If you want to soar in life, you must first love yourself

If you want to soar in life, you must first love yourself.

“You have to love yourself because no amount of love from others is sufficient to fill the yearning that your soul requires from you” – Dodinsky

So many of you have put the cart before the horse when it comes to love. You spend all of your time “earning” the love of others by being who they want you to be. By doing everything in your power to make their life perfect. You put others ahead of yourself and at the end of the day, nothing turns out the way you wanted it to.  You are left feeling like a failure, just “not good enough”.

There is a show on PBS called “Home Fires”.  It takes place in England during WWII.  It’s about a women’s group that contributes to the village and the war effort.  In the first season there is one woman whose husband abuses her.  Like all abusers he makes every time he loses his temper to be her fault.  The real issue at hand for the story line is that he is a newspaper writer who can’t get enough work, so of course he takes it out on someone he is supposed to love.

A few of her best friends figure out what is happening, but at the point in history there really isn’t anything they can do about it.  She is too ashamed to admit what is happening.  The times that she struggles to fight back, he leaves her self-worth in even more tatters.  At the end of the first season, one of her friends was successful in getting him a war correspondent job without him being aware of her having a hand in it.

He leaves the village to go to the front, and now his wife has the opportunity to start loving herself and building up her self-esteem.  The hope being that she doesn’t fall back into the same situation when he returns.  One of the underlying contributors of why women stay in abusive situations is that they don’t love themselves enough to gather up what remains of their self-worth and self-trust, to leave and not look back.

“Love yourself enough to take the actions required for your happiness.  Love yourself enough to cut yourself loose from the ties of the drama filled past.  Love yourself enough to move on” – Dr. Steve Maraboli

You may not be in such an extreme situation with your self-love, but you only have to listen to the comments you make to yourself, to know that it is something you can still do more work on.

When you live your life in such a way that reflects, you’re coming in last, you buy into a lie.  A lie that loving yourself first will take away from loving others.  A lie that says the only way to be worthy of self-love, is to prove that others love you first. How could you attract the love of others, if you don’t even love yourself?

Trying to in essence purchase the love of others by the self sacrifice of yourself, is like trying to fit the square peg in the round hole.  You can push it, twist it, and pound the peg until it shatters, but it will never fit. It won’t fill that yearning from your soul, that begs you to put “love us” first.

5 Things to Quit – right now.

• Trying to please everyone
• Fearing Change
• Living in the past
• Putting yourself down
• Overthinking

You have the power to choose where you are going. You have the power to stop trying to get attention from those who hurt you most. You have the power to stop hating your body, your personality, and the pieces of you that don’t fit in the square hole.

You can start with loving yourself, saying “I love my thighs just as they are”, “I love my imperfect smile”, “I love that I snort when I laugh”, “I love me”.  You can get the truth of the situation into your bones – nobody will ever love you more than you love yourself.

It is critically important to your health and happiness – both physical and mental – that you treat yourself right.

What if for the rest of this year you devoted yourself to loving you more?  Your choices will change your life.

Make peace with your mirror and watch your reflection change.  The loss of judgment in your eyes.  The removing of the wrinkles of anxiety across the forehead, that you aren’t good enough.  The curve of the smile of self-confidence, that says you are amazing, and you are rocking that outfit.  The glow of inner peace and love that fills your space with light.  And – LOL – Best hair day EVER!