs, but what helped me most was to really appreciate the every step and every beautiful moment, and not just brush them off as I am not perfect.
     Appreciating and expressing led to opening u,p and from there I have blossomed and feel so vital and joyfull – like I last felt as a child.

275. Bryony, I loved the light approach to choosing to listen to your body. I am finding being honest without being hard on myself is making a huge difference to when I don’t make such great choices which is part of my self care commitment.

276. Bryony I feel that you have expressed so honestly. I love the part about “calling myself out”. I understand this one well- those little things we still do that actually are not so little but we kid ourselves that they don’t matter ! We may bury our feelings with a bit of shopping, something sweet or watching T.V- things which on the surface may be seen as self loving but really are stopping us from truly feeling. I am getting better at calling myself out with some of these things but have a little way to go!

277. I love this blog, I have spent a lot of money flying to India, back and forth, and it is such a revelation and great feeling that I don’t have to take any plane anywhere. The need to go somewhere, thinking that ‘it’ is out there, I know that one very well, I even climbed the Mount Everest, I mean, how high can you go…..?

278. I love how you have expressed here Bryony, yes its not about perfection or finally getting to some place of achievement, its a constant unfolding that occurs through the love and acceptance of where we are right now.

279. Bryony I love how you refer to it as “loving myself stuff”. Yes feeling our way through rather than thinking is the key. I too spent many a trip to India, many self-help books, spending an absolute fortune on trying to better myself however, nothing ever worked. This “self loving stuff” works when we choose to be honest, to feel and to make different choices. No more trips to India for me, the answers are all right here in my body, no need to go anywhere; just to listen, honour myself and make better choices. Thanks to Universal Medicine for showing that there is another way.

280. This is so awesome Bryony, thank you so much for sharing. I love how simple you make it all and how you make the process seem lighter than I think I have made my own at times. Cutting out the self critique and just accepting the good and the so-called ‘bad’ is such an important step in healing. I really related to your leg waxing analogy also, as I can tend to be a matter of fact type of person and often forget that some of these things I need to let go of take a bit of time, patience and that self-love are key. It was lovely to read your journey.

281. Bryony such a lovingly forthright story dedicated to truth, and at your own pace too, wonderful.

282. I loved re-reading this blog it offers such a simplicity as to where our answers in life really lie…”What if, underneath everything else and deeper within myself, I already know how I want to live and the love that I am? Thank you, Bryony.

283. Yes, yes yes Bryony. How can we possibly force and manipulate and control ourselves to be loving. Its a bit paradoxical! We have to start feeling what we really need, honour that and take the first steps forward, or should I say backwards, to the love we knew ourselves to be as children and the self-loving ways we knew back then too.

284. This is great Bryony! I had to laugh when I read the benefits you’ve experienced from truly loving yourself…I SO relate to this!!! Only I DID go on many a trip to ‘find myself’ – not India…but it was next on my list! And the money I spent on books was just CRAZY!!! I could seriously have owned my own bookstore. All of this before discovering that everything I ever wanted and searched for was already within me…and thanks to Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine, I am now ahead of the game. I am forever grateful for the simplicity and the joy that I live with today…and for the ever expanding love that I feel. It all comes from me…and it is the real deal.

     1. Exactly Sara, I couldn’t have said it more simply and truthfully ……”that everything I ever wanted and searched for was already within me…” what a joy and freedom to know and feel.

285. Absolutely love your straight up blog Bryony. I love the feeling when I live from how I feel. It is a joy and as you say so very different than living from what I think.

286. Its easy for the mind to apply old familiar patterns to any task – even being ‘self loving’. So I appreciate what you have shared here Bryony. In avoiding ‘boot-camp’ and making simple decision to go with how you feel, you’ve developed a honest and practical way forward.

287. Bryony my smile became bigger and bigger while I read your blog. Smiling because of I know this so well, and your way of dealing with the choices we have and the thoughts we have to counter our self love. Just like you and a lot of other women I am not going for the quick leg-waxing fix and my bookshelves are light as well, but the most important thing is I enjoy me being me!

288. ‘It starts with me. Not in a narcissistic way, but in a way that recognises that I need to look after myself before I can be of any use to the rest of the world.’ In the same way that we must use the oxygen mask first (in the flight manual) before we can support another….this is so true.
     Thank you Bryony for your commitment to you. This feels so lovely and I too have changed the ‘ALBUM’ bringing the sweet sounds of love and connection into my daily living.

289. Byrony,
     The simplicity of how you describe the process of “learning to self love” is very encouraging.

     I find myself in your words, still discarding old patterns that don’t work, working on accepting myself for who I am and for what I’ve chosen (that doesn’t align with who I am!) and starting to feel ME more and more. I Know I’m on the right track, My track -back to me in full. -Thank you for encouragement on the way

290. Great Blog Bryony and love the practicality of what you have shared – especially “It starts with me”. A great reminder to care and love ourself before stepping out into the world. Thank you.

291. I loved this Bryony, so much so that I could have written it myself with the patterns and cycles I have been in and identifying all the unloving ways. I also loved the humour which helps with seeing the ridiculousness of the situation. Well done.

292. Thinking versus Feeling. Indeed Ariana it nails it. Feeling is such a valuable guide, it leads to truth.

293. “It starts with me”. This was a revelation for me too and the fact that I could not continue to blame everyone and everything other than looking to myself for what I was choosing or how I was living. WE are running the show and WE are responsible for whatever state we are in.
     Thank you Bryony for a sublime blog.

294. When we begin to drop the old baggage we carry around with us; the self judgment/self loathing and lack of self worth/self trust, our vehicle the body starts to feel a whole lot lighter and we start to feel ourselves again and all the other benefits you mentioned when we make a commitment to fully loving and taking care of ourselves. Love the light hearted approach in your writing!

295. What I love about this blog it that it reminds me of how often we dramatise our lives or choices or make them so super hard and unmanageable. But if truth be told, they are actually really simple, it made me giggle to read parts of your blog as I could relate to so many things I have thought, said and done and they are ridiculous really – when you look at the bigger picture, plus a super-tiring and restricting way to live. When, as you say, we don’t have to run away to live in a cave to find out who we really are, just simply commit to life here and make self loving choices.

296. I love the lightness and playfulness. It is also so practical – taking it day-by-day and step-by-step.

     1. I agree Jonathan, it just makes me smile, no arduous or hard task, but simple and practical ways to make self loving choices.

     2. I agree with the lightness and playfulness, taking it day by day and step by step, so practical and so simple. Very self loving.

297. I loved your article Briony, so easy to read and relate to. Bringing to light the importance of feeling our bodies, deeply nurturing and being honest with ourselves about our choices. Something that is a work in progress for me too.

298. Great stuff here, Bryony. I laughed out loud several times – from the ‘rushing in to mop up the disasters and stage-managing everything’ to the leg waxing analogy and the quick-fix healing approach. I particularly related to wanting the practitioner to do it all for me and tell me what to do, also. For someone who actually doesn’t like being told what to do and enjoys being responsible in general, when it came to my own healing I would gladly hand it over to another and just keep going back for more “every time the hairy mess grows back” as you so beautifully put it. Pretty counter-productive really, I’d get to feel the real me under all that but not actually change what was needed to feel this way all the time and soon the tired, ‘wallpapered over’ me would re-establish itself because God forbid exposing those cracks!!
     Thank Heaven, that I have opened myself up to feeling my over thinking, to actually stopping and allowing myself to register how my body is responding in different circumstances – expanding or contracting, tender and delicate or hard and defensive. Keep writing please, Bryony…..I loved it.

299. Bryony, this is a fantastic piece of writing. Really supporting and open. Actually really useful for people like me who think they have been on the path to true discovery and wisdom for x amount of time…when in reality there has been a lovely and consistent kidding of oneself. Where to start is often a massive question but I honestly feel that just by asking the question, I have already started. Then I found your blog, a real keeper, as I can refer back to this and remind myself I am not alone. In fact no one is, we all in truth just want to dump the fake us and build a relationship with who we truly are. Thanks.

     1. Love the honesty of your reply Phill. Beautiful to have brothers like you and Bryony who expresses honesty so playful. I also found myself often in ‘trying to think it out’ and it does never work…but it closes my heart. So to open up my heart and honour that I am a feeling being, brings the turn around again. And I found that being playful is a very very much lightening up tool!

     2. Beautiful, Phil, I love what you have written here.
        “we all in truth just want to dump the fake us and build a relationship with who we truly are.” It does take time, gentle acceptance, and loving choices.But it is so worth it. I agree, by asking the question, you have already started. Thank you.

300. Great blog Bryony, I feel your first few paragraphs sum up how most of the human race may feel… Where do I begin? And then because making self loving choices is so abnormal for us we start to think ‘this is too hard’, leaving us wishing we had made another choice. And as you say, the benefits are many, not least is that we get to start to feel who we truly are and that is definitely worth sticking it out for.

     1. Well said Tim, it was a great summary of how many must feel, including myself at one point and even still now on a lesser degree. Loving ourselves can be such a foreign concept and if we’ve lived a long time not loving ourselves, it can be hard to even take the tiniest steps towards this as we have no idea how. But teeny tiny steps make way for bigger ones.

301. “And how would I feel if I actually accepted, as part of my development, ALL the choices I’ve made so far, even the ones I’ve judged as ‘bad’? ” What a great question, Bryony. Self-acceptance is key to being able to move forward and embrace life again with open arms. Any judgement keeps us tethered to the past.

     1. So true Janet, it is so easy to get caught up in this and very easy to forget the self acceptance, once this happens you can get the self into a spin. It is very much about self acceptance first and most.

302. Love this one Bryony: “Being honest. This also means asking for what I want and need instead of pretending “I’m so flexible, lucky me for having no needs, and being so ‘un-needy!” hilarious I totally fall into this camp, so easy going! I really love the way you write it is so playful and practical. I know that relief of just being, just being ourselves. And I too are learning to just let myself be more and more and accept life choices as they have been and gone, only I get to chose to keep playing them over and over! I reakon its time for an album change. Acceptance and appreciation being the number one hits. : )

303. Beautiful Briony thank you, I loved reading your blog and your expression feels so joyful.
     I am being constantly reminded everyday, at the moment, of the importance of building a deeper connection with myself lovingly and how this is my foundation with life and everyone around me. It brings a confidence, honouring and strength with love and tenderness. Beautiful.

304. Bryony, I love your blog and the humorous writing style with which you expose everything so beautifully and simply. I am still laughing with this comment – “Healing will be just like waxing my legs: I’ll just get the pain over with and have another session every time the hairy mess grows back”. I will enjoy visiting this blog again and again – the lightheartedness is so uplifting -Thank you!

305. Bryony – I relate so much to these words. The learnings you share are exactly where I’m at – discovering more and more that it starts with me, that it is so much about being honest with myself and consistently so, and that part of being honest with myself is actually calling out whats going on.
     I really connected to what you’ve written here – and I thank you for the inspiration to keep the consistency up!

306. I love your blog Bryony, and your style of writing and I can feel how honest you are.
     I had to laugh at what you no longer have to do and the first one being no flight to India to find yourself! Well, I got on the flight but got malaria and had to return within 48 hours, so I missed the guru trip and once I recovered back in UK the search stopped – I met Serge Benhayon – a real man who speaks truth and stands for Truth. The first person in the world that was not marketing anything or wanting anything from me.
     That was 9 years ago and today I choose to deeply love and care for myself and this has truly inspired others.

307. Thanks Bryony, loved the blog and this line ‘I don’t need to wait for stillness and space to start making changes and be more loving towards myself’ because I realise I sometimes use this as an excuse like ‘well I’m not still enough to feel that or know that’ etc when in truth I can so feel what is not right as it brings a real tension to my body whilst what feels right brings an opening – a spaciousness.

308. You made me laugh, I love the last paragraph about the benefits of loving yourself so far. I’m sure many could relate to those thoughts, the great mid-life, or anytime, crisis. How wonderful to realize the simplicity of it all and appreciate loving yourself truly for what it is worth.

309. This is lovely to read and really inspiring. It did make me laugh reading ‘that little thing self judgement/loathing’, and really good to read that making changes do not have to be as dramatic as quitting jobs and ending relationships but little changes starting with us that we can be consistent with. Thank you for sharing.

310. Thank you Bryony, for spelling out for me, what this “loving myself stuff” is all about.
     Thank you as well, for the lovely metaphors that you have chosen.

311. “Thinking, my cherished number one pastime, had led me nowhere except the repeat button on a broken CD player, playing out the same patterns and cycles but never moving on to the next song, let alone a different album.” Thank you for this, this is a brilliant metaphor Bryony.

312. Thank you Bryony for a very enjoyable read. I agree that the ‘loving yourself stuff’
     sounds a bit vague and off-putting to start with. That’s exactly how I felt.
     I like your line about ‘taking care of yourself before you can do anything about the rest
     of the world’.

313. I loved reading this, very funny and inspiring, thank you Bryony.

314. Thanks for this reminder, Bryony: ‘I also realised that I don’t need to wait for stillness and space to start making changes and be more loving towards myself.’ It’s such a mind game, this one. ‘I can’t start until….’, when in fact there’s nothing stopping us but our own delaying tactics! Great blog – really enjoyed your humour and the wisdom beneath it.

315. Hi Bryony I loved reading your blog. Simple, clear and funny – lovely combination.

316. Bryony from London, what a great blog! Very funny and real – I hope we meet one day, we have lots in common! And great point you make about not needing the stillness and connection first, in order to make loving choices… Brilliant!

317. Bryony this absolutely rocks!!! I love it and the way you describe things. Keep them coming…I can totally relate but the bit I love the most is the tipping point. That gorgeous moment when practising a bit here and there add a bit more commitment, a lil pinch of self awareness and oops before you know it you are really loving yourself and living your way. I know exactly how that feels.

318. Great article, very real and I can relate to all that you have said. Thank you Bryony.

319. Bryony I love this. I love the way you have shared in an open, fun and lighthearted way. Your humour shines through and makes this piece very engaging and easy to read. Keep writing.

320. An insipring blog Bryony, you have made the what is easy to make complicated in life refreshingly obvious and simple.

321. I love your playfulness, Bryony, I find that I can get so intense about what self-love and self-care and nurturing mean for me, and start to blame myself for the way I have lived in the past, and of course, it always turns out to be more harmful to me than everything else as it stops me caring for myself and making a connection at a deeper level, and I go into a downward spiral and choose all those old habits you describe so well. It also means by putting them in the “past ” I am not addressing the places they still exist in subtler ways in the present.

322. I really loved feeling what you said about not needing to wait for the stillness and space needed to make changes because there is a place inside you that knows all this already. Wow, if everyone in the world just took that and trusted that it is true, we would sure eliminate a massive amount of self-doubt and self-judgement/criticism, which would help a lot of cases of depression for sure. I agree that we don’t need to have all the answers all at once and if we can accept our past choices and simply move forward as if we already have that stillness inside us.Then it’s almost like we have made a life that can appreciate the process and all the learning along our paths to more and more love without feeling like it is something we have to go out and get, since it’s right inside all along and can never be extinguished.

323. Bryony I love this, you are so correct, true change begins and ends with us, our willingness to commit to a truer, more loving life, and our willingness to be really open and honest. So true also that there is nothing to wait for – make the choice right now, this second!

324. I love that you don’t have to wait or run or hide, just being the real you is all it takes.
     I could feel your surrender to your own sweetness and how simple it is to choose a more loving way to live with your self, it’s in the small choices to start with and we build it up from there.
     Thank you Bryony.

     1. How simple and true Sherry “just being the real you is all it takes”. How many of us have felt we have to be a certain way, try so hard, or feel the need to be perfect, when as you say it is so simple and so freeing to choose a more loving way to be with ourselves – and it’s not about doing it all today, just each small loving choice and moment, which allows us to naturally grow from there.

325. I love the playfulness of this blog. It makes it very easy to read and relate to. As well as being light it is so absolutely true in what is addressed and then the simplicity of realising its not about ‘doing the self love thing’ but that the love we are is always there. Beautiful, thank you Bryony.

326. Very playful and enjoyable to read as you describe the ‘loving myself stuff” so well. The tired fake wall paper, the blaming, the wallowing on the floor, the leg waxing, everything you said I had fun reflecting with you on how we try to “do” self love. Thank you Bryony.

327. I love your honesty and openess Bryony, a great article with absolute truth, thank you

328. Dear Bryony, I love this blog as it was really playful yet profound to read. You are calling things out on behalf of all of us, which really can be turned around when we accept how we have been with ourselves in the past, and no longer fall prey to self-judgement. Thank you for sharing with such honesty.

     1. Absolutely Janet, it is about letting go of self-judgment

329. I loved reading your blog Bryony. It made me chuckle a few times. I can totally relate to feeling stuck about getting started on the self love thing. I remember thinking ‘what does that mean?’ I started with the gentle breath meditation taught by Serge Benhayon. Its amazing how introducing a simple technique like breathing gently can impact hugely on your life. Lovely to hear about your journey and how you’ve been gentle with yourself along the way. I love how you have expressed so clearly what you’ve learnt so far.

330. I loved re- reading your blog. So simple, direct and honest. If I want the world to change it starts with me, “if I start truly committing to myself….” Thankyou Bryony – I am appreciating all the choices you – and we – have made on our road back to love.

     1. “If I want the world to change it starts with me” I love this Sue, how true – we often look for other people or situations to change without making that commitment first to ourselves.

331. Bryony this is awesome, I love it, and I love your openness, honesty and playful-ness I can so relate to this. What really struck a chord with me was the simplicity in how you share, that you know it’s actually okay to love ourselves and look after ourselves for in truth if we don’t do that how can we really love another.
     So often we make it about every one else first, and get left drained and exhausted – very different to making life about love and people. And you are right it is also not about a quick fix, an overnight self help life transformation in a 5 day quick step to enlightenment, done that, bought the book, the course, the t-shirt, the silent retreat and believe me it doesn’t work, I left after a day or two as we were meant to express, talk about holding back and sitting in awkward and uncomfortable positions, where’s the love in that?
     But it is about unfolding each day, each moment as it comes, always with an opportunity to grow, evolve to go much deeper, and have fun, to en-joy life and all that we are, yes there’s stuff we need to work on, heal and let go, but we can do this from our light, our love, our joy and our playfulness. And yes honesty, honesty is the key, the willingness and openness to just be – honest with ourselves, our feelings and each other, and yes we may not always get it right, but that’s okay, it’s all a process to unfolding and being more of who we really are.

332. This is an amazing blog, I love how light hearted you’ve addressed the subject.
     ”After I’d picked myself up from wallowing on the floor, I began to try not to think my way through things, but to feel it.”
     This blog further solidifies the fact to me that feeling and allowing for changes in my life is better then running around in circles in my head going nowhere. And when I feel the ‘bad’ choices I’ve made I get a chance to say ”I am not going to repeat that, it feels horrible” as opposed to just beating myself up in my head over and over and over.
     Thank you.

333. I love the honesty and the playfull-ness of your expression, thank you Bryony.

334. This is a great blog Byrony, I laughed out loud several times in seeing myself in what you describe so playfully and wonderfully without judgement – tick that off the list : ). I can just feel that wonderful feeling of letting go of trying to control everything in how you have written this and how your body now leads the way. I agree with Gina, it feels you have supported us all in accepting where we have been, where we are and where we are going. Look forward to any updates you feel to share!

335. I love your writing Bryony. I can so relate. I too in the past have approached healing in a similar ‘boot camp’ style. Its a kind of self flagellation for all the ‘bad’ things I had done. It was driven by guilt and perfectionism and the feelings of self loathing that accompany this. Not an ounce of love or kindness in sight. I have learned that true healing comes from connecting to and accepting the deep beauty that resides within and using this as the marker, for this in truth is who I am. It is a work in progress but so lovely to let go of the hardness that comes from these feeling of not being good enough. Great blog thank you.

336. Wow I love this blog Bryony – I have definitely tried the ‘leg waxing’ approach before and can agree that it most certainly does not work… Thank you for sharing your inspiring experience.

337. I so loved reading this blog. Your raw honesty and humour is brilliant. It feels like you have so supported us all with your blog to accept our own awesomeness, and just get on with living with that awareness and playfully acknowledge along the way the hiccups which don’t matter in the bigger picture if the intention is there to live from that awesomeness. That’s why you say we don’t have to wait for the stillness and space because we deep down know we are simply amazing. Thank you for helping us to have fun with this discovery. So much better than judgement and waiting for perfection before we allow our awesome selves to come out into the world. Just trust we are awesome, present that to the world and learn as we go. Yay!

338. I had two responses to your blog, Byrony. The first half had me nodding my head and agreeing “yup, don’t know how to start this self love business” and the second half had me laughing at every one of the playful (but deadly serious) BENEFITS of having embraced the self love approach. Very cute and very well presented. Thank you.

339. An inspiring blog Jane, written with deep awareness. I love the simplicity of how you share your small steps bring new choices, reflecting how to get back and be with ourselves with a different understanding and self-responsibility through ‘feeling’ in a loving and tender way and not going around in circles that ‘thinking’ brings.

340. Thank you Bryony. Your writing and your development is so awesome to read and humorous too. I could completely relate to it.

341. Hear, hear, Felicity. You certainly break it down Bryony and share the simplicity of the steps you have taken. Thank you.

342. Thank you Bryony, I could relate to all you have shared here. So practical and REAL. Keep us up to date as we are inspired by your honesty relationship with YOU.

343. I agree with Felicity, thank you Bryony for sharing with simplicity and clarity.

344. Thank you Bryony for sharing how it has been for you, all of your self-revelations about expression and coming back to express the real you, who feels lovely and beautiful by the way! You also reduce the whole thing to ‘feeling’, it is a great and simple reminder that even in our most doubtful or confusing moments, ‘feeling’ is the key… as simple as that. I can relate to many things you say. I love how it is always a very personal process of self-discovery and self-honouring.

345. I love your openness and honesty. You present this in such a playful and simple way that is so lovely to feel and be inspired by. Thank you Bryony.

346. Great article Bryony. While I’ve never had a leg wax, I really ‘got’ what you were saying about making self loving choices. A line that really resonates with me is: “I also realised that I don’t need to wait for stillness and space to start making changes and be more loving towards myself”.

     Yep… why wait?

     1. That line also resonated for me, too, Rod. So often we delay until the perfect moment to arrive, which of course it never does. This article beautifully demonstrates the benefit of not waiting – very inspiring.

347. I really LOVE this Bryony. Your honesty and ‘realness’ in your writing is absolutely wonderful. I love how you have exposed in a loving and accepting way what pretty much all of us have gone through and/or are going through. I, too, have been spending (a little) more time just noticing, and less judging. And I’ve found that I actually can be ok with the choices I make that send me off the rails, and that I can come back to love any moment. And then maybe I go off again, and then come back, and then go off again, and come back, etc… And that no matter what, wherever I’m at is all ok. Just by doing this – accepting this – has been more healing for me than a session (although the sessions have been great too, in a different way possibly). The more I notice without judgement, the less there is to judge! It’s just so simple, truly feeling how there is no need for perfection, no need for complication.

348. Thanks for breaking this down into simplicity so anyone can understand and choose to follow a path to more self love in daily life. Reading this helped me appreciate the loving choices I have made too!

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