I want to write about my personal thoughts on what it is to really LOVE yourself. In my opinion, to love yourself is to.. ;
Knowing that you are unique
Instead of comparing yourself with others, but to truly know and understand that each and every one of us, including youreself, is UNIQUE.
No one is better than others. There is no point in comparing ourselves with others around us. Neither friends, family, colleagues, or random people. It's not about comparing ourselves, it's about realizing that we all are a part of a giant puzzle, none of the pieces in a puzzle are alike. They are all different, and they are all just as important to make the puzzle complete.
Imagine if "Lisa" compares herself with her friend in sports. What happens is that she'll might find out that her friend is better in synchronized swimming, and become depressed and feel bad and unsatisfied with herself. And then you have Lisa's friend again, who compares herself with Anne and then she again finds out that Anne is better at tennis, and now she feels bad. Do you get my point? We may not be good in everything,
but we are all good at different things, each and every one of us has a talent and each and every one of us is unique.
Setting limits
Loving yourself is to set limits for yourself, and dare to say "No" every once in a while. This is what I call being a positive egoist.
You have to help yourself first. How can you help others if you can not help yourself first?!
There are so many of us who have such difficulty when comes to helping ourselves first. A friend needs someone to talk to, a neighbor needs help, a family member needs help. Actually, you feel quite tired,
but again and again you put on your big smile and play the role as the person that are always there to help. Again and again, and again.
And so on you continue until you literally have run over youself and YOUR needs. Now, perhaps
many people think that I encourage you to be selfish. But what is an egotist?
In everyday speech is often used as synonymous with selfishness, ruthless and irrational behavior, but in my opinion, to be a selfish person is someone who puts themself first, and someone who lives for themselves, instead of other. Thats why i use the term being a positive egoist. Offcourse i'm not saying you should not be polite or stand in the queue at the grocery store and wait for your turn just as everyone else. If you run to be the first one in the queue because you dont have much time, that's just being self-centered. Being celf-centered is a completely different thing if you ask me. By all means, i do not encourage you to stop helping someone in need or to stop being kind to other people,
there's a fine line betwen a pole and an ocen. But what i do encourage you to do is to know your own boundaries, and to say "No" when you honestly dont have the energy to help other. To dare to say no once in a while forces you to maintant your own personal well-being and energy, so you can help others wholeheartedly because you truly want to instead of being afraid of letting people or people's reactions. True friends do take no for an answer.
Do what you love
Take the time to activities that gives the soul nourishment and pleasure, what these activities may be is very individualt.
For some it may be dancing, while for others it may be mounting climbing, fishing, sewing, etc. Find activities that gives you pleasure, that makes you forget about the time, and take the time to enjoy your hobbies.
To Allow yourself to do something you enjoy doing instead of constantly thinking about what you "have to" and "should do" , which results in only living in the future instead of the present. Take time each day or once a week to do something you really want to.
Make your own choices
Make your own choises in life based on what YOU want, do not make choices to please others because they want it or because it gives them the pleasure to see you go a spesific direction. Go your own way, listen to your own wishes. Sometimes it can be very hard to stand up for what you want to do, especially when it comes to our own family. I honestly think that some parents made mistake when they were young, and therefore they may be bitter and regret their bad choises, so they get pleasure in seeing their children do what they wanted to do. Thats understandable, but they may not understand that their children nay not be passionate about the same thing as they. We are all different. Offcourse you can live your life as your family or friends wants you to, but in the end i think you're gonna regret not staying true to your self and your wishes. Always follow your own dreams and do what you want to do.
Take responsibility for your own feelings
Taking responsibility for our own feelings and reactions, instead of blaming others. We all do it, we carry our feelings with us in a big old backpack. The longer you keep this backback on the heavier it gets. Often in life, we tend to blame everyone else around us and the world instead of taking responsibility for our own feelings associated with different experiences. Sometimes a memory you carry on too is not negative itself, but it is the feeling associated with this memory you're holding on too that is negative. But offcourse, some of us do experience terrible and even traumatising events. You can not change what has happened in the past, but you can change your feelings related too it.
Sometimes you may be struggeling with anger or getting easily irritated for reasons you dont know. Sometimes we know why we have negative emotions and we can relate them to past events, and sometimes we may not remember or know why we hold on to negative feelings. That's not of importance! The most important thing you can ever do when it comes to releasing negative feelings, wether it's related to other persons or not, is to ACCEPT them! Every time you feel jalousery, anger, sadness etc, always accept your own feelings. When you accept your feelings you're accepting yourself! Accepting our feelings is always the first step to release them. If you deny your feelings you're just gonna lock them up inside and carry them on with you. You have to accept them! When you've accepted them, you should allow yourself to feel, feel what you've been hiding fromyourself and been afraid to feel. If you feel like crying, cry. Dont hold the tears back. You've feel much lighter once you get it out.
You can do this on your own, you can combine it with meditation or you can see a proffesional to help you get started. There are many ways and a million of options. Do what feels best and natural too you.
Affirmate
Saying affirmations to the mind and body. .
What is an affirmation? An affirmation is a tool we can use to turn our mental attitude.
Every thought you have is an affirmation that creates your reality. Let's say you're in the bathroom in the morning and the first thing you think when you look in the mirror is "I look awful." That's an example of an affirmation. Or you maybe say to yourself "wow, i look fantastic today" that's also an affirmation. The difference is that the first one was negative.
Working with affirmations can really help changing your mental attitude and self-esteem. I'm going to write more about affirmations in my next blog post.
Accept yourself
If you truly love yourself you need to accept yourself, every single part of yourself. Even the sides of you that you don't like or try to hide from yourself. I do believe we all are perfect, but i also mean that in order to realize it ourself we need to start accepting ourself just as we are. It's common to judge, to judge ourself and to judge others. The reasons to why we do this may be discussed, but we need to let go of this fear of being judge, and we need to stop judging ourselves and realize that we ARE perfect.
If you jugde yourself how can you expect others to accept you? You need to accept yourself. And i do believe that in order to accept other you also need to accept yourself. Just try to think and notice when you judge others.. what are you judging them for? When we judge others it's always a part of ourselfe we are judging. We are judging others based upon something inside of us that we have not yet accepted in ourself.
Maybe i'm provoking someone by writing what i just did. We often judge using the terms "good" or "bad". Some may ask themselfes how i can honestly say that it's impossible to judge a thief. If you judge a thief you're really not judging the person, you're judging his actions, and that's a different thing. But then again even judging someone's actions is strange.. because how can we judge someones actions without having been in their shoes and gone through what they have gone through? Don't missunderstand me, i'm just trying to prove a point.
Surround yourself with positive people
Cut off people that are negative our make you exhausted. Some people are just negative and have no positive
impact on you, all they do is make you tired and pull you down. Love yourself, surround yourself with positive people, people who do not make you tired and exhausted. Offcourse someone can have a bad day and complain a littlebit, but i'm talking about those who constantly have a bad day EVERY day, and who constantly expects you to sit and listen to all their problems. Life is to short, to waist your time and energy one people that make you tired or exhausted is just not worth it.
Tribute to collective consciousness
The world is a reflection of our collective consciousness. We create our world. If we want too change the world, we must begin with changing ourselves and beeing the change we want to see. To explain this better I will illustrate with an example. The feelings and thoughts we have affect everything around us. we are energy, and what we think and feel has a specific energetic frequency that sends out vibes.
Just think about it.. if there is two rooms, and in the first room there is a really exited and happy person, and then in the next there is a extremly angry person. If you would go into the room with your eyes blinded, don't you think you would kind of feel in wich room the angry person is and in wich room the happy person is?
If you have a bad and negative attitude you will attract negative people and situations. Try to remember the last time you had a bad day. For example, you loose your bus, and you think "typical, it's one of "those Days" .. what happened next? The rest of the day was followed by such "typical" events where everything that can possibly go wrong goes wrong. Because your mind created the situation, you responded to the first happening by confirming that it was a bad day, and therefor you just continued your bad luck. What I am trying to say is that you create your world, and together we create our world.
That is why I believe that the importance of loving yourself and to be aware of your thoughts and feelings, not only helps you personally, but it tributes to the collective world and consiousness as well.
This insight came to me during a meditation, one of Ghandis quote came up in my head "If you want to see world peace, find peace in yourself first"
I've always liked this quote but kind of questioned it and never really understood it's meaning, until my meditation experience. It's hard to explain, but i heard the quote in my head and a big light just went up for me and i finally realized what he was saying. Offcourse he's talking about collective consuisness and that we are all one. Im gonna try to explain in real easily;
Imagine that one of the cells in your body thinks "My name is Jim, who in the heck are all those others cells around me"? Lisa does not understand that all the other cells, including himself are a part of and forms a body. We humans are just as this cell in my example. We see our selves as individuals, but we may not have fully understood that we are also a part of and forms ONE world, with ONE consciousness. Just like all our cells in our body forms one body.
The key here to truly BE what we want too see in the world is to stop complaining on the world and start working with ourselfes and our attitude., start by saying affirmations to yourself every day, create a routine and make it the first thing you do when you get up or before going to bed.
Every time you think a negative thought, think of five positive. Take one day at a time. If you forget one day, start again tomorrow.
If you find it difficult just ask the universal power / God / angels or whatever feels natural to you for help.
This is my perception on what it is to love yourself, i'm offcourse open to comment's.
Love and Light,
Amanda
