Love Yourself First
Many of us have been told to do what you love. If you do, you’ll never work a day in your life. We’re also taught to find our true love and all will be blissful. Unfortunately, we are rarely taught that in order to love anything or anyone else, we must learn to love ourselves first. Why is that?
Think of love as emotional energy that flows all around us. Sort of like the way we’re surrounded by air.
Air is always there and without it, we can’t survive. Love is all around as well, and just like air, if we don’t know how to accept it we can’t benefit from it.
If we try to love someone without knowing how to love ourselves, it’s no different than trying to breathe for someone else. It just doesn’t work.
Do you love yourself? I’m sure your automatic response is ‘of course, why ask such a silly question?’
This is a very powerful question to honestly ask yourself. If you don’t really love yourself, it’s pretty hard to love someone else, spread the joy of love, and importantly draw loving people into your life. Remember It all starts with you.
Both Beth and I have gone through periods in our lives when we didn’t love ourselves. And in those times we certainly couldn’t love each other.
One simple trick we’ve learned is to listen to how you talk to yourself. Are you supportive or do you constantly find fault? We talk more about this in an earlier post about learning to be your own best friend. www.youcanchoose.info/are-you-your-best-friend/
Another tool is to look at yourself in the mirror and smile. Practice sending and receiving love through the mirror back to yourself.
It might feel strange in the beginning but over time the more comfortable you become with your own gaze and smile, the more you will be open to allow yourself to give and accept love from others. Smiling with yourself is a simple and easy first step toward loving yourself.
A side benefit is when you see strangers on the street and smile at them, they reflexively smile back. And it feels so good when they do.
Love is in the air – by John Paul Young……. Such a powerful word and free as u say – and sometimes so hard to say, see, feel due to your vulnerability however so easy to show and not afraid ……