Thursday, Sep 30, 2010Learning To Love Yourself

There can be no relationship more real and more valuable than the one you have with yourself. That’s right: learning to love yourself – self love. Please don’t set this concept aside thinking that I’m off track here. Take a look at yourself and make a change. Please hunt deeply for what is true and see if, by the end of the article, you don’t agree with me, because the perfect person you need to find lives inside the imperfect person you know as yourself.

With self love and healing in your life, you change from dull to a heightened sense of aliveness. The sky is bluer, your happiness is happier, the food tastes better, and you think that your life is definitely worth living. Love in your life feeds your soul and keeps you moving steadily down the path.

We don’t realize very early in our lives that the need for love is the underlying emotion behind the desire for fame, the stand we take for honor, the home we keep meticulously clean, the fashionable garments with which we clothe ourselves. All of those things are about being lovingly accepted and approved of. Thomas Aquinas says “Well-ordered self love is right and natural.”

You can begin from where you are right now and learn to unfold self love, self approval and self acceptance. You can add to your life the joys that these three for-the-self virtues bring along with them. One of the very best ways of learning to love yourself is to repeat words of affirmation with the hope of discovering the deepest truths they hold inside. When you repeat the affirmations, think deeply about their truths to see how it applies to you. Ask questions of yourself to discover more.

You can search on the internet for quotations that sing to your heart. Just enter the words “self love quotations” into your search engine and the abundance is amazing. I’ve listed a few words of affirmation here in addition to the quotations you’ll find yourself that can help you to unfold a new sense of self love:

• I am the essence of goodness and love.

• I love and approve of my Self

• I accept myself exactly as I am right now

• Love is always in my heart radiating forth

• I love my Self completely

• My Self has everything within it for my life and I love that

• It’s easy for me to love my Self and others

• I give love away with no thought of myself

• Other people find it easy to love me back

• I am loved and appreciated by my family and my friends

• My supply of love has no end

• The love I feel for myself is easy to extend outward

• I am gracious about accepting the love of others

• My self love is attractive to other loving beings

• I always deserve to love myself and have others love me

• My loving self-relationship attracts other loving relationships into my life

I’m wondering if you’re feeling uncomfortable by this time or if you’re feeling a sense of relief? So many of us did not get the loving nurturing and the peace-filled environment in which to foster self love. Well, here it is, today, and right now. What can you do today, right now, to begin learning to love yourself?

Can you set aside fifteen minutes in a quiet room or in a quiet place outside? Can you tell yourself to set aside all the worries of the day for just fifteen minutes? Can you ask your mind and your heart to think about self love for just fifteen minutes? While you’re thinking in your quiet place, can you begin to formulate a list of things you can love within yourself? Can you slowly read to yourself the words of affirmation above to discover their truth within you? Our life is a step-by-step process. If you begin to take these small steps, can you imagine how your life will begin to Become the Change?

“To have that sense of one’s intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference.” ~ Joan Didion

“We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.” – Sam Keane