Valentine's Day is coming up and frankly, I'm not totally into all the Hallmark holidays (including this one) but it's nice to have one that inspires the display of love. I recently attended a women's networking event and one of the guest speakers spoke about love languages. The book The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman outlines five ways people express and experience love; the five categories are gifts, quality time, words of affirmation, acts of service, and physical touch. Basically, the premise of the book speaks to the fact that everyone is wired with a specific 'love language' meaning, a certain category helps us feel loved. Mine for example are quality time and physical touch...if you give me undivided attention and time, I feel loved; hugs and touch? I'm loved by you...I matter. Anyhow, one of the panelists spoke about self love and how we can't truly love others unless we love ourselves. She used this book as an example of a beginning and asked the simple question, 'How do you start loving yourself?' She spoke about the fact that we read all these books and assume that they're to help us love a significant other better, but what if they were speaking about how we could love ourselves better. If my number one language is quality time then how about I spend some quality time on me, reading, taking a walk, meditating, etc
I think the most important thing in life is self-love, because if you don’t have self-love, and respect for everything about your own body, your own soul, your own capsule, then how can you have an authentic relationship with anyone else?” – Shailene Woodley
If you've ever been to a wedding you've heard 1Cor 13 from the Bible saying 'Love is patient, love is kind,' how about we stay patient and kind to ourselves? How often does that happen? We all have a story. Mine includes cancer. Lipstick has provided a way for me to communicate my moods but self-love is an inside job. Take some time this week to do the inside work. Maybe there's a color of lipstick that helps you express that on the outside. When I say 'Life is your canvas' I mean it. Life gets nuts, wear the lipstick.
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