Last night I went to see some "performance" that was organized by a friend. It was less of a performance and more of a social experiment. The point was extremely relevant to me. The performance artist was trying to show us how much we limit our own freedom in order to be socially acceptable. He asked people to make noises and invited us to ask random questions to strangers. Most people probably felt "what the hell is this? Where is the performance?" but I appreciated it a lot because he was actually teaching us how to love ourselves, even if his main point was simply "freedom".
Giving yourself freedom is an important aspect of loving yourself. If you can't do what you want to do even when no one is stopping you, even when you wouldn't hurt anyone, just because it's AWKWARD, you are not being true to yourself. This is not to say every urge that comes to you is a true desire. Our mind sometimes fools us into thinking we want things that we don't. This is often because we are scared to change, scared to face our fear. These fear based desires are not true desires and often take the form of addictions and compulsions that we feel guilty about or a feeling that you want to run away from something. If you are driven by fear, doubt, vengeance, jealousy, embarrassment and often anger, this is not an expression of love for yourself or true freedom. You can always tell if it is driven by fear because afterwards you won't feel any better, and if you do, it'll only be for a moment.
A true desire for freedom and an expression of self-love is one where you feel yourself lifting emotional restraints. It will never take the form of a desire to hurt another. It will sometimes feel as if a load was taken off you shoulders and sometimes your body will physically feel this way. You may want to cry and be holding it in. You may want to talk to a stranger and stop yourself. You may want to stand up for someone (or yourself) but be too afraid, or you may want to go against the grain but not allow yourself to. These are all examples of restricting your own freedom and failing to love yourself.
As someone who is extremely averse to conflict, I often find myself avoiding people rather than telling them how I feel when they've made me uncomfortable. Last night there was a guy who was hell bent on getting a picture of me. This happens often because I kind of stand out where I live. As I talked to two friends of friends, I put a book in front of my face because I did not like him taking a photograph without asking. He moved around to see past the book and I moved the book. He didn't quit so I dropped the book and said "Hey, how would you feel if I came up to you and started massaging your asshole? That's how you are making me feel right now."
He immediately apologized. It felt really good to stand up for myself, and I know that it was a real expression of love and respect for myself because I didn't need to feel any real anger and I was able to drop it as soon as he left me alone, we actually ended up talking peacefully later on. In the past I would have gone outside to avoid him if he didn't quit when I put the book in front of my face. I may have also exploded and shouted at him. True love and respect for yourself will almost always lead to you feeling more comfortable in the end without a high likelihood of conflict though because you are not adding a charge to the situation, you are neutralizing it.
I realize that this telling someone something like this comes easy to many people, but you likely have your own way of restricting yourself past the point of comfort. You may take a lot more shit from your boss or partner than you can handle. You may force yourself to be what you think you want to be without allowing the change to come from a true sense of inspiration, whether that be thinner and more attractive or smarter and more productive. Allowing that inner voice to guide you and acting out of inspiration is what freedom and self-love are about.
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Confessions of the Damaged - a collection of short stories
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