Self-Love vs. Self-Care: What's the difference? (hint: it's huge!)

(Listen to Dara talk about Self-Love vs. Self-Care on the She Calls Her Shots podcast!)

Self-love is a hot topic these days. And for good reason! Our relationship with ourselves impacts absolutely every area of our lives. It affects how we experience both the mundane and significant moments in our lives. It is the cornerstone of our ability to flourish fully and evolve into who we are meant to be.

The you that is in right relationship to Self will create a vastly different life than the you that is disconnected from yourSelf. So it is absolutely crucial that we get this self-love thing right.

But there’s one very big problem I see all the time with regard to self-love- it’s not really understood. If you don’t understand what it is to love yourself, you stand little chance of fully experiencing and benefiting from real self-love.

One way we get self-love wrong is that we equate it with self-care. The two are intertwined but not the same thing. Self-care is to self-love what self-esteem is to self-concept- one is a proportion of the other. In this post I will explain the difference and aim to define self-love in a concrete and useable way.

What is Self-Care?

Self-care is the part of self-love that involves you taking care of you, as opposed to you taking care of others or allowing others to take care of you (yes, both of those things are parts of self-love!), although self-care is also beneficial to others, which I’ll discuss more later. In our society, when we talk about self-care, things that come to mind are exercise, nutrition, rest and relaxation, bubble baths, and massages. These are all great self-care practices! But self-care involves so much more than doing wellness related activities. Before I expand on what a thorough approach to self-care looks like, let’s define what self-love is.

What is Self-Love?

Self-love is a broader concept of which self-care is a part. Self-love, as I have come to define it, has 3 functional parts that are rooted in its spirit or essence. The essence of self-love is about ‘being’ and is something you come to experience through self-understanding and acceptance. At the core of self-love is connection to truth- namely, the truth of oneself. To love yourself is to know yourself; to know your true nature, to connect to it, and to live from that place. Most of us struggle with self-love because we are disconnected from our inner most being. We carry around beliefs about ourselves that are untrue. Our perception of our selves is far too small. Coming into self-love always begins with questioning the ideas you have about yourself, discovering your deeper truth, and replacing old, false beliefs that hold you back with what is true and real, which will free you to live boldly and courageously.

The Essence of Self-Love

The essence of self-love is the way in which you experience yourself. Since your core nature is love itself, to love yourself is to experience yourself AS love. When you go out into the world embodying the awareness that you are love, you live your life from a belief system that is I AM WORTHY. The deep awareness that you are love means you are also aware of you innate worthiness and therefore do no expend any energy at all seeking external validation of your worthiness. You live from a place of enough-ness. You are grounded in a sense of wholeness and adequacy. This inner connectedness fuels you with vitality and energy for life. It enables you to go out into the world with a sense of belonging and a general notion that the world is a hospitable and benevolent place that wants to receive you and your unique gifts.

To lack self-love is to be disconnected from the deeper part of yourself that is aware that love is your true nature. Recovering this connection to the Self, which was interrupted at some point in life, can begin to be reestablished through a conscious commitment to cherish, protect, and nurture your self, your life, and your inner path. The key here is conscious and deliberate devotion. A relationship with yourself needs to be chosen. Once that commitment is made, a journey of self-(re)discovery can begin. One must know themselves to recover love for themselves. To begin loving yourself, you must begin to remember who you are and come into total self-acceptance.

First, get to know yourself well. This is the very first step. Become fascinated with discovering who you are. Clarify what it is that you need and want out of life, and what unique treasures you have to give to life. Connect with the various dimensions of yourself. The journey to this deep knowledge of self and connection to your inner most self requires nothing but curiosity and attention. You do not need to do anything in order to love yourself. You need only to be. Many of us try to do things so that we can love ourselves. This is to completely misunderstand what true self-love is. You do not need to earn your own love, only to realize it. Only to realize that you are it. Then all that you do you will do because you love yourself, not so that you can love yourself.

How do you practice Self-Love?

Self-Care is essentially self-love in action. It is the ‘doing’ part of self-love. Self-love is the creative force, the energy, from which you build your life. Once you have consciously opted into a life of loving devotion to yourself, have become reacquainted with your inner world, and chosen to accept yourself fully (arguably the most difficult part for any of us, but the most critical if we are to truly love ourselves), you will fully practice that love and fully enjoy the creative energy it produces in your life. There are 3 external manifestations of self-love that keep your life energy flowing without interruption.

Self-Care: Self-care means mindfully and consistently nurturing all aspects of your own wellbeing- spiritual, physical (where we tend to mainly focus our self-care), intellectual, relational, and emotional.

When you know and understand yourself, self-care becomes much easier and is nearly automatic. On the intrinsic level, self-care means healing your relationship with yourself. This looks like healing your wounded parts, speaking to and about yourself with compassion and respect, tuning in, asking, and giving yourself what you need, and fully embracing every part of yourself.

In the day-to-day of life, it looks like what you typically categorize as self-care: working out, eating right, getting enough sleep, and taking time to relax. But it’s also clarifying and setting boundaries, choosing loving relationships, doing fulfilling work, learning new things, questioning your beliefs, having fun, planning for your future, dealing with your struggles head-on, living intentionally, asking for help, and keeping your stress levels in check. It’s being responsible for yourself in all ways. It’s doing no harm to yourself, and protecting yourself from harm. It requires never abandoning your own needs and always being there for yourself.

The practice of self-care is as important for your relationship with others as it is for you. In taking adequate care of yourself, you are optimizing your ability to show up in a loving manner for everyone around you and beyond.

Care for others: Doing for other people is often believed to be separate from self-care and love. In fact, a common reason to promote the idea of self-love is to remind people that they need to care about themselves as much as they do others. The truth is, loving others is an act of self-love. You cannot be self-centered and fulfilled. It’s impossible. When you give to, help, or otherwise nurture the needs of other people, you are simultaneously nurturing yourself. What a beautiful arrangement, isn’t it? You will only feel depleted when caring for others if you are not keeping the balance of these 3 practices of self-love. Giving to others in a way that is not joyful and fulfilling is no longer serving anyone. True generosity is giving with a joyful spirit. This type of generosity is deeply self-nourishing, thus making it a critical component of self-love.

Receiving care from others: This is where most of can see evidence of a lack of self-love in ourselves. Even more difficult than prioritizing your self-care is allowing other people to take care of you. Yet, asking for what you need and allowing others to provide is a major act of self-love. When you truly love yourself, when you embody the awareness that you are love, you are able to receive love from others because you believe you are worthy of it. You are able to joyfully give and receive.

We bless both ourselves and others, since, as we already clarified, by receiving we enable others to thoroughly love themselves. Self-love helps you appreciate that allowing other people to take care of you benefits them as well as you. When you love yourself, you’ll be able to reach out for help more often. You will accept time, attention, gifts, compliments, and other generous acts from people. You will let people love you! Connect deeply enough with yourSelf to know you are worthy of the love others have to give.

I believe that self-love is a life creating energy that is generated through a deep, deliberate devotion to your soul’s path and wellbeing. Manifested through a deep inner connectivity, and lived through a regular conscious practice of giving and receiving love, self-love is the most worthwhile commitment one can make. The practice of self-love is the key to recovering wholeness, which is the key to transcendence.

Do you think this is an approach to self-love worth spreading? If so please share this post!

How do YOU approach self-love and self-care? What are your thoughts on this post? What would you add? Keep the conversation going with your comments and suggestions and inviting others to do the same. If you’d like to email me your thoughts I’d love to hear from you.