Topic of the Month – Understanding ‘Loving yourself’
I have arrived. I am home. in the here. in the now, I am solid, I am free, In the ultimate I dwell. Thich Nhat Hahn
Loving ourselves is very necessary in life yet is so often misunderstood. If we can’t love ourselves how can we love others? So often people say to me, I don’t know how to love myself, I don’t understand what loving myself means. I don’t want to be one of those awful egotistic people who just love themselves and no one else.
One of the great lessons we have to learn in life is to love ourselves. On the surface, this sounds like a simple thing. How hard can it be to love yourself, to feel confident about your abilities and comfortable in your own skin, and to act in a way that is self-loving, rather than self-destructive? Most of us know it's much harder than it seems. We often beat ourselves up and are hard on ourselves without even realising we are being so. It seems to be easier to beat our self up than to love our self.
Many of us put our own needs and wants and aspirations aside. Often, we are afraid to shine and be our unique self as if we didn't have the right! We don’t want to bring attention to ourselves in anyway. Or in some cases we don’t want to appear to outshine someone else. We so often don’t think we are as good as anyone else for no apparent reason at all, or it stems from childhood when we may have been compared to our siblings or classmates and therefore made to feel inadequate.
We are all here with a unique life path and reason, everyone has some sort of unique gift and we should not at any time compare yourself to others or be compared, we can’t all be brilliant scientists, or top models, brilliant sportsman, life would be so boring if we were all the same. You are perfect just as you are, you are your own unique creation.
We all carry experiences and messages from the past that have ingrained into us feelings of unworthiness, messages from our parents, peers and upbringing. Many of us have false beliefs about ourselves and think we are totally inadequate or not as good as anyone else. We have so often taken on behaviours’ that reinforce those feelings.
Many of us will compare ourselves to others, always thinking that someone else is more beautiful, thinner, cleverer and funnier. Many women will look at themselves in the mirror and really dislike what they see as they don’t look like the paint shopped models in the magazines, with no blemishes and perfect figures with not an inch of fat or a wrinkle insight.
What they are actually comparing themselves with does not actually exist and yet they will carry on doing it and will grow more uncomfortable and on constant diets never really enjoying who they are and constantly putting themselves down, beating themselves up and making themselves miserable.
We all have the desire to love and to be loved. The love-impulse lives within us, and urges us to shine.
In the words of ‘Marianne Williamson’ in this passage from A Return to Love best describes our need for affirmations and to recognize yourself as whole: "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? ‘ I personally love this passage and I read it often to remind myself
The development of self-love comes faster and more easily to some than to others, but it is something we all have to work toward and maintain. Even for those who have begun to grow into themselves, self-esteem can seem illusive - one moment you feel good about yourself, and the next, something inside of you shifts, and those old feelings of inadequacy come bubbling to the surface. One tool that can help neutralize negative thoughts when they arise, and get you back on track, are positive affirmations, powerful statements that support self-love.
There are many who argue that simply saying "I am worthy" is not enough. In a 2008 study entitled "Positive Self-Statements: Power for Some, Peril for Others," it was revealed that while affirmations such as "I am a lovable person" were beneficial to people with high self-esteem, it made people with low self-esteem feel even worse about themselves. Among individuals with low self-esteem, telling themselves something they didn't believe only served to highlight their perceived flaws, their own false beliefs about themselves ingrained by years of continually looking and finding proof they were right in their belief.
It makes sense that an affirmation you don't believe in will have very little power or resonance with you, so of course will probably actually heighten negative thoughts. The most powerful affirmations are the ones you do believe in! We always believe in the negative statements we say about ourselves so we really do have to say something positive and realistic and powerful in its simplicity for a person to really believe it. Affirmations that work are usually the short ones.
What I find in many ways that can work better than affirmations and are just as powerful are the statements that inspire you to reach out for your greatest potential. For an affirmation to manifest in your life, it must resonate with you so strongly that the vibration from it can be carried forward into the way you behave in the world. These types of affirmations can have very beneficial effects because they are important reminders when wrong thinking begins to cloud your vision and makes you doubt everything.
In times of need, they can help shift your focus from the negative to the positive. They can help to ground you and bring you back to your centre. They give you the courage needed to go forward into difficult or frightening territory.
Affirmations can be found just about anywhere, in books, movies, speeches, poems, conversations or websites. The first step is to write down affirmations that you like and that resonate with you when you find them.
Keeping a record gives them a place in your life. You can try some of these other popular techniques to help weave the power of affirmations into your daily life:
Post them in places where you will find them fridge, bath room or bedroom mirror, cupboard, wardrobe, daily diary, wallet, notebook, by your bed on the car dashboard etc. You can even put them on your Ipad , computer or phone as a daily inspirational wake up message. Whether it's a good self-esteem day or a low self-esteem day, remind yourself of the affirmations that are important to you. Let them be part of your consciousness on a regular basis. Remember to call on the affirmations in times of need. You can say the affirmations to yourself silently, or out loud, and really do not worry what other people think, that’s their problem not yours. Many people find that reciting an affirmation while looking at them self in a mirror helps to reinforce its power – I find this very powerful and very useful and it is the one I use all the time!
Tell you self daily, That you love you, you are worth loving, that you are beautiful and that you are perfect as you are. Say it to yourself looking in the mirror until it really starts to sit inside you and you really believe it.
Stop being hard on yourself, become aware of what you tell yourself daily, and as soon as you find yourself being hard on yourself, ‘Stop’ and give yourself a hug and start afresh again from this moment on and instead of searching for evidence that you are not worth loving, no good at anything, etc start looking for and seeing the evidence that you are worthy etc, and create the life you really want to live.
After all as I said in the opening of this newsletter, the now is all we have some of the most powerful affirmations will be the ones you write for yourself. These come straight from your own self-knowledge and self-love. Here are some that may help.
"Om Namah Shivaya" (I honor the God within me). - Siddha Yoga
"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." - Eleanor Roosevelt
"What you think of me is none of my business." - Wayne Dyer
"What I am looking for is already in me.- Julie Lomas
Action Challenge:
• Re read the above section, and mark where is really appropriate for you, then write it down.
• Find and also write affirmations that work for you! They have to resonate with your very core so
• Become more aware of what you are saying to yourself…every time you say something negative, write it down, so that you will start to see a pattern of why you do it,
• Immediately you say something negative about yourself, or beat yourself up, stop and then say something loving to yourself, about yourself.
• Look in the mirror everyday and have a truly loving conversation with yourself.
• Know that you are perfect just as you are, unique in every way, no 2 people can ever be the same.
• Everyday do something just for ‘you’ even if it means sitting in the car listening to some favourite music track on the radio, everyone can find 5 minutes spare to do something or say something nice to themselves.
• Attend one of my workshops on positive thinking or loving the self.
Love yourself, you are worth it! Good Luck
Tel Bahrain: +973 39606712 Tel Spain: +34 661928937
Info@conscious-connections.com http://www.conscious-connections.com/ http://www.julielomas.com/
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