Imagine as well as teaching you how to tie your shoe laces and use a knife and fork properly your parents taught you how to love yourself.
Or in between your maths and chemistry lessons at school you had how to love yourself lessons.
Wouldn’t the world be a different place?
Most parents (and teachers) don’t know how to love themselves, so they can’t teach you. They can’t give you what they haven’t got.
In fact, most parents/adults teach you the complete opposite – despite you being totally lovable and worthy, they teach you otherwise. Their upset, stress, dysfunction and issues are all passed through to you, and as a child you think – well it must be me, there’s something wrong, bad or unlovable about me. I must be the one causing this. And you go through life with that belief. Children always blame themselves for the issues of the adults around them.
These adults don’t usually mean to mess you up, but they do.
Some of us are very lucky and have an exceptional grandparent or wise old teacher that sows a seed of self-love within us and that’s great, but generally most of us are surrounded by adults who don’t model self-love in any way, shape or form.
Self-love is NOT arrogance; it’s NOT conceitedness, selfishness, or diva-ish, elitist behaviour. That’s not self-love at all.
Self-love is loving yourself in a quiet, calm, stable, comfortable-in-your-skin kind of way. Knowing you are the equal of anyone and deserving of goodness and happiness. Knowing that you have a purpose in the world and a gift to share.
People who are comfortable in their skin and truly love themselves are generally very humble – the opposite of arrogant. They don’t need the limelight, their light shines from within.
Most people believe that you have to be perfect to love yourself and this simply isn’t true. We’re human beings, not robots made in a factory.
You love other people who are not perfect, so why not you?
What is perfection anyway? It’s totally subjective. What I might think is perfect you may not. There are probably 7 billion different kinds of perfect in the world like there are 7 billion different kinds of normal.
Loving your differences, accepting your “flaws” and embracing your foibles is all part of loving yourself.
You are unique, one-of-a-kind, special and 100% meant to be the genuine, authentic, real version of yourself. Often it’s your differences that make you unique and what other people love about you.
So often it’s the coping mechanisms, affectations and masks that we’ve taken on to get through life that are ugly, not us.
When you love yourself (appropriately) the world is a much more comfortable place. You are happy to give your all – to yourself, your career, your relationships, your happiness, but you also know you deserve to receive that all in return too.
You know you deserve all the success in the world. You know you deserve all the Love in the world. You know you deserve happiness in ALL areas of your life.
True happiness is about balance. It’s no good earning lots of money if your health is really suffering because of it, or working non-stop if you have no Love or friendship in your life. That’s not balance. An un-balanced life is often an unhappy life.
Where are you out of balance? Is it time to make some changes?
If you have low self-esteem a great place to start on this journey to loving yourself is to ask when faced with any kind of a decision:-
“What would someone who loved themselves do?”
Stop and actually ask yourself that question. You might be surprised to realise that the decisions you generally make work against you. They move you AWAY from your overall happiness.
If things are going to change, you have to become very, very self-aware. You have to zoom out and see things from a different perspective. A bird’s eye view so to speak. Things are often so much clearer when you zoom out.
If, when faced with a choice, you’re going to make decision B (like you always do) then stop and consider what would happen if you make decision A (that you would never normally choose) and then ask yourself what would someone who loved themselves do?
This can apply to any choice whatsoever. Whether it’s food, exercise, work, Love, family, anything.
I started doing this years ago. When I had to make any decision I would ask myself what would someone who loved themselves choose and I started choosing that.
Even if it felt wrong, weird or uncomfortable I chose that. Gradually the gap between me and someone who loved themselves got smaller and smaller until eventually it wasn’t uncomfortable any more. It felt natural and right.
This isn’t fake it till you make it, this is try it till you fly it.
The more you do it, the more you start to think like someone who loves themselves. The more you do it, the more you realise how far away your decision-making was from supporting the best choices for you.
Start your journey to loving yourself today by asking yourself this simple question….then making that different choice.
It’s time to fall in Love with you!
Much Love
Christina xx