Do You Like Yourself?
Here are 7 areas you can work on to embrace your self love:
- Money and Achievement:
We just need to intend a new beginning and we find ourselves taking steps towards a new reality.
This was my identity, a lack of self-love. I had mistakenly taken my self worth to be measured by money, evaluated by the opinions of others and the tasks that I completed. I had no understanding that my presence and essence in itself, made me worthy. If I am “me”, I am already worthy. The cells of my body, did not know this.
In a society in which achievement is recognized, I fell into the collective programming of ambition, “do-ing” and achieving. Success became a glorified external thing, not an internal state. Reward is earned: to be at the top of a class, to have credentials, to be a “somebody”!
This is what the cells of my body knew. I had been programmed in this way since birth. In fact most of us are, even if we do not recognize it cognitively.
- Internal Dialogue:
Despite beautiful successes, I found the tyrant of my mind, relentless in its call for perfection, wanting me to be accurate in my moral judgment on ALL occasions, and pushing me to be responsible towards others at any expense. My mind never considered me on its agenda!
Everything outside of “me” was a priority, and “I” was afraid to even think that I should be somewhere on the list.
I engaged in internally self-sabotaging dialogue, trapped in a reality in which I tolerated self-abuse, self-judgment, self-criticism, self-hatred, self-condemnation and harshness.
Had I been too rigid? Should I have taken more time to listen? Could I have avoided being angry? Am I wrong in my choice? Had I used people? Could I have been kinder? Was I wrong to say no? Should I have been more honest? Should I do more? Could I let someone down? It went on, and on and on!
I had no idea, that all these self-upsetting conversations were designed to help me.
- Am I willing to be Responsible:
When we take measures to claim our “self- worth”, the story of our journey takes a 180-degree shift, and fortunately for me the wisdom blossomed to address all of these self-condemning noises.
The starting point was to be honest with myself and to observe the lack of true happiness that I felt inside. I was being called to take responsibility for me, to address the heaviness inside….and to take responsibility for everything that I had believed about the rules that society had subtly helped me to be hypnotized by.
It was time out- an opportunity to consider what I actually needed. Why was I thinking the things that I was? Where had those conclusions come from? Why did I feel like two people and not one? Who was this chatting voice, the inner critic? The more I concentrated on my inner state, the more my inside became intriguing. The more I explored the more I shocked myself by discovering how those crazy thoughts had arisen.
The wonderful by product of this deep search within, was living in a body that felt lighter, calmer and happier inside. As this happened, the world outside of me began to offer back to me a new reality, as I took courage to break the link with these self-limiting thoughts. A new reality in which I became more compassionate, forgiving, understanding and heart-centered, but all without having to compromise myself.
Tolerance for self-abuse is very low when we have self-love, because we like ourselves just the way we are. For this of course, self-acceptance is absolutely key. This is not because we feel perfect, No! It is more because the female and male energy inside us has come into balance.
How many of us can actually say “I like myself”?
How many of us are willing to say “ I love being me”?
- Illusion of the Outside World:
All the time I was working in the material world, the paycheck seemed to hide my lack of self worth.
When I played the role of being more insignificant, I awoke to a new reality- a reality that was much more self-depriving than I had realized! I came to terms with the fact that I too, had fallen for a collective story, that perhaps mums are merely something less than the people that make money. I guess this is the quiet message we receive in a patriarchal society.
Without an external job, I lacked an identity. I had bought into the idea that I should be a machine, designed to be of service to society, and if I found myself not taking part then suddenly I was not enough!
I had bought into the idea that if I am a woman, born into a brown family, then obviously I am less than a man. My defensive responses bore truth to this wound inside.
I had believed my emotions and their story of my wounded and helpless, weak state.
My previous busyness in life had avoided me falling victim to hear these inappropriate conclusions. This was the same as numbing out or pushing away the truth, since without time many of us never notice that this is what we are doing to ourselves. Sadly most of humanity is busy- keeping busy to never have to face themselves.
If we have “less action” to be engaged in, then we find ourselves wondering how to define ourselves, feeling confused or disorientated, lost in a new oblivion of questions!
When we are not so busy we can actually hear what is happening inside us and this can be overwhelming for many! We try to run away from this feeling of nothingness, and we try to fill it with new duties and tasks.
If new duties cannot be sought we try to relieve the depressing thoughts with medication and or drugs that help us to escape. Our escape is always outwards, alcohol, television, medicines, doctors, volunteer work…..etc etc. And yet if we went into those dark thoughts and feelings, our real rescue becomes within reach.
- Embracing a “Nobody”:
- Our needs:
We human beings hunt to fulfill our needs, and we become the predators, not knowing that it is for something we do not need. We hunt for love outside, ONLY when we do not have love for ourselves, and think it is lacking. Interestingly it is the state of most of the human race.
Everything we need is inside ourselves- hunting for justice, god, happiness, love- that is what we are doing on this earth, and yet all of it resides within! There is no lack!!! From what I have discovered, Inward leadership reveals the most magnificent gifts and shows us what is not lacking, and how much we are full. Full in our true nature.
Parasites love fear, drama, anger and jealousy and this is where all of the self-abuse comes from, driven by our own ego. As soon as we stop comparing ourselves to others, stop evaluating ourselves by a preconceived notion of what we should be, and accept that every mistake made was deliberately designed to make us wiser, we finally recognize with compassion the folly of self-judgment and our inner critic. This is the part of us that is a predator: the part of us that wants to be redeemed.
It is a war for freedom in a real sense. The warrior part of us is the hunter who is hunting to find itself! We simply need to become a better hunter than the parasite inside of us driven by our ego! Our ego that is conditioned by so many illogical conclusions.
As we watch the ego, and we see we are not it, and we observe our actions that come from a deeper silent knowing, we finally are able to take full responsibility for our actions. With self awareness we determine whether we choose to be loving towards ourselves or not. We choose to be fooled by our ego or not.
- Seeing with eyes of love:
Interestingly for me, the role of being a mother, focused on the needs of my home full-time, forced me to embrace my self worth. A role to which not much societal recognition is offered. A role in which it is common place for the needs of others to be placed ahead of our own.
You see every old conclusion I had made, became useless and a lie in this new reality. If I am not earning, it wasn’t true that I suddenly became worthless. If I am not inventing, and creating in the world, surely I still have value?
My love is creative. My capacity to respond to the emotional messages of my family is my essence in action. Every meal I make is the sharing of my creativity and love. In fact my nurturing had a lot of value, the value that helps to connect us and feeds our souls.
I had to find a way to drop the shame of not meeting external expectations. I had to relieve myself of the guilt associated with wanting to concentrate on me. I had to re-define the word “selfish”.
I had to face my internal demons and insecurities, my fears and my anguish, and understand what they were telling me about my real truth.
I had to find my real power, the power that comes beyond the ego attached stories. This sort of power creates just for the joy of doing so, with no thought of external reward, outcome or return.
This power is not used to control others but more is just a recognition of the fact that wonders can be done through us- if we simply embrace what it means to be unique, to have our phoebles and biases, and yet to recognize the sameness that we have with everyone around us. It is our emotions and vulnerabilities that help us most to understand this, not fake masks that try to hide what is happening inside us.
Every cell in our body depends on us…to those cells we are god, and they are completely loyal to us. We will end up saying sorry to our own body and apologize to it, and begin to take care of it again, when we see that we are god towards it!!!
If we reject our own body, we are rejecting ourselves. We have to accept our body, and only then is there true acceptance of everything. Everything inside of us, and everything outside of us too.
We no longer fit in with the old people that are continuing to numb themselves away from their own emotions and thoughts. We appear as if we are strangers to those that are choosing to remain very busy.
We become willing to step back from our old reality and no longer accept certain types of abuse that existed in that realm. We see with compassionate eyes, that those were our stepping stones to liberation.
