Many times I get asked, “What is the silver bullet in working with the Universal Laws?” And I always say, “Self-love.”

Why self-love? Remembering that everything is energy, love is one of the highest energy vibrations. It does not matter if we are talking about love or self-love. The easiest way to be in a high vibration is loving yourself.

What is self-love? Self-love is loving yourself and accepting yourself as you are right now. It is being kind, considerate, and loving to you! It is treating yourself with respect and unconditional acceptance. It is listening to your own wishes, goals, and dreams. It is making yourself feel special and cherished and not waiting for someone else to do this for you. It is recognizing and celebrating your own successes. It is being open and honest with yourself. It is being willing to express yourself and speak your own truth. It is being completely connected in heart, mind, body, and soul with YOU.

Many people do not do all of these acts of self-love. We are willing to do them for others, but not for ourselves. Instead we are critical of our flaws, override many of our needs, take for granted our positive attributes and accomplishments, and generally devote little time or attention to connecting with our own hearts and spirits. We seek true love and companionship from another, but we have no idea how to give this to ourselves.

Self-love simply means believing in your own essential worthiness. It is nurturing a healthy sense of positive self-regard and knowing in your heart that you are valuable. Loving yourself also means actively caring for every part of YOU. It shows up in every action you take, from the food you eat to sustain your body to leaving a relationship that does not fulfill you. It means paying attention to and honoring your own wants and needs.

Not everyone grows up with a high self-esteem or feelings of worthiness. In fact, most of us feel unworthy or “not good enough,” which goes against our entire natural way of well-being. Most people feel there is something that is not good enough in their lives, whether it is their bodies, intelligence, finances, relationships, emotions, or their spirituality. However, respecting, nurturing, honoring, and cherishing yourself is your birthright and something you can learn, just like learning to transform your thoughts.

If you do not love yourself, it is impossible to love another. You can only give away what you have. You may be able to give love, but if you are not able to give it to yourself, you will not know how to receive, and the receiving is a very large part of being in a healthy, loving relationship. Loving yourself is the best way to learn how to love. Love is an action that requires certain understandings, skills, and capacities. By loving yourself, you then are able to love another.

Only when you have successfully mastered taking care of your own needs can you know how to extend that same attention to others. Think about when you are on an airplane. When the flight attendant is going over the safety instructions he/she says, “If you are traveling with a small child, place the oxygen mask over your own face first before attending to the child.” You can’t help someone else, including all the people you care about, if you haven’t helped yourself first. I know for me and my work in the world, I can’t empower others until I have first empowered myself.

Self-love doesn’t just happen. It is a skill and something that you have to learn to give to yourself. With most of my coaching clients, they are very unclear on how to practice self-love. It is like learning to play golf for the first time. If you went out on the golf course and never had anyone show you how to pick up a golf club, you would have no idea how to play. And you probably would be really bad at it. But as you learn and practice, you get better and better. The same is true for any new skill. Self-love is one of those new skills. I have coached many of my clients to learn to love themselves by following my system, and I also practice self-love on a daily basis using the same system. It is very easy to do, and it is simple when you follow a successful system.

There are many ways you can love yourself, and everything that happens to you is a wonderful opportunity to have a loving experience. With the right thoughts, and the right perspective, anything can be an occasion to love YOU. When things seem to be going against you, you can use it as an opportunity to see where you are focused on what you don’t want and limiting yourself from having what you do want.

One of the many benefits of self-love is that you can manifest anything you want into your life with ease and effortlessness. The vibration of love is the foundation for manifesting the highest levels of success in this material world. When you completely love and accept all aspects of yourself, you send out such a strong energetic vibration into the Universe and you become a manifesting magnet! You’ll experience that everyone and everything around you simply wants to be around you, including you. You will enjoy being with YOU!

It is really important to understand that the energy of love is one of the highest vibrations in the Universe. Whether you are loving another or loving yourself, physically you vibrate at a much higher frequency than any other emotion you can choose. Those lower vibrational feelings such as fear, greed, lack, impatience, or frustration only block you from manifesting everything your heart desires. Through increased levels of self-love, you will naturally shift the vibration within your mind-body, transforming yourself into a powerful source of magnetic energy that attracts those divine experiences, relationships, and financial opportunities into your life! The more you cultivate self-love, the more the Universe will flow its abundance of every kind onto you.

Discovering this true self-love is like believing you were the moon, who needed light and warmth from others on the outside, so that you could reflect that energy back to everyone. Then one day you realized that this love is not coming from outside you, but inside, and that you are truly the sun who is always radiating, and shining its light onto everyone and everything. When you turn your attention to WHERE the source of love is right now, you simply find out that you were always the sun and forever will be this brilliant loving light.