Money Smells Like Love — Self Love, To Be Exact
Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus dropped a couple of hints about it at the Grammys.
So, you want to be a legend.
Or, maybe you just want to survive another day without going completely broke, or buckling under the weight of anxiety and depression.
Happily, what I’m about to share with you is valuable no matter what you want from your life — as long as you’re interested in making it better.
The RULE: People who get to live out their dreams love themselves. Self-love is, in fact, the prerequisite to their dream.
I’m not talking about the American dream, necessarily.
I’m not talking about being bloody rich and undeniably famous, nor am I talking about amassing generational wealth that changes an entire family’s history and narrative.
I’m talking about dreams.
I’m talking about the unique, individual fantasies that each person has, that are specific to them: for you, it could be any number of things: it could be learning to ski, it could be owning a home in your favorite city in the world. It could be spending more time with your family, or painting massive watercolor pieces on canvas that you get to share with the world at galleries and through auctions.
Your dream could be to write a book and sell it, or to talk about what you’ve learned in your life with an captive audience. Your dream could be to make sweet, delicious love to one person for the rest of your life, someone who truly honors you—or to enjoy a whirlwind of fascinating, passionate romances with an ever-rotating wheel of magnificent human beings.
Your dream could be to contribute in a big way to World Peace and global relations. Your dream could be to rescue animals — or to cook them up in mouth-watering recipes and feed them to hungry, fine-dining connoisseurs.
Your dreams are not something that the world can decide for you: your dreams are yours.
Your dreams are not something that the world can decide for you: your dreams are yours.
In survival mode, people don’t know what their dreams are.
Folks in survival mode don’t have the luxury of time or inner peace to contemplate their dreams — although, I assure you, those dreams are there, thrumming silently behind every action and thought.
Instead, people trapped in survival mode spend their energy trying to reach some kind of equilibrium: secure some measure of stability so that they can breathe, rest, and recharge.
One step above survival mode, the rest of people have an inkling of their dreams, but don’t know how to realize them. They hope for a stroke of luck, or the passage of time, to change their fortunes…
But they usually don’t. One step above survival mode is not vastly different from survival mode—these are individuals who spend most of their energy hustling, only to then use their free time to build their hustle-motivation back up with the classic pleasures: entertainment, vacation, validation, and food and drink.
And then, there’s Thrival Mode.
These are the folks who appear to be driven by a supernatural force. They have a vision, and it is all-consuming. They know their dream, and they spend all of their energy (or as much of it as they feasibly can, sometimes narrowly evading homelessness and financial chaos) delivering that dream from the unmanifest world of their mind into tangible, objective, manifested reality.
They’re focused.
They’re driven.
And they love themselves.
“Sccreeeeeeee!” *record scratch sound effect*
They love themselves?! How did the L-word get in there?!
What differentiates survivors from thrivers is ONE ingredient, and it’s free— something that everyone is capable of, irrespective of their social and economic advantages or disadvantages.
It’s the next step in our human evolution, and I believe that it’s the single greatest responsibility of the free world to rise up and take it on as their personal mission.
It’s the mandate of self-love: and it’s calling. If we intend to evolve as a species, we must pick up the phone.
It’s the mandate of self-love: and it’s calling. If we intend to evolve as a species, we must pick up the phone.
Legends love themselves.
There’s a high probability that you weren’t taught to love yourself, and that’s okay. You weren’t taught a lot of things — in fact, I’d venture to guess that most of the things that matter in your life, that have changed and formed you, you’ve had to learn yourself: and some would say that’s the entire purpose of our journey through human consciousness.
Self-love is one such experience, and it’s the very vital practice of self-love that transforms a survivor into a thriver.
Self-love is the act of consciously taking on the responsibility of loving stewardship to all parts of you: your body, spirit, and mind/emotions.
Self-love is the act of consciously taking on the responsibility of loving stewardship to all parts of you: your body, spirit, and mind/emotions.
Like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, it often includes the meeting of fundamental requirements: ensuring you have a roof over your head, food in your stomach, and safety in your environment.
Unlike Maslow’s hierarchy of needs—and this is where mainstream culture gets self-love entirely wrong—self-love is not a “checklistable” event.
Plenty of people work their way all the way up Maslow’s “needs pyramid,” establishing careers and families, acquiring sufficient resources to feed and shelter themselves, and taking time to squeeze out the occasional creative project. They might even be rich!
Does this make them self-loving?
No. Not at all.
You can’t fake self-love.
Just like a parent can provide for all of their child’s physical needs and completely miss the mark on addressing their emotional needs, adults miss the mark on loving themselves, for real, every day. Every minute of every day, even.
It turns out that unlike Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, to love oneself is not simply to check off the social and cultural norms of success.
It turns out that unlike Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, to love oneself is not simply to check off the social and cultural norms of success.
Instead, it’s to radically and courageously follow the inner compass of the individual human heart that beats within you—which may involve jumping akimbo around the “hierarchy of human needs” pyramid out of sequence, making choices that don’t make sense to other people or society at large, and defying the expectations of “normal behavior” by prioritizing your own vision.
How many “legends” have had to couch surf or sleep in their cars while trying to realize a dream? How many “legends” have had to work two, three, four jobs while running in the direction their heart led them? How many “legends” have had to leave their country on the hunt for the liberty to be themselves? How many “legends” have had to change laws, start movements, and create art or make statements that categorized them as dangerous or scandalous?
And where did they get the courage to do it?
Self-love can’t be faked, in fact, it can’t even be imitated—it can only be experienced personally as an internal phenomenon, or externally, by witnessing human excellence in action.
The “legends” I speak of aren’t just the creatives at the tops of their craft. The “legends” I speak of, whether rich monetarily or even more invaluably, rich in the satisfaction of living life on their own terms, are the individuals who have chosen to believe they are worthy of their dream.
Some of these legends didn’t have a clue what their dream was when they started out on the self-love journey, but they knew that something inside of them wanted out—and they knew that they deserved to find out what that thing was.
Self love will save this planet.
Global self love will herald world peace.
It’s our responsibility, our divine mission, to love ourselves.
At the root of every creative fragment of art, words, or music that has ever moved you—every piece of technology that has ever assisted you—every human being who has ever uplifted you—every shred of nature that has ever sustained you—is a source, an energy, that believed it was worthy of existing.
The nurturing and cultivation of that energy has furthered every inch of the evolution of our human consciousness since that point. The continued nurturing and cultivation of that energy—within you, specifically—will be the vehicle that our species rides to internal, and consequently external, peace.
The nurturing and cultivation of that energy has furthered every inch of the evolution of our human consciousness since that point. The continued nurturing and cultivation of that energy — within you, specifically — will be the vehicle that our species rides to peace.
For all of our sakes, please love yourself.
Love yourself courageously, love yourself relentlessly.
Advocate for the dreams of your heart like it is the only purpose of your life, of your entire existence.
