Did you know that a lot of issues problems people
have in relationships (and life for that matter) are due to low levels of self
love?
Truly, if you don’t love yourself, you would find it
hard to love anyone. Indeed, love, like life, travels in a circle.
The more you love yourself, the greater freedom you feel to express yourself. Then the more you express yourself, the easier it is for people to appreciate the real you and not simply the image you project. And the more appreciation and love you receive, the more you can love yourself.
This is a cycle of increasing love and honest self-expression. When you don’t love yourself, this cycle moves in the opposite direction of decreasing love and diminished self-expression.
Here are four important steps to help you define what it means to love yourself and to help you have the best out of relationships.
1. Appreciate yourself
Many of us are taught from childhood that to appreciate ourselves is vain, and vanity is not good. Modesty is an admirable quality, but we often do too good a job of being modest and therefore diminish our self-appreciation for those things that we have accomplished and do well.
2. Desire yourself
We are taught to share early in life. Again, this is an admirable quality. The problem is that as we seek the love and acceptance of our parents and elders many of us become expert at self-sacrifice without learning that some of our dreams will only be accomplished if we focus on our own wants, needs, and desires.
3. Express yourself
The effort to please your parents, family and friends often comes at the price of self-expression. You become preoccupied with becoming like other people and surrender the chance to express your own uniqueness. In time you learn to live with a sense of inner failure and frustration because you have buried your potential for success.
4. Be yourself
If you experienced love being turned on and off to you as a child, you probably decided that your worth and goodness depends on your ability to please others. Simply being yourself might have earned you little praise or recognition so you changed your behavior and actions...and yourself.
Hoping to see you grow in love.
The more you love yourself, the greater freedom you feel to express yourself. Then the more you express yourself, the easier it is for people to appreciate the real you and not simply the image you project. And the more appreciation and love you receive, the more you can love yourself.
This is a cycle of increasing love and honest self-expression. When you don’t love yourself, this cycle moves in the opposite direction of decreasing love and diminished self-expression.
Here are four important steps to help you define what it means to love yourself and to help you have the best out of relationships.
1. Appreciate yourself
Many of us are taught from childhood that to appreciate ourselves is vain, and vanity is not good. Modesty is an admirable quality, but we often do too good a job of being modest and therefore diminish our self-appreciation for those things that we have accomplished and do well.
2. Desire yourself
We are taught to share early in life. Again, this is an admirable quality. The problem is that as we seek the love and acceptance of our parents and elders many of us become expert at self-sacrifice without learning that some of our dreams will only be accomplished if we focus on our own wants, needs, and desires.
3. Express yourself
The effort to please your parents, family and friends often comes at the price of self-expression. You become preoccupied with becoming like other people and surrender the chance to express your own uniqueness. In time you learn to live with a sense of inner failure and frustration because you have buried your potential for success.
4. Be yourself
If you experienced love being turned on and off to you as a child, you probably decided that your worth and goodness depends on your ability to please others. Simply being yourself might have earned you little praise or recognition so you changed your behavior and actions...and yourself.
Hoping to see you grow in love.
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