I have been asked three times last week about finding self love. I always take note when things come in three’s so here is some tips on how to find self love.
Now I don’t think I am an expert in the sustainability of self love. I personally believe self love is like the love we feel for another human being. Sometime we can feel irritated, frustrated, annoyed and disappointed in another human or ourselves. True love, the love without ego, allows us to forgive whilst reflecting upon where our own feelings are coming from. This form of ego free love is known as unconditional love and it is a tough one to sustain. So firstly don’t buy into the misconception that self love will make you void of all inward negative thinking. You are likely to still feel negative thoughts towards yourself. It’s about becoming mindful of those thoughts and turning them around quickly. This doesn’t mean feeding yourself a lie about your feeling about yourself or something you have done. It’s about self expectance. It’s about being the witness to all your demons. We all have a shadow side, ignoring it doesn’t make it go away. When we turn to face our shadow with love and acceptance we have poured light into a dark place. When we fully know that side of ourselves we don’t have to act upon it. Personally I find a good deal of humour really allows me to bring forward myself love. My negative mental meanderings are really very funny when you take the power out of them by taking away the meaning. So you might think you’re an idiot over a decision that you made, and give it much bigger meaning than it has. In that you also give it more power. You might think that decision is going to mean you lose your job, or something bad is going to happen. Only to find in the future what you feared had the best result. If you are spending time beating yourself up you might just miss the positive result. Often when we think we need to stay angry with ourselves or another person we don’t progress to positive times in our life so we can stay angry. A positive outcome takes away the finger pointing anger. It’s amazing how lack of self empathy and love can hold us prisoner in a paradigm of our own pain.
So here are some tips on how to ‘grow your own’ self love.
- Ok so you think you’re an idiot, you don’t make good decisions, you’re too fat too thin, your nose is…odd, whatever. Welcome to the human race. You know when you think back on the people you have loved, I bet what you remember is the quirks they had, not their perfection. Life is all about being a learning ground for your soul and enlighten and if you got it right all the time, you might just ‘pop’ off the psychical world. Be kind to yourself.
- Enlighten up! Don’t take yourself too seriously, or anything you do which is important. There is nothing more important than bringing love into everything you do. If you’re stressed in your life the chances are you’re not able to come from the best of yourself. Stress is often a signal of a person who isn’t self loving, they think they have to do so much just to be worthy in the world, or make something loveable about themselves. Your lovable even when you’re just breathing!
- Forgive yourself of everything you have ever done on the assault course that is life. If you can’t forgive yourself make immense in some other way in a different place. Let it go, draw a line, learn and keep loving.
- Forgive others; people rewrite their story and their life as they go again. Rewrite yours and create something better than the thing you can’t let go of. Staying angry only holds you back and no one else.
- Make note of all the positive things you do, but know that doing them doesn’t make you who you are. It’s living with an open or closed heart that makes you who you are. All actions taken from a closed heart fall flat at some point. Only those made with the eyes closed and heart open lead to what we all seek, real love.
- Be a positive spin doctor in your own mind. If you think a negative thought, look at it, take some humour from it, but turn it into a better thought.
- Pay attention to what you need. Often when we are busy the things we need get lost as we chance the things we want. This takes us to a tipping point and we then become the kind of people we don’t like. Never sacrifice your needs for another person, take time to nurture your soul, speak up and learn to say no and take care of yourself first are the basics.
Finally know that self esteem is different to self love. Self esteem or confidence can be faced and knocked by someone else. Self faith is a vital component to self love and when you have them both the world becomes rich and fulfilling, relationships find you and people treat you with much more love and respect.
