The end of the year is here, a the new one is about to begin and it is time to transform your life by learning self love. All around you are sales and promises from products that promise to make you thinner, fitter, prettier, more acceptable, and more lovable in the New Year.

They pull at you. You wonder which ones are for real and which ones are just trying to trick you. Through your caution, you still hope that one of them is for real. Wouldn’t it be great to be beautiful and loved?

Maybe you’re looking to yourself for the change. You may be thinking of resolutions. Maybe you’re gathering with friends to create vision boards or set intentions for what you want to manifest in this New Year. Is self love on the list?

Self love is more radical than self-esteem. It goes beyond having a mental construct of you as a good, loving, confident, and accomplished woman.

Self love requires you to get radical. Self love asks you to get honest. And admit you have flaws.

Do any of these sound familiar? You show up late. You pick your nose. You have smelly parts. You bleed. You have cold feet. You don’t know the difference between a hypotenuse and a hypothetical statement. Whatever it is that you feel ashamed of or embarrassed by, you’ve got to admit it to yourself and you’ve got to welcome it in. Why?

Because if you don’t you will never have the self love you want. You will never feel as connected and loved as you want. You will always look for your lovers and friends to tell you that you’re good enough.

All the while you’re going to hide from them this shame, this flaw in yourself. It won’t work. They’ll know. Or worse yet it will work, they won’t know, and you’ll keep getting rewarded for hiding yourself.

Either way you lose, and the consequences of not loving each and every part of your core and your being persists. You’ve got to open up and get real. Your future may depend on it.

The unloved parts of you are craving your compassion and attention. Take your skeletons out of your closet and listen to them. They are the ghosts of your dreams. They are the parts of you that were too much, too radical, didn’t fit with the rules, and weren’t liked by the teachers and your parents.

They might be angry. They might seem insatiable and famished. These unloved parts might have been locked in a closet, with duct tape over their mouths, for years. You’d be hungry, needy, and pissed off if that had happened to you too.

Please be gentle with them and yourself. If you don’t love them, who will?

Ready to step into self love? Here are a couple of tips to get you started.

Learning Self Love

1) Admit you’re not perfect.

If you need to keep believing you’ve got it all together, you will have to keep lying to yourself and others. Just pick one thing about yourself you usually hide and stop hiding it. This is a good start.

2) Find someone to listen to you.

This could be a friend, a coach, a counselor, your lover, a family member, your journal, or all of the above.

3) Accept your good and bad traits

Offer compassion to the parts of yourself you don’t like, don’t trust, and perhaps don’t even know you have. Listening deeply and reflective listening can help.

4) Take your time.

Once you start listening to yourself, you will find that there are many parts of you you’ve ignored for a long time. This may seem overwhelming. Be patient. Things will settle down and start to make more sense as you persist.

5) Connect with the elements.

The land, sun, air, and water support you all the time no matter what you do, say, think, or feel. It is good to remember that you have support all the time that is totally unconditional. This can make it easier to accept the conditionality of human love and affection.

6) Be gentle with yourself.

You won’t do self love perfectly either. You may read this, get really inspired and swear you’ll never hide your true self in order to be accepted again. But you will. When that happens, be gentle with yourself. Admit you make mistakes. And try again.

As simple as these steps sound, they are life-changing. Once you start, change will happen and your life will transform. If you’re ready for change and feeling an itch to shed your limitations and fly into your potential, this is a great place to start. And what better time to start than the New Year?

Are you taking steps to learn self love? Please share your tips and experience in the comment box below.