I enjoyed an unforgettable birthday this past month.

I was having a conversation with my BFF from college (yes, COLLEGE) who was visiting me in celebration of both of our birthdays . . . or birth-daze, as I started affectionately calling them. Jodi and I have been through darn-near everything together through the years.

As we were talking, she showed me some photos of her beautiful niece. One of the photos was of her as a baby landing a big-ole’ sloppy wet kiss on her own image in the mirror. All of this with the unabashed zeal of a 3-something-year-old.

It occurred to me that in almost every family photo album I’ve ever looked through, there’s at least one photo of a kid kissing themselves in the mirror. This isn’t an isolated event. This is something that I’ve seen again and again.

Of course that set me to thinking about that amazing dividing line that we cross in our developmental lives – both literally and metaphorically. We go from this unconditional love that is so strong, so curious, and so non-judgmental that we actually love ourselves so much that we’ll kiss ourselves in the mirror! How many of us can come close to even looking in the mirror (as adults), making eye contact and saying out loud: “I love you!”

Raise your hand if you can do that without squirming or feeling way-craaa-zy.

And yet, this is a key element to our growth as individuals; our ability to love ourselves unconditionally, because guess what? If we can’t love ourselves unconditionally, there’s just no way we can extend that kind of love to another person, period. Whether that other person is an intimate partner, family member, or even our children.

So yes, what you don’t know CAN hurt you.

That’s another reason I’m so passionate about sharing the little ole’ tool of Numerology. Because it’s just one way that you can find a way to reveal some of the stuff that is standing in your way of embracing the real, honest, amazing you.

NUMEROLOGY TIP FOR THE WEEK: HOW TO LOVE YOURSELF

Here’s a Life Path-specific tip for you.

Remember how to calculate your Life Path number.

Take your full date of birth and add it together like this:

Example: August 14, 1963

8/14/1963

8+1+4+1+9+6+3= 32

Keep adding until you get a 1-digit number

32 = 3+2 = 5

If this were your birth date, you’d be a 5 Life Path

1 Life Path: You’re all about #1 and truly march to the beat of a different drummer (to use the cliche!). Your barriers to self-love? Lack of self-confidence. How to break through? Use positive affirmations in order to get that endless “tape” of self-deprecation out of your head. The 1 seriously has that “Devil on your shoulder” whispering – rather than “sweet nothings” it’s whispering “hostile nothings” into your ear. Focus on your unique talents and build a new inner dialogue with positive affirmations. Your end-of-the-summer homework: Check out Louise Hay, the utmost expert on empowering and positive affirmations.

2 Life Path: You’re all about serving the needs of others to the point of leaving yourself way, way behind. Your barriers to self-love? Lack of emotional boundaries. How to break through? Begin to learn your triggers when you’re over-giving to the point of withdrawal and resentment. Reconsider your level of giving to others. Chances are you’re giving way too much (and, shock of all shockers!) often the people you’re giving to don’t even want what it is you’re giving! A good end-of-the-summer read for you? Energetic Boundaries by Cyndi Dale.

3 Life Path: You’re all about communication and creative self expression. Your barriers to self-love? Questioning your inner voice so that you over-ride your intuition with “shoulds,” “duty,” or “what-if’s” so much that you aren’t true to yourself. How to break though? Know that you don’t need justification for your decisions. Often – because you have such an open heart – you attract takers into your life. Then you somehow feel responsible for them. Your key: HOW DO YOU FEEL? Do you feel good before, during, and after you interact with a certain person? If not, love and respect yourself enough to move away from those who don’t add to your life and instead move toward people and experiences who feed you, not the ones who hold you hostage.

4 Life Path: You’re all about security, process, and stability. Your barriers to self-love? Sometimes you want security so badly that you’re the last one out the “take a risk” door! You can become rigid in your routines and your thinking, so much so that it impedes your ability to open up and live a little! Or you can be the anti-4 and be such a ramblin’ guy or gal that you feel as though life is slipping through your hands. How to break through? Open yourself up to new ideas and new experiences. Step outside your box just once a week – ever-so slightly. Try a different restaurant than the old standby. Buy yourself a sexy piece of clothing. Stretch your personal limits. You get the idea.

5 Life Path: You’re all about freedom through self discipline. Your barriers to self-love? “Don’t fence me in” is your mantra. Sometimes you’re moving so fast and so hard that you don’t take the time to focus on who you really are and what you really want, which stands in the way of truly connecting with yourself. How to break through? Your biggest obstacle is to reign it in and focus on a steadier route to what you want in your life – whether that’s a committed relationship, a career you love, or a diet plan that works. The 5 must connect more with focusing all that sensuous and freedom-seeking energy into a structure that supports it’s intensity and success rather than throwing it all around – willy-nilly – without focus or purpose. Embrace the wild’n’crazy compromise that gets you to the place you really, truly want to be.

6 Life Path: You’re all about nurturing, responsibility, and you’re a visionary. Your barriers to self-love? Perfectionism. You expect so much out of yourself that even when you’re lingering in the top two percentile of … well, of everything – it’s just not bleeping enough for you! How to break though? Do this experiment: For one entire week, focus on taking the word “should” (or the derivative, “shouldn’t) out of your vocabulary. Even your inner dialogue. Every time you say it or think it, simply notice it and move on. If you master this after a week, go for week two. Write down how you feel at the end of each week. Do you feel more empowered? Do you feel more forgiving, of yourself and others? Do you feel acceptance of your amazing self and also of those who you have been pretty hard on in the past (for how they “should” be behaving?). If this works for you, drop me an email. I’d love to hear about your experience. 🙂

7 Life Path: You’re the spiritual seeker; always seeking the Truth. Your barriers to self-love? You have a difficult challenge with learning to trust and with being open to yourself and to the world. There’s a part of you that is always under lock-and-key. How to break through? When you can truly connect with your authentic sense of yourself through spirituality – however you personally define that – your road to self-love will begin to be paved. It’s when you’re in denial about higher purpose and your connection to something on a higher plane when you become frustrated and have a tendency for superficiality, martyrdom, and not treating yourself as you deserve to be treated.

8 Life Path: You’re all about developing your personal power and financial abundance. Your barriers to self-love? Either you can be way too hard-driving and work oriented to make time for yourself, or you can be the ultimate victim of “fate” or circumstances. How to break though? Let’s face it. You’re opinionated and can be controlling. Your inner critic is pretty vocal as well! Your key to self-love resides in taking some breaks (some good laugh-breaks are particularly good for you as well as dance-breaks!). A biggie? Acknowledge some of those big emotional wounds you might have from childhood or from other aspects of your life and make a real, concerted effort to embrace what they taught you, forgive the unforgivable, and move forward without all that residue. You, of all people, can do it.

9 Life Path: You’re all about creativity and humanitarian work. Your barriers to self-love? Deep feelings of unworthiness and, oftentimes, acting as though you’re a “rebel without a cause.” How to break through? You’re so dynamic, so giving, so creative. Yet this lifetime is set up where you might feel as though you receive limited rewards for all your efforts. Your key to self-love resides in keying into a true sense of living in the present moment. For you, letting go is a constant and consistent theme and why not do it with grace, good humor, and wisdom? Some great end-of-summer reads for you: The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle or The Dalai Lama’s Book of Wisdom by the Dalai Lama.

Yet, no matter what Life Path number you are, isn’t it about time to kiss the mirror?