Hi dear one 🙂
One of the most frequently asked questions in my world is "How do I start loving myself?"
This one quest - the quest to find love in your relationship with yourself - is the purpose of this life in my opinion. I truly believe that everything leading up to you finding that loving relationship with yourself is one portion of your life, and that everything that comes after finding love for yourself is you being on purpose.
I fully believe that in order to live your greatest potential you must love yourself.
Now, I know this may seem daunting, and it may even seem like a really extreme opinion.
However it does stand to reason that the less you are in conflict within yourself (and any level of not accepting yourself causes internal conflict) the clearer you will be in your actions, thoughts, words, and so forth in life. I also believe that your capacity to really love others, and to really accept love from others hinges on your ability to love yourself.
This is a really big deal.
So, if you are ready to get serious about re-learning to love yourself (because you were born loving yourself, you have just forgotten for a bit) then here are my top five strategies to get you started.
(This post got really long, so I am splitting it into two parts 🙂
1. Identify What You Love About Others, And See Those Things Within Yourself:
Your conscious mind can only perceive so much at once. If you were to actually become aware of everything that was going on around you and within you at any given moment you would be totally and completely overrun with stimulus. Lucky for you, your conscious mind has a way of filtering out a large portion of of data and leaves you picking up on only the things that really matter to you and your survival.
Essentially you can only perceive the things that have something to do with you, your survival or your interests, at any given moment.
This does not make you self centred, this makes you human 🙂 You are here on a self discovery mission, so it makes sense that most of what you perceive in any given moment pertains to you on some level. When you are picking up on characteristics that you love in another you are actually sensing a characteristic that you share with that person, or a characteristic that you have the ability to develop within yourself. Pretty cool huh?
That is why taking the time to sit down with a pen and paper to do the exercise below is so effective for starting to love yourself. What you see in others you posses within yourself.
What you love about others is essentially what you love about you.
A) Start by choosing 1-3 people that you really love and admire.
B) On a piece of paper, write down 10 things you love and admire about them. Ie - she is a wonderful mother, she is successful in her business, he is so fit!
C) Take the ten items on your list, and distill them down to the characteristic this person/people possess that give them the ability to demonstrate the item on your list. Ie - She is patient and loving (making her a good mother) She is driven and knows what she wants (thus making her business successful) He is passionate about caring for himself (thus he is fit).
D) Now take all of those characteristics, and begin to personally identify with them. Can you think of examples of when you were loving and patient? Can you remember the last time you were driven and knew what you wanted and went after it? Do you remember caring for yourself? If you are having a hard time placing these characteristics on yourself, don't worry. It takes time sometimes.
E) Keep this list and carry it around with you. Start to look for times when you embody these characteristics in your life. Start to 'catch yourself in the act' of being someone you love. The more you do this, the easier it will be, and the clearer you will start to see these things in yourself.
2. Add Play Time To Your Life:
You must play. Think of it this way, if you had a small child under your care and you never allowed them to do anything they enjoyed doing - but instead made them do chores, do their school work, read books that were educational, eat food that was good for them but that they hated, and sleep - they most likely would not feel very loved by you. They would most likely feel deprived and sad.
If you do this to yourself, you will wind up feeling just like the child would.
If you have organized your life so that there is little to no playtime - no times where you are doing things purely because you enjoy them - you are most likely showing yourself on a day to day basis that you do not love you. By adding in play time you are energetically sending yourself a message that you deserve joy for the sake of joy. That you deserve pleasure for the sake of pleasure. This is an incredibly loving act.
The more you practice this, the more you will develop other self loving habits. The tight grip of discipline and self punishment that you may have around yourself will start to loosen.
Start small if this is challenging for you. Pick one activity that you like - that is NOT self development of some kind like reading self help or spiritual literature, exercising, or is productive on some level - and set aside at least 15 minutes 3 times a week to engage. Then build from there.
Tomorrow we will go over the final 3 things you can do to start cultivating self love.
See you tomorrow beauty!
