Do you ever find yourself wondering what “loving yourself” really means?
You are not alone in wondering this.
Unfortunately, the expression “loving yourself ” has often been associated with selfishness, self importance and self obsession…along with the common experience of building evidence around why we shouldn’t be loving ourselves.
And if you are someone who wants to love and serve humanity, the truth is that you will only have the power to be of true service to the extent that you truly love and serve yourself.
Many years ago when I was first learning about what it meant to love myself, I went to a service organization called “Save the _____”, and found it interesting that most of the staff were working 14 hour days, felt exhausted, disappointed, hopeless and as if they were the ones that needed to be saved! It was then that I truly understood the power of what it meant to truly love myself and know that I am only able to love and be of service to anyone was to the level at which I was willing and able to serve and love myself.
THE GOOD NEWS IS:
Loving yourself simply means making choices that encourage, nurture and support yourself.
Start out by asking yourself this question: “What is the nature of experiencing the bodily felt sense of loving myself?
Loving to yourself includes:
(1) Talking to yourself in ways that are nurturing and supportive
For example:
Imagine that someone just got mad at you about something that you said.
Here are two different ways that you can choose to talk to yourself about what just happened.
- “No matter what I say, it’s never enough”
- “I’m not very good at communicating, so I might as well give up”
- “I’m really not a good enough person”
- “There must be something wrong with me”
- “I’m a loser and should just forget about ever having any friends”
- “She hates me, so I might as well leave and never come come back”
OR
- “Wow, I didn’t know that I was having that effect!”
- “I care about this relationship, so I’ll take a deep breathe and commit to resolution”
- “I admit that I was doing something provoking by not being very present for what was happening”
- “I’ll learn from this experience”
- “Take another deep breathe”
- “I’m ready to go back and apologize and commit to staying more present and communicating more clearly”
Notice and feel how the second option feels to you. Giving yourself these options is a perfect way to excel in developing a new kind of freedom in your life.
Talking to yourself in ways that are degrading, self defeating and disempowering and can actually become a habit. It’s your become aware and get clear on how you do it.Look around you and see how many people talk to themselves and each other in these unsupportive ways.. Listen to how to talk to yourself inside and outside of you and make new choices.
(2) Ask yourself powerful questions and experiencing the answers…
Powerful questions give powerful answers.
As soon as you ask a question something inside of you starts to shift immediately.
Your questions are catalysts that set the universe in motion to respond to you.
If you use your thinking wisely, you can craft you questions in such a way that the answers come as the bodily felt sense of having the experience that you want.
For instance:
If you ask yourself the question, “What is lack of self confidence”, then what kind of answers will you get? The experience of all the ways you lack self confidence!
Now think about it. What could happen if you had ask the question like this, “What is the nature of experiencing the most beneficial and empowered self confidence possible? What experience would you have as the answer to that question? It would be the bodily felt experience of empowered self confidence!
Choose your questions wisely, and you will notice the freedom that this skill brings!
(3) Choose appropriate relationships
Be with people that love, nurture, empower you. Choose to be conscious of what the appropriate form of the relationship is at any given moment and be willing to follow the truth, knowing that what is appropriate at any given time can change.
For instance:
- Understand that your relationship may feel great as business partners, and not for sitting around your dining table at home or sleeping in your bed. Or a person may feel great as a traveling companion and not a sleeping partner. You both understand that the form of a relationship is flexible and want to keep being in the truth of that.
- You know the person loves you unconditionally.
- You feel more empowered when you are around them.
(4) Be compassionate with yourself …
For example:
If you are not feeling free and self confident in any given moment, you might support yourself by saying:
- “I know you are feeling a little scared right now”
- “That’s fine”
- “I’m are human and I’m just about to take a big step, and I’m feeling a little shaky.
- “I’ll take a deep breathe and shake it out a bit”.
- “I’m stepping into the unknown, something I’ve never done before”
- “I can breathe, relax and be here with myself and be connected to the power of the universe…I’m not alone”
- “As long as I am all the way here, I can be aware and make good choices”
- “My intention is to support all these people, and I am being supported by the universe as I do that”
(5) Embrace Yourself
For example:
If you are feeling scared because you think you may have made a mistake, a loving choice might be to:
- Breathe into your experience
- Imagine holding yourself
- Let yourself know that you won’t push any part of yourself away
- Be honest with yourself, admit what choices you made
- Stay present with whatever feelings you have and give them a safe place to express
- Let yourself know that you just had a learning experience., and are not bad
- When you’re present and ready to talk to the people that were involved in the mistake you made, let them know what your experience was, and why you made the choices you did and apologize with the intent to bring resolution and make new choices.
(6) Be attentive and responsive to yourself
For Example:
- Listen to you body and respond to what it needs
- Listen to your feelings and respond to what they are telling you
- Listen to your spirit and respond to what it is telling you and support yourself in making new choices.
- Listen to your heart and respond to what it is telling you. Be aware of pretending to love someone or something when that is not really what you are feeling.
For instance:
Imagine yourself waking up one morning feeling you might be getting a cold.
Do you try to ignore what your body is trying to tell you, so you can push through the day to to get a job or project done? Do you push through the warnings that your body was trying to give you and then get really sick?
You always have the option to:
- Breathe and take notice of what your body is telling you
- Let your body know that you will respond to it, and ask it what it needs
- Rest instead of pushing past what you know is best for your body
- Let go of how you thought your day was going to be, including changing any plans that you had for the day
- Drink plenty of water
- Take a hot bath
- Take appropriate herbs and supplementation
Unfortunately, our culture often encourages us to override our bodies…and use them like machines.
That is not loving yourself.
Think about it, your body is the core of your manifestation.
Being attentive and responding to yourself is a key your freedom and successful manifestation!
Know that you will do the best it can to take care of yourself is one of the fastest ways to create more freedom in your life.
Which goes right along with the willingness to….
(7) Nurture yourself
For example:
- Make healthy choicex. Explore and learn more about what that means to you.
- Eat healthy nutritious foods. They can make all the difference!
- Rest when you are tired.
- Drink when you are thirsty.
- Spend lots of time out in nature.
- Do things that make you happy.
- Reach out and ask for help when you need it.
- Give yourself a comfortable bed.
- Get a massage.
- Read things that make your life better.
- Listen to things that add value and make you feel alive.
- Watch things that add value and make you feel good.
Which goes hand and hand with the choice to….
(8) Let go of comparing yourself
It’s fine to look around and appreciate what other people do and learn from it..that’s healthy.
But if compare yourself with other people to figure out what’s right or wrong about yourself, or to feel “less than”, you are not on the track of how developing more freedom in your life.
You were designed to be uniquely you.
It’s impossible to be someone else, so you might as well forget about that.
Put your focus on discovering who you are, and how you do things. It’s what you were inherently made to do.
Be in discovery mode.
If you notice yourself comparing yourself to others in an unhealthy way, stop yourself, admit, and talk to yourself :
It could look something like this:
“I am comparing myself to make myself wrong, and I choose not to do that. I can see what someone else is choosing, Is it something that might work for me too? I can learn from it!
Relating to other people’s choices in such a loving way, will keep you on the path of how to develop self confidence.
(9) Have fun with yourself
For example, imagine this scenario:
- You’re just about to make a choice that you know is not going to work
- You admit to yourself you know the probable outcome
- And let yourself have a sense of humor about it
- You say to yourself, “Nice try, you were just about to ruin my day, no way!”
- And laugh at yourself for how ridiculous that was to even think about trying to sabotage yourself in that way!
And have you ever noticed how many movies start with with a choice that you know is a setup of for the main character to sabotage their experience? The rest of the movie is about cleaning up the mess from that one single choice?
Well, let’s face it, we each have plenty of choices when we wake up each day.
And it’s great to know that:
- It’s YOU who is always there for you.
- It’s YOU who you can always count on to make beneficial choices
- It’s you that makes the difference of whether or not your life is about a sustainable experience of freedom from your inside out!
Which leads right into the art of..
(10) Being Willing
Part of loving yourself requires exploring the nature of being willing.
You can ask yourself this question: What is the nature of experiencing willingness?
True freedom requires willingness.
To be willing requires that you give your consent to release reluctance and resistence.
It is a decision and choice that takes focus, concentration and honesty within yourself.
- Am I really willing to be free?
- Or is there’s a little part of me that still wants to hold on to how I am now? I’m used to it and I feel more comfortable here because it’s “the known”?
Neither one of these is right or wrong, it’s simply the truth of where you are now.
Even 10 seconds of being truly willing, can shift the direction that you have been going in.
The power of willingness is highly underestimated.
You may not even notice the results at first, but I guarantee that if you actually are willing,
things will start to change.
It takes at least 10 full seconds of true willingness to ignite the changes that you want.
(11) Reach out for support
Reaching out for support may sound easy, but when you are feeling isolated, alone and lacking self confidence, it can often seem hardest to do.
Do it anyway!
For example:
Reach out to a friend or someone who you trust.
Confide in them.
There is something magic that happens when you reach out.
It pops a certain isolation that it is easy to get lost in.
Sharing and getting touched by another person is a very important part of getting free.
Congratulations on your commitment to truly know what it means to love yourself no matter what the evidence!
I encourage you to be gentle on yourself and take time you need to assimilate and integrate what you have learned.
Let it be an unraveling.
And as you continue to confide in yourself, accept where you are, and do what it takes to love yourself, you will be building the foundation where your freedom thrives.
To your freedom,
guides you. The remaining pillows represent emotions, heart and body. Begin a dialogue with each aspect. You may find that your emotions are angry about how often you avoid, deny and control them. They may want to scream, cry and hit the pillow in anger about feeling abandoned, imprisoned and denied by you. You can respond by telling them your side of the story. Continue interacting, feeling and expressing. Let each aspect interact and express in a similar way. Allow them to know the changes you will make.
July 31, 2018
0 Comments