I've been on a journey for the last couple years learning about self-love. Self-love is one of the most important things you can ever have, because you will never be able to truly love someone else until you learn to truly love yourself.



The reason this is true, is because until you learn to truly love yourself there will always be a wall up around you. There will always be something the prevents you from giving yourself freely to someone else.

A lot of us give of ourselves freely to our animals. Some of us become crazy cat people, while others become crazy dog people. A lot of us can give freely of ourselves to our children.

Many of us have trouble giving freely of ourselves to another adult of the opposite sex, however, because we are so caught up in protecting our emotions. Until you are able to give yourself freely to somebody, though, you will never experience love.

You actually may be able to experience some depth of love, but you'll never experience powerful love. We all deserve to experience powerful love.

The personal journey of self-love I've been on has been unbelievable. What is most unbelievable about it, however, is that it all stemmed from a “Brady Bunch Greg Brady falling off my surfboard in Hawaii” moment.

I think there is an actual mark on the surfboard showing where I fell. I was truly channeling Greg Brady and his Hawaiian surfing episode: I went down in the reef, I had the tiki idol necklace around my neck, Marsha and Cindy were yelling from the beach .. . Ok, maybe not that last part. In all seriousness, though, something did happen to me in Hawaii.

Hawaii is a very spiritual place. When I was surfing in Hawaii this past summer staring at a waterfall, I noticed that if you lined up the surfboard correctly you'd be surfing directly into the waterfall and the mountains.

There is a lot of energy in Hawaii, both spiritual and emotional energy. For reasons unknown, although probably because I was trying to show off to people on the beach, I decided while surfing to jump off my board into the shallow water .. . and ever since that day my hip has been aching.

Once I went deeper into it, I realized that I was on an emotional journey to have and experience the most incredible love I ever wanted: the love of myself. I realized that until I was able to do that, I would not be able to meet and experience someone amazing.

The “I Want More” blog I wrote was all about the feelings and emotions you have for someone that are so amazing that you just constantly desire more. A man named Joe (Mr. “DarkEnergy” himself in fact) posted a comment to that blog asking me how you can tell the difference between the feeling I described in the blog and a simple “crush.”

My answer to Joe was that you want to have a crush .. . just a crush that lasts forever. That's the magic of love. The magic of love is having a crush that lasts forever and ever, but also knowing and being able to do the necessary work to nurture that relationship to allow it to go the distance.

I want a crush that lasts forever. I want to look at someone and always think they're the most beautiful person in the world. I want every kiss to be magical.

The only way to make that happen and to make a crush last forever, though, is to be totally conscious about the other person. You need to find someone who is effortless to be with and with whom doing the right this is easy.

The only way to make a relationship like this last is to have both of you want to make it last. You both must recognize the gifts. You both also must recognize your relationship to be comprised of two souls which connect on a deep level. Most importantly, you must have done enough work on yourself to realize that such a connection doesn't happen every single day.

You may still have more work to do on yourself, but we all need to be working on ourselves every day. If you do and you have already found a crush, the great thing is that you have the other person to support you, accept you and embrace you for everything you are working on about yourself.

Granted, every relationship has a honeymoon phase, but I've seen couples who are still “ga-ga” about each other after seven or eight years. They may no longer be having sex seven days a week, but when they make love it's still absolutely amazing. It is still so amazing because they are still making love to someone on whom they have a crush, someone with whom they've created a level of comfort where they know each other on every level and have given every part of themselves to each other.

So all of you should be looking to have a crush on someone, the kind of crush that lasts forever. The only way to make a crush last forever, though, is to first have a crush on yourself. Start getting a kick out of yourself. Start enjoying yourself.

More importantly, get on the same page as someone else's soul, and let your souls connect. When two souls are connecting, you are going to have a crush .. . and a crush far greater than the kind you had at age sixteen.

Over the age of thirty, you truly know that when you find this it is a gift being presented to you that doesn't happen every day. You are emotionally mature enough to embrace it and have fun with it.

For all of you who don't believe in the magic of a crush, you are missing out on something. For those of you who still want to find someone on whom you have this “forever” kind of a crush, the only way to start is to first have a crush on yourself. Remember that nobody can have a crush on you unless you love yourself.