Self love is the best gift we can give to ourselves. Loving yourself has nothing to do with being egoistic and arrogant. In contrary, self-love opens your eyes to what you have and can offer to the world. When you love and respect yourself, you are creating a place of peace and comfort for your soul, a refuge, a sanctuary that is placed within.
When you make a mistake, know that life is about learning lessons and encourage yourself to not forget the lesson you learned from the mistake instead of blaming yourself and feeling awful about it. When you look at yourself in the mirror and feel you don’t like what you see, remember you are the only version of you and you are unique and that beauty is a man-made definition and relative. Remember you are enough and have everything to be the best version of you.
Louise Hay, http://bit.ly/1WatYPe, an international bestseller and a metaphysical lecturer and teacher with more than 50 million books sold worldwide, encourages us to love and accept every inch of our bodies. She reminds us that we used to do that as babies but somewhat along the line we listened to others who told us we were not good enough. She suggests to drop all the judgment and nonsense and get back to accepting and loving ourselves totally as we are. She warns us that “The subconscious mind has no sense of humor and does not know false from true and It only accepts what we say and what we think as the material from which it builds.”
When you blame yourself or see yourself with flaws or can’t accept something about yourself, it’s a sign that deep down, you don’t love and trust yourself. And if you don’t love yourself, you’ll never feel completely at peace with yourself and the world around you. You’ll always find something to complain about, and the people in your life will always seem to be less than perfect, because you think you’re less than perfect and you project that feeling into others around you. As a matter of fact, you will constantly attract imperfect people and situations towards you only because like attracts like.
Also, Unless you can learn to love yourself, and accept yourself and your feelings, you’ll never be able to be fully loved by anyone else, either. That is a fact! Deepak Chopra, MD, http://bit.ly/1TdG4EM, the author of more than 75 books, including 22 New York Times best-sellers such as Super Brain, explains that you should be able to feel love worthy and easily acceptable in order to love yourself and others unconditionally. Chopra proposes a multilevel process to do that:
Beginning: You first see yourself as wanting and needing love. You feel insecure about being lovable.
Middle: You aspire to a higher kind of love, ego and neediness begin to count for much less. You start to feel that love is a healing force that binds everyone. You are now able to love someone without needing anything from him or her. Your awareness expands, and you feel less insecure.
End: And finally when all limitations all left behind, love becomes unconditional. This is when you have tapped into a universal aspect of being. No longer you have a personal stake in the people you love including yourself.
So how can we gain this unconditional self love?
By practicing the following steps we can help turn self judgement to self acceptance and respect:
- Make contact with your inner strength.
- Honestly face your inner obstacles and resistance.
- Deal with old wounds and bad memories.
- Forgive your past.
- Form relationships where you feel loved and appreciated.
- Practice the kind of love you aspire and receive.
You should not wait to be loved by someone else to feel better about yourself but rather be that someone yourself! The more you live your ideal love, the more your love towards yourself will attract the kind of love you want from others to you. Self-love is the foundation for all healthy relationships, success with work and personal well-being.
Remember you are born to be loved and to love. You are unique and perfectly capable to create and live the kind of love life you desire starting from loving yourself unconditionally. So, be forgiving, kind, encouraging, helpful, passionate to your own self.
The Center for Youth Leadership 