Loving Yourself

I want to talk today about self-love. I’m finding a lot of negative issues that people are creating in their lives are due to the negative beliefs and feelings that they have towards themselves. We have been unknowingly trained to be materialistic, to believe that true happiness is only found outside of you with material items like cars, a big house, holidays, shoes, clothes to name but a few, instead of being taught that the only true place you will find joy and happiness is within you.

Your soul needs to be loved, it needs your love to feel nourished, and if it doesn’t get it, you will soon know. Self-love is all about you and no-one else. It’s about nourishing your inner child, doing what makes you happy, doing what’s fun and brings you joy, giving yourself compliments, telling yourself “I Love You” and really meaning it, treating yourself with respect to what you eat, how you exercise and what you think and say about yourself. I know many people, myself included, that are so hard on themselves that it causes problems; weight gain or weight loss, depression, anxiety, stress, sickness also. Do you like what you see in the mirror every day or do you prefer to see ‘perfect’ bodies all over social media and wish you looked like that? Is that good enough for you? I really hope it’s not.

From the moment we were born we were taught to ignore our needs and love all others first, to think of everyone else before ourselves, because if we even thought about putting ourselves first, we were labeled selfish and insensitive which caused us to create guilt. We were conditioned by those around us early in our lives; our parents and family, school teachers and friends, and programed how to think, speak and behave, or more importantly we were programed to think, speak and behave how others say we should, and to NOT think for ourselves. This negative programing stops us from expressing ourselves and causes us difficulties in our later years because we need to express who we are, what we believe and what we think as individuals. It’s plain old human nature.

Over time, this causes your soul to grieve for the love it isn’t receiving. It craves and begs you to love yourself, and like it or not, materialistic things will not make it right. You may feel excited and good about driving your new car for a short period of time but that won’t satiate your soul for long and you’ll soon be craving external materialistic things that you believe will make you better and you’ll end up in a vicious circle. As a result, we experience emotional pain which can become self-sabotaging; we can injure ourselves, cause physical issues which can create fear, and panic about what’s happening to us, what is this pain I’m experiencing, what’s wrong, is it serious? So, we run to the doctor, someone we are taught to trust and are conditioned to believe is the only person that has the ability to heal you. The doctor can give you a prescription which will mask the symptoms and not even address the cause, and things may calm down a little and you start to feel better, but the cause is still there – lack of self-love. It still hasn’t been addressed, we have only suppressed it with pharmaceuticals, so what can happen over time if this continues, is that we physically create something else in the body – we manifest blocked emotions as a physical dis-ease or ailment – it’s like your inner self knocking on your door saying, “Please help me, there’s something wrong.” In effect, if we don’t open that door, we are shutting it out, and over time it comes to your door a lot more often to get your attention. By changing the manner in which you treat yourself, and by listening to what your body is telling you, things can be turned around and made so much easier, and the sooner you start, the better.

Lack of self-love is often brought on by trauma from an incident that occurred in a past life or in your current life, like a car accident or a messy divorce, and can also result from the pain, shock or trauma of experiencing some form of abuse. I’m not just talking about physical abuse; it could be mental or psychological, verbal, emotional, sexual or even from being bullied at any point in your life.

The effects of abuse can produce Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) like symptoms; like depression, nightmares, anxiety, stress, insomnia, weight gain/loss or even suicidal thoughts – each person mentally and physically reacts to trauma or abuse in different ways and there are many other symptoms. Trauma creates emotional/physical pain, which creates guilt, which makes you create situations to punish yourself to reinforce negative beliefs that have been created in your subconscious mind. These can be that you are not loved, or maybe that you are incapable of being loved, you are unworthy and undeserving of love, you are not enough, or that you don’t deserve to receive love. These are a pretty huge deal individually, as they are very prevalent and powerful in the collective subconscious belief system of fear, lack and suffering. It’s all a huge cycle of negative programing that we get hooked into unknowingly, and it may seem that we will be stuck in its clutches forever.

Conscious awareness is key. Once we are aware of these beliefs that we have because of what we are creating in our lives, we can make the choice to change them. We can start to change the negative beliefs and programing that run our lives. Also know this – it’s very important not to look at others and compare yourself with where they are, because no two people will be at exactly the same stage on their journey through life; levels of self-awareness will be completely different for each of us, we are all at different levels of learning, and we each perceive life and the world in different ways. No comparison! We are on our own journey and have different lessons that we have agreed to learn in this lifetime – we have agreed to everything; ethnicity, location/country, parents, culture, how we want to express ourselves what we bring to the world, so we are all incredible, unique beings and cannot be compared to anyone else – no self-judgment. Know that you are exactly where you are supposed to be in YOUR journey, not anyone else’s, and that you will learn at your own pace, not theirs.

Don’t be hard on yourself, because you’ve done the best you could with the information and knowledge that you had so you need to give yourself a huge pat on the back instead of launching self-berating words and actions. Compassion is what your soul needs; gentleness and care, not criticism or anger or hatred at who you are or what you think you look like to others. Criticism, anger, resentment and rage are very damaging to your body – be very careful with your thoughts, words and actions towards yourself and others. Tell yourself you are beautiful, inside and out, every single day and mean it. It may take time, but you’re going in the right direction – keep doing it. Creating self-loving actions can have a wonderful, positive and life-changing effect on you both mentally and physically.

As we gain access to more knowledge that resonates with you, it can be implemented into your life at your own pace, but make sure to do it carefully and respectfully; don’t do it all at once like I did, because you will be overwhelmed and increase the risk of giving up because it’s all too much and you’ve burned yourself out. I learned well from that experience, and now I’m changing at a pace that’s better for me so I can experience and integrate the changes without knocking myself out. Life is a journey not a race. Implement slowly and live and understand the changes to your life because that’s what it’s all about – living in the now, experiencing your life growing and changing and expanding and becoming more and more conscious on this earth. It’s a very precious time to be alive – use it well and suck it up.

Contact me about how I can help you remove those negative blocks and subconscious programing to allow you to love yourself and step-out into the world unashamed of showing it, and the resultant new, more confident you, that emerges like a phoenix rising from the ashes.

I Love You.