In my last post of this sort, I promised to answer some questions about how to become ready to love and know ourselves and what this process looks like from my perspective.
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It has been my experience that I can't just automatically feel inner joy and self-love as if I'm flipping a switch on. It hasn't worked that way for me at all. I've had to ease myself into feeling it and slowly convince myself that this is the right decision. After all, everything external does its best to convince all of us that joy and love are also external; this is the biggest yet most common lie that the general population believes.
The people who say you have to just "get happy" one day don't know what they are talking about. However, they are right about "getting happy" being the answer to our problems. They are so close to the truth, yet so far away. That is, they know the solution, but they don't know how to go about finding that solution in a way that will lead to genuine and eternal happiness.
Step 1 - Get Ready and Be Selfish
This step doesn't make anyone feel pressure to start the self-love process, but only to come to terms with its importance.
In order to get ready to love oneself, we have to understand that all love stems from this self-love and that no other love is possible without self-love first serving as a foundation. Understanding how important undertaking this quest for self-love is, is the first step in achieving it. This step is basically allowing you to get ready to get ready to get ready. Think of this step as a gentle mental massage that will aid in getting the love flowing later. Are you with me so far?
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This step is a time to stop beating up on yourself -- if that's what you've been doing. If you can't muster up the ability to think positive yet, do know that even neutral or no thoughts are better at this point than negativity. Meditation is great during this phase (and during all the other steps as an ongoing tool), but it's especially helpful now. I'm not talking about becoming a Buddhist or anything like that, but only suggesting that meditation is a way to reach yourself so you can feel clarity.
The whole idea during this step is to break your old habits and circular thought processes that are stopping you from loving yourself. Anything that is negative or doesn't feel good to you is hindering your ability to love yourself and needs to stop. You can stop thinking about something negative by refusing to turn your thoughts to it for a few seconds and gradually work your way up to a few minutes, until you're not thinking about it at all. If that doesn't work, you can try thinking about something else that is pleasant.
If this step sounds selfish, that's because it is. Loving yourself is the ultimate selfish behavior, but it is required if any form of selflessness is ever going to come from you. Is it true that selfishness and selflessness are two sides of the same coin?
Tend to your own garden and suddenly you will realize how easy it is to contribute to the flourishment of another's garden.
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