First, let me dispel some myths about what it means to love yourself. Self love is not about being arrogant or egotistical. It is not about comparing yourself to others to determine if you are good enough. It is not about always putting yourself first at the expense of others. It is not about always getting your way. It is not about always winning. It is not about "only looking after number one".
"You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection." Siddhartha Gautama Buddha
Learning how to love yourself starts with knowing that you do have a choice. And it is up to you to consciously make the decision of loving yourself. The choice to make is clear: to love yourself unreservedly, without apology and in every way!
Your intention is to be happy, love yourself and lead a fulfilled life. By making the conscious decision, you are really saying that you want to come alive. You accept that you are responsible for the outcomes that you experience in your life and would like yourself to shine from living a full life.
1. Trust Yourself - Trust must be earned, and it can be done by anyone who wants to gain confidence in their strengths to achieve peace, happiness, wealth!
Many people believe that trust is not related to words like faith in yourself, belief in others. How do you think, can you believe in yourself if you do not trust? Can you trust another person if you do not believe in him? I do not think so. Can you trust your job to another person if he constantly thinks he will do it badly? Of course he will do it badly if you expect that. Your expectation will be justified, because everything we think materializes.
Trust is the result of sufficient awareness, sufficient quantity and quality of endorsements from past experience and courage. In order to fully trust ourselves, we must trust, by fulfilling our previously ordered or other promises, or constantly justified expectations.
If you do not lie and you are not mistaken, there is no reason to doubt yourself.
2. Forgive Yourself - To forgive yourself, doesn't mean to forget or to justify your actions, but to realize that you are a human being - and such as everyone you make mistakes. And mistakes make sense. They are our teachers and help us grow.
There is a big difference between guilt and responsibility. The guilt is related to the feeling "I am bad". When we feel guilty, we are self-pity, we experience anger, hatred, fear. Feeling guilty, we become sacrifices - we are self-defeating, rejecting without doing anything without finding the lesson. When we feel guilty we often try to transfer it to others. We are focused on condemnation.
- Responsibility is awareness of the error and taking appropriate action. We are focused on the reception and the moment here and now.
Think what this error teaches you? What you can do from here on, will you apologize to the person you hurt, whether you can fix to a certain extent what you've done ...
The things that have happened are already in the past. The important thing is what you will do now!
What can you do?
“To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.” Lewis B. Smedes quotes
3. Grow Spiritually - I want to share with you, thoughts about how we can achieve such changes in our lives that would endure the test under all circumstances. Is this possible? Yes, it is. You are capable of becoming such a person as you strive to be. There are three steps that, in my conviction, will help you move forward, grow spiritually, accept everything that is going on positively, and draw lessons from everything you have to face.
Remember the three steps:
1. Change because you want it, not because it HAS TO.
2. Accept your human nature.
3. Start to look at all people and circumstances as your own teachers.
4. Learn To See Beauty - What is beauty? Where can we find her? The answer is, a beauty is everywhere around us and if we have eyes for it we can notice it even in the most insignificant things. We can find it in the sunrise and sunset, we can see it in the smile of the people who walk in the street - in the children's laught, we can feel it in the song of the birds and in the sun that strokes us with their rays , we can even find it in the wind, we can find it in the fragrance of a flower, we can perceive it in a picture, beauty can be in the noble act in love. Because beauty can be perceived by touch, hearing, smell, sight, but it is also a sensation that only senses the heart and the soul. Beauty is in our souls and our hearts. Notice everything. Feel everything.
5. Acknowledge Your Effort - Pause today and notice something you have worked hard on and recognize yourself for it. Take the time to acknowledge and celebrate YOUR EFFORTS.
We can not love ourselves without rejecting everything that has hurt us and limited us. If we start to love ourselves more than we do now, it means to put an end to the destructive relationships and situations, to change the harmful habits, to start treating ourselves in a different way. That's why it's not easy to love myself.
The most important thing, however, is that with our current thinking, we can not imagine anything fundamentally different from our present reality. When we become different steps and feel differently, we can really realize the difference between our old and new state.
“I am Me. In all the world, there is no one else exactly like me. Everything that comes out of me is authentically mine, because I alone chose it — I own everything about me: my body, my feelings, my mouth, my voice, all my actions, whether they be to others or myself. I own my fantasies, my dreams, my hopes, my fears. I own my triumphs and successes, all my failures and mistakes.
Because I own all of me, I can become intimately acquainted with me. By so doing, I can love me and be friendly with all my parts. I know there are aspects about myself that puzzle me, and other aspects that I do not know — but as long as I am friendly and loving to myself, I can courageously and hopefully look for solutions to the puzzles and ways to find out more about me.
However I look and sound, whatever I say and do, and whatever I think and feel at a given moment in time is authentically me. If later some parts of how I looked, sounded, thought, and felt turn out to be unfitting, I can discard that which is unfitting, keep the rest, and invent something new for that which I discarded. I can see, hear, feel, think, say, and do. I have the tools to survive, to be close to others, to be productive, and to make sense and order out of the world of people and things outside of me.
I own me, and therefore, I can engineer me. I am me, and I am Okay.” Virginia Satir quotes (American Psychologist and Educator, 1916-1988)