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Self-love is in vogue but what is self-love anyway?
Is it telling yourself how much you love yourself? Is it carving out time to take care of your emotional and spiritual needs? Is it doing the things you like to do?
Yes, to all of the above, but self-love goes so much deeper.
Loving yourself more doesn’t mean indulging more. What self-love really means is the deepest level of self-acceptance and self-appreciation.
And to accept and appreciate yourself, there are a few things you should stop doing and a few things you should start doing.
Nonetheless, I don’t mean this in a “you have to be a certain way to love yourself” way.
The following points are practices you can engage in to remove the blocks to loving yourself right now, just as you are.
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” ― Rumi
Talk to Yourself like You Would to Someone Who You Dearly Love
It’s crazy how some people talk to and about themselves.
They make jokes at the expense of themselves, they argue for their limitations, they blame themselves for every little mistake, they kill every idea with doubts.
Now, if you do any of the above, ask yourself if you would talk that way to a friend. And if you would, is that person going to be your friend for much longer?
Or if someone talked to you the way you talk to yourself, would you spend more time with this person? You can answer those questions for yourself.
I understand that if you have practiced negative self-talk for some time that it’s difficult to break that habit.
The first step is to become aware of your inner dialogue or let’s call it inner nonsense.
You don’t have to force yourself to think only positive thoughts as this creates resistance, which just empowers the inner nonsense.
When you become aware of inner nonsense, just acknowledge it and let it go.
You can say to yourself: “I see you, but that’s not true, I am…” and then restate the negative thought into a positive one.
Put Yourself and Your Happiness First
Many people try to please others before they please themselves.
This is a recipe for disaster. It’s true that there is great value in being in service to others, but before you can truly serve others you have to serve yourself first.
If serving others makes you happy, great go ahead! But if you feel like you have to serve others, and secretly resent it, you are overlooking something.
Tend to yourself and your emotions. Make a decision to put your happiness first and you will see that you automatically uplift and serve others.
When you are happy, you want others to be happy. Sometimes the only thing that’s missing for happiness is the recognition that you deserve to be unconditionally happy; it’s your birthright.
Happiness is a choice; let it be your most important choice.
Do Things for Others
Now that we have putting yourself first out of the way, doing things for others is next. This sounds like a contradiction to the previous point and perhaps to some degree it is.
Putting yourself first and then doing things for others is a more satisfying way to go about service.
Yet, for many, this seems like a lot of inner work before you can ever do something good for others.
Hence, consciously deciding to do something for others despite not being fully aligned with your inner being can be a powerful practice.
Self-love can emerge from a genuine love for other people.
When you respect and love others and the human race as a whole, respecting and loving yourself more is the natural consequence as you are also part of the human race.
In that sense, serving others is serving yourself and you might just see that when you help fulfill the desires of others that your desires are automatically fulfilled as well.
Forgive Yourself (and Others)
Another important aspect of self-love is forgiving yourself for past errors and mistakes.
Feelings of blame and guilt are among the most destructive emotions for your mental and physical health and are the breeding ground for many illnesses.
Forgiving others is as important as forgiving yourself, and really it’s just forgiving yourself as well.
Holding a grudge against someone doesn’t hurt the other person, it hurts yourself. It’s like picking up glowing coals to throw at someone; you get burned.
You can forgive yourself and others by recognizing that every past mistake seemed like a good idea at that time and that everyone does in each moment what they think is best.
Deep down we are innocent as all our errors and mistakes are made from a place of ignorance, unawareness, and naiveté.
Also, realize that blaming yourself and others has no positive effect at all. We can’t force ourselves or others to change through emotional blackmail.
Stop the Judgment
After you have forgiven, make sure to no longer have any reasons to forgive yourself.
This means not judging yourself.
Again, in the beginning, this seems difficult as you have been conditioned for judging yourself, others, and the world around you.
But with each judgment you are aware of, judgment gets less and less.
Also, be aware that every judgment of others is really just self-judgment. You are judging a part in someone else you can’t accept inside yourself.
Every behavior in others that strongly triggers you, represents a shadow aspect of yourself you have not yet owned.
Become aware of all the judgment in your life. Every time you recognize you can say something like: “There you are your honor, what a pleasure to have you here.”
This will take the seriousness out of it and soon you’ll have to laugh about it. And eventually, judgments will start to disappear.
Feel Your Emotions
You can’t love yourself more if you’re not in touch with your emotions.
To really come to a place of self-love, meaning self-acceptance and appreciation, you have to allow yourself to feel your emotions.
The two things that overshadow love and happiness are
1. Suppressed and repressed negative emotions
2. Resistance to positive emotions
When you allow yourself to feel your negative emotions it’s like slowly releasing pressure from a steam cooker that has been building up for a long time. Tension disappears and a feeling of lightness washes over you.
Feeling your emotions doesn’t mean thinking about them, neither does it mean indulging in them nor does it mean expressing them and dumping them on others.
It means to let them be as they are and observe them (i.e., the sensations that accompany them) without trying to change them in any way.
This is the basis of letting go, which will gradually free yourself from negative emotions and increase your positive emotions.
Do Things that Make You Feel Good
This ties in with the previous point to put your happiness first.
So many of us just do things we think we have to do, things other people expect us to do, or things that have an ulterior motive.
Loving yourself involves doing things that make you feel good while doing them, not just because they lead to a certain outcome.
Doing something because you like to do it will not just make you happier and but will also improve the quality of your action.
And this in turn leads to self-appreciation and appreciation of the thing you are doing.
Ask yourself what makes you happy and do more of that. This might be reading, painting, cooking, petting the cat, whatever it is, make it a priority.
And although the things you like doing might not seem like a viable career choice in the beginning, following your bliss is a straight path to success, fulfillment, and abundance.
Leave Your Comfort Zone
Leaving your comfort zone is powerful to self-love because it increases self-respect and self-appreciation.
Doing things that make you grow is a very empowering experience because you’ll recognize that there is no challenge or problem you can’t overcome.
Regularly leaving your comfort zone will also greatly enrich your life experience.
Outside of your comfort zone, you’ll regularly encounter interesting people, opportunities, and experiences you otherwise would have not had.
Many people lack self-love because they feel stuck in life, and they often feel stuck not only because they avoid their inner life but also because they don’t try anything new.
For starters, leaving your comfort zone doesn’t have to be as big as moving across the world.
It may be going to a place in town you haven’t been to or trying out a new sport.
Whatever it is, make sure it’s outside of your comfort.
You’ll know you are outside your comfort zone by feeling a little (sometimes even a lot) uncomfortable or weird. Befriend that feeling. Turn it into a trigger for reminding you that you are growing.
You will see that expanding your comfort zone will greatly increase your self-love.
Do Less Be More
This point is perhaps one of the most important ones.
The majority of our actions are fueled by negative emotions like anxiety, pressure, and the need to validate ourselves.
The reason is that we live in an action-oriented society where much emphasis is put on doing and achieving things.
With all this hustle and bustle it’s easy to forget that we are be-ings, not do-ings.
And when all your doing is just a way to avoid your inner world, this becomes a real problem. For many, the result is workaholism and eventually burnout.
But when you embrace being a little more, the clarity you’ll gain enables you to do just the right things. Not too much, not too little.
When you learn to accept and embrace each moment with stillness and awareness, life and you will transform.
Self-love and for that matter, love for all life will then happen by itself.
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“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.” — Buddha
Luka
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THANK YOU – VERY WELL ANALYSIS
Thank you for your nice words!
Beautiful. Thank YOU.
I’m glad you liked it, Maria.