“You only see correctly with your heart” – unknown.

In order for us to see with our hearts, we must heal and find unconditional love. The shortest path starts by creating new thoughts and habits.

Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habit.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
—Lao Tzu

In order to rewrite the narrative and build a habit towards unconditional love. You must first open yourself up to the idea and thought of loving yourself. This can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months. Be patient. It only takes a few minutes each day, but I promise you the change will come. Just come and do the work.

The following are two options for starting on your path to finding unconditional self-love. As a third option, you can also follow the mantra meditation in the blog post here, and for your mantra use the phrase “I love you” or “I love myself.”

I suggest you commit to this for a minimum of 30 days straight. Anyone can do that for ~2 minutes a day. If you can do it for a longer duration at each time, it will sink in that much sooner. Remember, this is counteracting years of negative messaging, so be patient and give yourself time to heal.

Loving Meditation

The first option involves listening to a song, the second is a moving meditation.

Song Loving Meditation.
1) Find a song 4-7 minutes long that is soothing, and makes you feel good and happy.
2) Breath in through your nose if you can. As you inhale think “I love you/myself.”(your choice). As you exhale breath out and release any feelings that arise. Its ok if your mind wanders, just come back lovingly, without judgement to your breath and your mantra. Repeat it for the entire duration of the song. Or a minimum of 2 minutes if you don’t have a lot of time.

Moving Loving Meditation.
1) Walking, running, swimming, with or without music do the above with your breathing and exercise for as long as you can. Its ok if you lose the train of thought, just come back to it gently. Sometimes I find myself doing this for 40 min swim.

To learn more, and read a great book from which this idea came from, check out Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It by Kamal Ravikant