I have had a scarcity mindset around my body for a lot of time. My impossible goal is to love my body unconditionally by the end of 2021. So today I went back to the basics and I found myself thinking, why do I care at all about my body, how it looks, and how it changes as a response to food and exercise?

The answer is because I want to look good. And why that? Why do people want to look good? My answer is because we have a sense of self, we have mirrors, we are social animals, so all in all we want to look good because we want to be liked. And why that? Because being liked makes it easier to access thoughts that create feelings of appreciation, love, and connection.

For sure you will tell me that you are either a person who A) wants to look good or better but you are appreciative for how you already look, or B) you think you don’t look good enough to deserve your and other people’s love.

But I would say that in both cases you are eliciting emotions of self-love that are conditioned by the presence of others. So it is by definition a form of conditioned love. I am sure we both agree this is not a problem, nor wrong is just how we grow and live in this world. However, I am confused about how much is this still limiting me in my goal of loving my body unconditionally.

Given that none of us have a zero unconditioned self-love, we all have some unconditioned self-love otherwise we wouldn’t be alive probably, and given that on top of it we all enjoy the pleasure of this love conditioned by people liking us, then I am now having a hard time drawing a line between the set of limiting thoughts and behaviors I have and the thoughts and behaviors I want to move towards. Some suggestions? Appreciated, thanks!