There comes a moment in life when you reach a fork in the road. One lane leads to health, happiness, love, prosperity and joy. The other leads to compromise, tension, burnout and anxiety. I have been at this crossroads several times.

I know what it is like to live, detached from ones’ authentic self. It an empty, confusing place and the consequences that come with sometimes include… physical, mental, and emotional challenges.

These are sometimes quick to show up or slowly catch up to you and hit you like an asteroid landing on Earth out of no-where and ruining everything in its path.

For close to three decades, I consumed myself with busy work, seeming productive and continuously made and completed my to-do lists… but I felt miserable.

Then…. I reached a breaking point. I knew I could not stay in my marriage, but my divorce coincided with several other major events including the death of my mother, moving out of state and relocated my kids along with my ex-husband to a new city and on top of all that,  the flare up with my repetitive stress injury wasn’t just a flare up anymore. I was in continuous pain and started to lose functionality of my hands. For too many years I had used my hands in my graphic design business, fine art oil painting career and professional portrait photographer career.

I had to re-invent my career from scratch in my late forties while covering the expenses of being a single parent…

Within all this chaos, I recognized I was in the current situation is that I had, in fact self-sabotaged when making so many critical decisions in my life.

I had made choices out of fear.

I had made choices out of “shoulds”

I had made choices out of not realizing my worth.

I often asked myself, why would I self-sabotage; my mind is strong, I can tell the difference between a sabotaging voice and one that is self-loving… right…. well not really. There are many reasons we unknowingly self-sabotage the things we want most. If you can’t see the outgrown, unhealthy chains and shackles trailing behind you, how can you even begin to search for the key to unlock them? Sometimes you just need someone to shine a light so you can awaken to those dark hindrances keeping you from fully awakening.

This began my quest for self-love… what I soon discovered was the antidote for self-sabotaging thoughts.

For several years after my divorce, I tried to embrace self-love.

I got into the best physical shape possible, lost weight and on the surface thought all this was self-love.

It took me quite a bit of time to discover what self-love really meant… for me.

Here’s what I learned.

 Self-love means taking the time to discover my core values.

Self-love means being in integrity with myself and actually living my life based on my core values.

Self-love means being in my power. Not giving it away to anyone else, man or woman. Family or friend.

Self-love means being able to have the awareness when I am sabotaging myself

Self-love means acknowledging when I am making decisions based on fears.

Self-love means taking the time to understand what drives my soul in this incarnation.

Self-love means how I can accept myself fully, as I am, without judgement.

 Self-love means being able to distinguish between being alone and being lonely.

That is self-love… to me.

I realized that I self-sabotaged because I had not gotten real or took the time to know my inner critics, the saboteurs, that were louder in my head than my allies.

I have since made a list of the ways in which I truly love myself and they include:

• Doing some fairly simple investigative work on what my care values are
• Setting Boundaries and sticking to them
• Recognizing when I am making a fear-based decision

Life is a work in progress… but what I have discovered is that each moment I get to choose.

I get to choose my actions, my thoughts and make clear decisions on how I get to lead my life.

I can be very difficult to navigate this process of finding my authentic self alone. I’ve worked with some amazing coaches and used several different methodologies to discover my core values.

What I have come to know as truth, is that I have be super focused and clear and be the continuous witness of my thoughts, remind myself of my values and stay in integrity with them. That is self-love.