What Is Self-love and How Do I Achieve It?

Currently, there seems to be a large mystery regarding what self-love is.  Most people try to compare the love feelings they have for others to the feelings they have about themselves and repeatedly come up short.  That is because self-love is mostly about “action” and not about gooey, warm feelings.  However, I’m not discounting that through appropriate action, you may very well begin to feel a loving, tenderness toward yourself. 

The “actions” associated with self-love are as follows:

Self-love is having compassion for oneself.  It’s about understanding the innocence behind our not-so-flattering behaviors and then being willing to forgive ourselves for making poor decisions for not having the confidence to act in a powerful way at that moment.

Self-love is about protection.  Not protection in the “armor our heart” kind of way, but in the way that we would protect those we love. It’s about being aware enough and confidence enough to refrain from putting ourselves in situation where we may receive bodily harm and/or emotional abuse.

Self-love is kindness.  It’s being as gentle with yourself as you are with the rest of the world.  It’s about honoring your soul on the same level that you honor your beloveds.  You are not different or deserving of any less treatment than anyone else in this world.  We are all created equal.

Self-love is standing up for yourself.  It’s about understanding your worth wholly and completely.  It is offering appropriate communication and boundaries when necessary to keep the “testers” in our lives in line.

Self-love is nourishing your soul with positive self-talk and actions.  It is about taking removing all demeaning, judgmental and harsh language we speak to self and replacing them with loving, supportive statements.  With this, we fill our own cup and when we fill our own cup we stop seeking outside ourselves in hopes that another will fill it for us. 

Self-love is personal dignity and respect.  When we honor and respect ourselves, others in turn will honor and respect us.  The respect and honor we give to self, is in direct proportion to the permission we give others how to treat us.

Self-love is learning to tap into the courage that has been lying in wait for far too long!  Courage that has the capacity to move us into our best life ever!  Courage we muster up when we know that our best life waits on the other side of our greatest fears and to achieve this, we must go get it!

Self-love has a remarkable way of making us more attractive to others.  It gives us license to personify our souls which gives others the opportunity to see us as we truly are.  Our authenticity in turn helps to build trust, confidence and intimate relationships. With self-love, our life begins to fall into place.  We suffer less.  We are more joyful and passionate. We respond to people from a higher vibrational energy.  Our egos deflate and we become better lovers, mothers, friends, siblings and co-workers. 

Choosing self-love is about finally saying ENOUGH to our doormat tendencies of yesterday and saying YES to a wonderful new life brimming with delicious new opportunities and amazing new people! 

Self-love is the Great Miracle Cure!

When Someone Repeatedly Hurts Us

“When someone does something to hurt us over and over again, and we allow it, we are actually hurting ourselves.”  Byron Katie

  When someone hurts us repeatedly, the first thing we tend to do is blame the other person.  We gather our crew of supporters around us and we stand in our justification of our anger or pain.  All the while pointing the finger to him/her and how they need to change.  There is an old saying, “One time, shame on you, two times, shame on me.”  Once we state to the “offender” what they have done, it is then up to them to change their behavior, but only if he/she wants to.  If they decide not to, we then jump into the cyclical behavior of Pain and Blame.  Why won’t he/she stop doing that?!  What’s the matter with him/her?!  He/she must not love me enough!

Is it truly that he/she doesn’t love you enough or is it simply that you do not love you enough?  If a behavior continues with someone else, only WE have the control whether we change or not.  We cannot ever change someone else.  At this point, we must decide how we are going to handle this?

Historically, I have been the Queen of wishing for someone else’s change.  I felt so justified in my unhappiness.  I would talk until I was blue in the face hoping and praying that the “offender” would finally get it!  That he would love me enough to not want to hurt me anymore.  Boy, was I wrong.  You see, we teach people how to treat us.  We can tell them all day long what is acceptable and what is not, but the truth is only our behavior will truly speak for us.  We must be willing to lose the love or friendship or whatever, to not allow someone to treat us inappropriately.

Once I started working on self-love, this actually just fell into place.  Once I knew that I was fine with or without _____ , that is when I truly stepped into my power.  You must understand the word power is not used in the definition of control and manipulation.  It is used solely as a loving feeling for self that stops me from allowing people to treat me poorly.  I now take care of and protect myself in the same method that I would someone I love.  Prior to this, I was so worried over losing the love that I would put up with the disrespectful behavior of people.  On one hand I thought I was just being a forgiving soul and then I realized, that I could forgive their innocence but that did not mean I needed to stay in the relationship. 

So now my new method of operation is: 

1.      State my thought

2.     Have a conversation around it

3.     Forgive and move on

At this point, I know I have been fair in stating my truth.  I have given opportunity to the person to explain the behavior and I have forgiven.  If the behavior then continues, I now know that it is up to me to make a change.  Keep in mind, this doesn’t always mean leaving the relationship- it could merely mean changing something about the way I deal with the behavior.  Sometimes a small change in myself is all that is needed. 

In conclusion, love yourself!  Take care of you!  Be your own best friend.  Stop looking for love outside of you and be willing to walk away if someone is repeatingly treating you poorly.

Namaste’