Loving me Loving you

Loving me loving you

Our capacity to show love to others is directly proportional to the amount of self-love we are feeling at the time.

Even when we say we love someone there are times when we are not showing all that love to them. When we have not been attending to our own needs and not remembering to love ourselves our perspective is altered. Sometimes this is temporary and can easily lead to an argument and sometimes it goes on much longer and shapes our personality and the relationship. When we are not feeling self-love we are more likely to see others faults, judge them, blame them, and complain that they are not showing us love or fulfilling our needs. We are looking for love in the wrong way.

When we are feeling good, and loving ourselves we tend to be able to show more empathy, see the funny side of things, understand, feel generous, love everyone, inspire, and be naturally fun and easy to be around, so love naturally flows towards us.

If you have ever felt unloved or unappreciated it can be very empowering to remind yourself of this. To know that others can only give love to you from the place they are at at the time. To remind yourself that you can only feel love to the degree that you think you are worth it and that it must come from you to you first.

How to love yourself

1. First you need to challenge the belief that loving yourself is wrong, selfish or self-centred. Putting others before yourself is not loving and does not mean you are more worthy of love. Attempting to love from this perspective eventually leads to resentment and feeling unloved as you are expecting others to show you your worth in proportion to your selfless deeds. Other people can feel this pressure you place on them. And remember they can only show you love in proportion to how much they are loving themselves. So when they are self-loving they will be very loving back to you in response to your selfless deed but when they are not they will not show you the amount of love you were hoping for so you will feel unloved.

When you give to others from a place of absolute self-love, it doesn’t matter how the receiver reacts. It doesn’t effect you because you are already feeling love. Therefor you are more likely to give when you can. There is no risk in showing love to others. You are free to love and enjoy it fully.

2. Form your own opinion of yourself that is based in the most love you can possibly feel about yourself. Pick a time when you are feeling good about yourself and the world and make this your truth. It may help to write it out. Write loving statements only. Don’t be tempted to ask others opinions. What others think of you is none of your business. What others think of you is proportional to what they think of themselves and the amount of self-love they have at the time. If you have formed the pattern of judging yourself harshly then go easy on yourself and simply start challenging your judgments. When you catch yourself being negative about yourself stop and say ‘I love myself’ smile and let it go. Eventually this will become automatic and your perspective of yourself will change.

3. Ask yourself every day. ‘What do I need to feel good today? Give it to yourself. Give yourself rest, music, nourishment, play, daydream time, sunshine, adventure, connection, me time, nice things, praise, mediation, and time to do other things you love to do. Schedule this into your day as the priority it should be. After all if you want to be a better mom, employee, partner or friend etc then it has to start with you meeting your own needs first. Think of self-love as fuel and yourself as the vehicle. No matter how much you have to be somewhere on time, or how much you have to do today you can’t go too far in your vehicle if the fuel tank is on low. You can try but eventually you will be forced to stop and fill up. If you don’t you will eventually break down.

4. Learn to set boundaries. This one was hard for me. Saying no can mean risking being judged and being unloved if you are still believing your love and sense of self-worth comes from others. It can make you feel like you are being selfish. Setting boundaries means not putting others feelings and needs before your own or making them more important. It means asking yourself if the other persons needs and feelings are more important than yours. It doesn’t mean you will stop doing things for others. It just means that you will want to do things for others and feel good doing them because you are coming from a place of feeling loving of yourself and others. It is about being true to yourself, checking in with yourself and loving yourself enough to stick up for yourself. It means being able to say no to others and not be effected by their reaction or opinion because you know that others ability to show love and respect for your needs is proportional to their level of self-love at the time. (that was a mouthful lol). It means recognising that when you are feeling low, that your self-love is low and that this is the time to give to yourself first and sometimes that means saying no to others. It means that if someone else is expecting you or even putting pressure on you to put their needs above yours then they are attempting to get their love needs met through you and not giving it to themselves.

5. No matter how much you love someone else you can’t replace their self love and make them feel loved. We are responsible for the amount of love we feel and so are they. We are all on our own journeys in this life. We can only set an example of how to love yourself and interact with others from this perspective. Sometimes those we love find their own path to self love, in their own time and sometimes they try harder and become more desperate to get it from others. This is why people come and go in your life. No one is wrong or right we are all just finding our way.

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