Have you ever asked yourself the following question: “How are you?”. We tend to ask everybody else how they are, listen to them and care for them, but what about ourselves
self-love?
How many of us use some kind of addiction to disconnect from ourselves, to avoid feeling, to avoid seeing the truth? This addiction can come in different forms: seeking others to love us, food, drugs, alcohol, work, excessive physical training, etc. And besides being addicted, we also stare in the mirror, or not, and be really mean and critical about ourselves: “my eye colour is not nice”, “I am so fat”, “I am so skinny”, “I hate my butt”, “wish I had bigger/smaller breasts” and so on, and so on. Mainly this is how me start our mornings. How many of us go in the morning in the bathroom, look in the mirror and say “wow I look awesome”, “I love my messy hair”, “no make-up day today because I look amazingly natural and I own it”. Well probably not many of us are so kind to ourselves.
“You don’t have anything to give, that you don’t have!” Oprah Winfrey
I spent years of my life thinking that I need to give all I got to others, put myself somewhere between the last place and no place on my To Do list, so that people love me, accept me and don’t leave me. I felt guilty if I didn’t do just all that and giving something to myself just felt wrong. I spent just as many years thinking I am too fat, no one likes me or thinks I am attractive. And after all those years it just hit me like a high speed train. An immense feeling of sadness. A disconnection I have never felt before. A loneliness that made my heart and soul weep in a way I never did before. So, I started reading books like “AimTrue” by Kathryn Budig, “Healing Your Aloneness” by Margaret Paul and making best friends with myself. I made a decision to learn from my mistakes instead of putting myself down for them, to love myself so I can love others, to listen to my higher self aka inner child, to forgive and move on instead of poisoning myself with resentfulness. I am far, far, faaaaar away of being done with the process. But, as my lovely friend Elena told me: “Trust the process!”, I trust the process; I trust that things happen for a reason; that I take wrong paths so that I can clearly see the right path. There really are no mistakes or failures. Because my mistakes and failures are there to wake me up and put me on my path again.
Rule #1: Work On Yourself
So, if you would ask me: “How can I start self-love?” The first thing I would ask you in return is: “Are you willing to work on yourself?”. If you are not willing to work on yourself, and blame the outside world for your unhappiness, then you are just not there yet. BUT if you are willing to work on yourself, that is where the beauty starts, that is where happiness starts, that is where success starts. Practice Svadhyaya.
Rule #2: Start Your Days By Loving Yourself
Really, Kathryn’s book has a really nice passage about this ritual. Take the time and read it in detail. Here is my morning coffee mug:
Rule #3: Be Honest To Yourself
You know you are on a detour from you path, when you don’t feel at ease with yourself. AND sometimes we ignore that feeling. We ignore our higher self / inner child that is yelling inside of us, telling us things are off. Get connected to yourself again and LISTEN and be honest about it. Otherwise you are just delaying something that eventually will happen anyway. Because all happens for a reason.
Rule #4: Forgive Yourself
Nothing can be more rewarding and soothing than self-forgiveness. Practice Ahimsa.
Rule #5: Repeat 100X: “Me Time” Does NOT Equal Selfishness
If you are happy, then you can make others happy. If you are off balance, then you can NOT provide for others. It is like in the airplane and the oxygen mask: first you, then the others. Only when you find yourself in balance you can shine like the supernova you are.
“I always feel that until you take your last breath, you’re always growing.” Oprah Winfrey