Should you ‘find the world’ in another person, as Alicia harmonizes? If you say, no, read on mis amigos.
We are all looking for love in our lives.
Not only to love others but to be loved. Without fear…conditions…limitations.
Love songs, classic movies and today’s blockbusters provoke us to find that ideal love we watch on the big screen.
Alicia Key’s tune above sketches a love so deep that a lover’s arms around you are worth more than a kingdom, more than gold and diamonds!
(If you’d rather have the $bling$ than the hug, raise your hand friends)
Movies depict undying and eternal love. Music serenades the perfect lover. Books depict the depths of love between two souls.
While we’re caught up in fairy tale weddings, passionate romances and soulful love stories, there’s one person we’re ignoring.
The person we should be loving first.
Ourselves.
To love ourselves is a process of complete acceptance, compassion, forgiveness without limits or conditions.
But how many of us ever reach the place where we are truly in love with ourselves? How many of us even try?
We cannot love others until we fall in love with ourselves first.
Loving ourselves is a prerequisite to loving others.
We cannot complete others, as Tom pronounces in the clip, below until we complete ourselves.
Were you loved?
For some of us, the people who were supposed to love us never understood the way to show us love.
Perhaps they never knew how to love themselves either so loving you was an impossible feat.
The people who are supposed to love us made us feel inadequate, incompetent, inhuman or broken. Unloved.
4 Ways to Love Yourself (in a non-sensual way – ha!)
1. Compassion
We tend to be harsh and merciless with ourselves.
A practice of compassion is the first step to loving ourselves.
Compassion doesn’t judge and doesn’t put conditions on our love. Compassion sees our shortcomings and faults and accepts them anyway.
Practice empathy. Feel your pains, fear and guilt without wallowing in them. Be loving towards your past hurts and sorrows. Be gentle.
2. Acceptance
To be able to truly love ourselves, we have to accept who we are as people.
To love ourselves, we have to accept our good and bad traits, qualities, characteristics and life experiences. We must learn to embrace our pains, sorrows, fears, shame and inadequacies.
We must come to term with our histories, biographies, upbringing, personalities and our quirks.
Self-acceptance is the road to self-love.
3. Show yourself that you care.
How do you treat yourself? Is your life balanced, healthy and fulfilled?
Are you running around every day being ‘busy’? Not eating well? Working too much? Not exercising? Not being mindful? Stressed? Worried?
Are you treating yourself the way you want someone who loves you to treat you?
If you love yourself, take actions in your life to show yourself love, gentleness and kindness.
Look at the things in your everyday life that bring you physical discomfort, stress, worry, and emotional pain. Take steps to eliminate and reduce those factors.
Look for work that allows you to truly love yourself. Eat foods that shows you that you love your body. Be around positive and caring people. (Don’t talk to your mother-in-law – joke!) Create a daily schedule that allows you to spend time with yourself.
Take small steps to show that you’re important, that your health and body matter and that you’re worth taking care of.
4) Take action.
Romantic relationships fail when you stop working on them. So does the relationship you have with yourself. If you’re not actively taking actions to show yourself that you care, you’re not loving yourself as you’re capable of.
If you’re not removing caustic and harmful people out of your life, you’ll find it harder to love yourself. If you’re not doing work or a career that suits your personality, you’ll find it harder to be joyful and treat yourself well. If you’re not taking care of your body, you’ll feel less healthy and positive about yourself.
Accept yourself and strive be good to yourself.
Not only will you fall in love with yourself and be a loving person be but you will be able to share that love with all those around you. You will be love, can give and receive love.
The secret to loving others and being loved the way you want is to love yourself first. (Here are 17 additional ways how. Thanks Evelyn!)
My friend Wendy Irene talks about the importance of loving yourself in her weekly videos. Watch to learn more.
To pick up my book, Self Romance Manifesto: Fall in Love With Yourself and Live From Your Heart, click here.