Travel Soul Therapy

Travel For Loving Yourself.

To the same degree that you're loving yourself, you experience fulfillment in life. With an attitude of using travel experience as a mode of inner transformation, you have a chance to explore this intimate relationship with yourself. 

To love is to wish someone to be happy. To begin loving yourself is impossible without encountering and befriending yourself right where you are. Travel by nature has a structure where you have explicit moments of self-containment to spend time in your own company. And this is a great opportunity inherent in travel - to initiate and deepen self-love, awaken desire for yourself to be genuinely happy.

Most people conditioned to associate self-loving with a feelings of approval they feel when they get desired results or when acknowledged by others. Many of these associations are imported from others: from our early caregivers, teachers, peers and broadcast commercials. Those primary sources in collaboration gave ground to a static ambiance of constantly measuring yourself through expectations. Generally it is a critical, judgmental mindset of disapproval punctuated by moments of relief earned through some kind of external approval. That is hardly freedom. 

With that mindset, the first thing that we search for is imperfection, a proof that "I need to improve", to do something more to reach expectations. And only then "I can be loving to myself". Self-approval based on conditions of external achievements results in a very rare occasions of self-love. It is not surprising that so many people are unhappy. They feel that they should earn their love, and therefore don't deserve it... yet. 

This is a trap of unhappiness: to keep looking for what is not fulfilled, not achieved, not done right. It is like a man in a poster who is looking out of a jail window, holding on to the bars. Except that he is standing in an open beautiful landscape firmly holding prison bars in front of himself. 

When you love yourself, you accept yourself just for who you are, unconditionally. Because you have a potential to live happy, loving yourself; with everything seen from a point of gratitude, as an opportunity for growth and development. With self-love you naturally develop a positive point of view, your world will begin to shift and you will begin to notice more positive things.

You will also notice that the universe you live in begins to appear more tolerant and loving toward you. The energy usually spent on suspicion and paranoia will be finding its way through creative expression of a heart desire.

3 Steps of loving yourself.

• Self-Acceptance. Remind yourself that whatever you focus on grows in dimension, volume and presence in your experience of life. Therefore decide to have an intention of approving of yourself, regardless of how you feel or what you do. Approve of yourself where you are and how you feel. When you disapprove, you generate more reasons to disapprove of yourself.  Always hold an intention for approval of yourself. Approving of yourself is not feeling superior or taking a choice from others. Even when accepting responsibility for your actions, self-acceptance allows you to learn from consequences and change.

• Self-Forgiveness. Judgments are the limiting frames of perception. Very often standards for deserving love are based on self-judgments. When judging is engaged, loving yourself is not available. Taking responsibility for one's less then perfect actions and change in behavior does not require self-judgment, while awareness is the most powerful agent of correction. 
  Self-judgments perpetuate conditions for them to be valid and block energy of loving. To begin loving yourself, dissolve judgments through the process of self-forgiveness.



• Self-Regard. As an immediate expression of loving yourself, self-regard is a shift to relating to yourself with positivity and approval of how you value your experience as a being. This includes taking a conscious relationship with yourself. As any relationship it implies nurturing, giving time, space and resources — nurturing your soul.
  
  From the outside it appears that your life flow becomes more steady, more consciously directed toward wholeness. Internally, there would be an increased awareness of instinctive impulses and reactions that you may choose to examine for their merit.

You can increase transformational power of travel with intention of loving yourself. Very often when traveling alone, there is an inherent opportunity to come face to face with your inner relationship. 
This potent possibility of self-examination and awareness may provide the insight, the energy for genuine change. Especially when travel is propelled by a deeper search for meaning or life events that disrupt our spiritual or emotional inertia. 
There is an opportunity to travel for healing, when you consciously deepen your self-acceptance, practice self-forgiveness, and shift to self-regard. Healing effect of travel with intention is bound to show up as the energy of loving yourself.

On the trip alone, freed from habitual ways of distracting or loosing yourself in superficial interaction with others, you will come to the crossroads of facing your authentic essence and awareness of conditions you might hold for self-loving.

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