A note from Danielle: This is a guest post from the fabulous Kimberly Delarosa. Kimberly Delarosa is a wellness writer and weightlifter located in Eastchester, NY. You can follow her stories on her website at www.kimberlydelarosa.com loves!

There’s a lot of self-love going around and I absolutely love it!

As a wellness writer, one of the topics I strongly encourage my readers to implement in their lives is self-love and self-care. I think it’s crucial to be able to sit down daily and make sure that you’re okay: physically and mentally. With the world being ruled by technology and our political climate triggering everyone around us, this is a crucial time to take up space for your thoughts and emotions. Seriously if you’re not happy with yourself as a human, you’re going to have a lot of trouble growing and developing in this world.

However, there’s a fine line between self-love and conceitedness.

One of the many questions I’ve been asked is “Well if I put myself first and love myself, doesn’t that make me conceited?”

This I can totally understand! We live in a world where if you put yourself first, you’re automatically selfish. If you think about yourself first and put your needs out on the table, the world will judge you for being too into yourself. We’ve all experienced some sort of shame in honoring ourselves one way or another. For example, you have an awesome outfit on and want to take a selfie but you won’t do it when there are people around because you don’t want to look like a snob (raise your hand if you ever did that!).

So what’s the difference between self-love and conceit?

It might seem like there isn’t that much of a difference on the outside because there isn’t. The difference is internal. In the book The Universe Had Your Back by Gabrielle Bernstein, she states that we as human beings approach the world through two emotions: Fear and Love. Every decision we make in our lives revolves around this. Regardless of what comes our way, we respond or see the world from a place of fear or a place of love. This, my friend, is the difference:

Conceit comes from fear, whereas self-care comes from love.

When you see someone who feels like the light isn’t on them so they need to gossip about others to feel better, that’s someone ruled by conceit. They’re the judgers, the haters, the gossipers, the soul suckers. They constantly fear that the light won’t shine on them, so they need to diminish others in order to bring the light back. When we’re in the beginning stages of self-love, we can get trapped in a place of conceit so easily. We’ll start to take care of ourselves and we feel great but then when we see other people around us succeeding, all of a sudden we don’t feel so awesome.

Why is that? I feel awesome about myself so why do I feel like crap when I see someone else do something amazing or feel like they’re better than me? That’s because you got the first stage of self-love down packed, but you’re missing the key ingredient.

Whenever I talk about self-love, people always think that self-love is going to yoga class, drinking herbal tea, becoming vegan, or thinking that you’ll never have bad days ever. If this is your mentality of self-love, please stop. You’re doing yourself and the world a disservice because that’s illogical. That’s not what self-love is about.

Self-love is releasing judgement, not just of other people…but of you.

Self-love is making peace with your traumas, your judgments, and your internal stories. It’s recognizing your insecurities and letting go of them in order to honor who you are as a human. It’s an understanding that we’re not perfect and we’re not all meant to be the same person. If that were the case, there wouldn’t be so much diversity in the world. We’re not cut from the same cloth and we each have different traits to contribute to the world.

When we can recognize and fully embrace ourselves, flaws and all, we can then begin to look at the world through the eyes of love. We can walk through life knowing that no matter what’s thrown our way, we’re here for a purpose and that’s to spread love. This means encouraging one another to shine. People ruled by conceit believe that if we encourage one another to shine, it’ll diminish their own light. This is a false belief that society has instilled in us because it’s NOT TRUE!

Emilia Ortiz, a spiritual advisor and healer, described this concept perfectly in a recent interview:
“There’s this idea that there’s not enough of the pie to go around. If I have a slice that means there’s less to go around for other women so we go ‘Nu-uh I’m not sharing my slice with you’. But if we stop doing that and decide to come together and figure out how to bake a new damn pie, then none of us will have to sit here and fight over this small ass slice that society GIVES US to fight over.”
Trust me when I tell you that when we encourage others to shine, that’s self-love all the way! When you can walk into a room and don’t feel the need to judge yourself, judge anyone around you or better yet, support them, you’ve reached a point of self-love at another level. You embrace who you are as a human and understand that life is abundant. There’s plenty of light to go around! However, we also have to understand this:

Self-love is not a destination, it’s a journey.

It’s holding a mirror to you and revealing the good and the bad. There will be days where you’re totally positive about yourself, and then all of a sudden your mood will shift. I remember reading a post where someone said you don’t all of a sudden wake-up and love yourself – I think this is false. You definitely can have a day where you refuse to think badly and choose love. You can wake up and decide enough is enough and that you deserve to be happy…but that doesn’t mean the journey is done!
The relationship you have with yourself is the longest relationship you will ever have in your life. It’s figuring out your insecurities and triggers and facing them head on, which means this takes time. Some of us are not ready to give up our internal stories of trauma yet. Mastering self-love is a lifelong journey. However the more you submit to love, the more you truly embrace who you are as a human, that’s where the greatest love can grow.

Is it easy? Absolutely not. It’s not supposed to be. But is it worth it? Hell fucking yeah!