October 28: Learning Love

I learned to practice hating myself for the first 42 years of my life.  It became the habitual program through which I operated, interacted with others, and created every aspect of my life.  Until I learned to start to practice loving myself, and truly accepting and appreciating myself for who I was, I was never really able to love and accept others on the level THEY deserved.

It has been said that we are only able to meet people and accept others at the level which we meet and accept ourselves.  I have found this to be true.

Learning to love ourselves takes consistent, habitual, repeated practice.  It takes a lot of work.  It takes a proper mindset, and a solid set of beliefs.  Sometimes it takes reprogramming the subconscious mind and replacing beliefs tied to our self-identification process that have robbed us of joy our entire lives.

This excerpt from the book, “The Language of Letting Go,” by Melody Beattie, helped me really put this knowledge into perspective and begin this wonderful journey of healing:

Self-Love

“I woke up this morning and I had a hard time for a while,” said one recovering man. “Then I realized it was because I wasn’t liking myself very much.” Recovering people often say: I just don’t like myself. When will I start liking myself?

The answer is: start now. We can learn to be gentle, loving, and nurturing with ourselves. Of all the recovery behaviors we’re striving to attain, loving ourselves may be the most difficult, and the most important. If we are habitually harsh and critical toward ourselves, learning to be gentle with ourselves may require dedicated effort.

But what a valuable venture!

By not liking ourselves, we may be perpetuating the discounting, neglect, or abuse we received in childhood from the important people in our life. We didn’t like what happened then, but find ourselves copying those who mistreated us by treating ourselves poorly.

We can stop the pattern. We can begin giving ourselves the loving, respectful treatment we deserve.

Instead of criticizing ourselves, we can tell ourselves we performed well enough.

We can wake up in the morning and tell ourselves we deserve a good day.

We can make a commitment to take good care of ourselves throughout the day.

We can recognize that we are deserving of love. We can do loving things for ourselves.

We can love other people and let them love us.”

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People, who truly love themselves do not become destructively self-centered. They do not abuse others. They do not stop growing, improving, progressing, and changing.  People who love themselves well, learn to love others well, too. They continually grow into healthier people, learning that their love was appropriately placed.  People who truly love themselves are always UPGRADING.

WHAT DOES SELF-LOVE LOOK LIKE TO YOU?

I have found that what we ALWAYS get MORE of what we think of the most, whether we want it or not.  Why not consistently shift our thinking, and expand into MORE of LOVE?

It is by reading things like this on a consistent basis, and changing my beliefs and the ways I think about myself and things in general, that I have been able to accept and love myself more fully.  Because I was able to begin learning how to do that for myself, I was able to learn to begin to accept and love others more fully, as well, “flaws” and all.  Doing this has provided me with the daily opportunity of a more meaningful, fulfilling, purpose-filled life, and has empowered me to create and maintain deep, meaningful, long-lasting connections.

The most useful and effective habit I have implemented is to set a DAILY alarm to go off at the same time to remind myself to ask and immediately answer the question: WHAT AM I MOST PROUD OF ABOUT MYSELF OR SOMETHING I HAVE DONE TODAY?  Try it out, and see if, within only a few short months, this produces the miracle of a deeper self-appreciation than ever before for YOU, like it did for me.

Perfection is impossible.  Excellence is achievable, and is something we can work towards and practice, every day.  Excellence is achieved when we do our very best, and our very best changes, from day to day.  I have learned a valuable lesson:  Progress over perfection.

Today I will practice loving myself and others.  I will take a hard look at the beliefs which tell me I am unlovable and replace them with more beneficial, helpful, empowering beliefs which help me remember to better love myself and others.

Ram Dass has thousands of hours of recorded content available on THE BE HERE NOW NETWORK and has spoken often of self love, and how we can love, accept, and allow the self more fully.  I highly recommend listening to every bit of content found including and featuring Ram Dass.

This interview on the Lewis Howes Show, featuring Marisa Peer, has been one of the most helpful bits of content I have come across, so far, in my pursuit of learning to more fully love and accept myself, which has empowered me to create a life full of love and acceptance for others, as well:

Her is an interview I conducted with Shanta Generally.  The part where we talked about Self-Love was so inspiring.

Here are a few other INCREDIBLY useful and effective pieces of content that have empowered me IMMENSELY in my journey towards re-creating a Self Image worth working towards:

When it comes to Self-Appreciation, information from Brooke Castillo has been incredibly helpful.

https://youtu.be/5EKSDHwaQNg

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Remember:  Mindset matters.  Character counts.  That which we choose to consistently focus on is what EXPANDS in our lives.  WE CREATE our realities.