How to Love Yourself?
Many of us find it difficult to Love ourself. There is a lot of focus on our family, relatives, society and so much effort to share our love to them. We, ourselves are drained and find it difficult to share our love with others because the source of all love is empty.
Where can you generate the love for people in your lives? Do you know any shop where it is available? We derive our love for others from the love for SELF. Yes, we need to love ourself and this love we have for ourselves, helps us to grow, expand and share that love with others. Let’s take an example, let’s say you are really hungry right now- I give you a plate full of food, your first act would be to consume the food on the plate. The moment your tummy is full and I still keep feeding you with more food, you will start looking around to share your food with others who are still hungry, isn’t?
This is how love also works.
“Loving yourself and extending that Love to others is the secret behind successful relationships” – Dr.Girish Kumar
So now comes the important question how to love yourself? Let me list few ways to love yourself from my perspective.
List down the things that you love about yourself : I would request you to do this as an exercise. Take a piece of paper and pen. In case you can’t find one then you can do it in your mind.
List out the things that you love about yourself. Have you finished it?
Interesting and lovely isn’t? There are so many things there we just need to remind ourself of them regularly.
Accept things as is : Easier said than done. But with awareness, practice and perseverance anything is possible. With whatever is happening in your life, just flow with it, without fighting it. Understand that all things happening in your life are for a reason they are happening because the universe wants to teach you a lesson. So be keen on learning and growing rather than complaining and repelling.
Understand your journey and other people journeys are different: It is very common for us to always compare our lives with others, our cars with our neighbour’s car, our FB profile pic with that of our friends’, etc. This leads to dissatisfaction and makes us feel let down. Understand that no two fingers of your hand are the same. No two people lives are the same, even if they are twins. The environment, education, learning, situation everything is absolutely different. So instead of comparing your life with others, start comparing your life with your life yesterday and see how you have progressed in your journey, and celebrate every single progress.
Give yourself a gift everyday: When was the last time you gifted yourself something and that too with 0% guilt???
When I say gift it need not be costly. It can a be a chocolate, a trip, ride, a movie, fruit of your choice, an extra hour of sleep, an extra spoon of ghee, etc. Whatever, just keep gifting yourself every single day. You are sending information to the subconscious that- “I am important to me and I am very happy with myself.” I often, very often gift my self a lot 🙂
Write a gratitude for how you are right now: Yes, all of us have heard about writing/sharing gratitude to other people. When you share gratitude to how you are right now, for the things that is happening in your life now. You will feel the love from the universe. This moment aren’t your breathing? Shouldn’t you share your gratitude?? Make a gratitude list regularly and feel the love.
Move away from Negative people: People either add to your energy or they pull away your energy. Choose the right people to be associated with and see to that you are among people who motivate, push and propel you to give the best in your life. I am blessed to be among people who do that to me and I can feel the love they shower upon me , which makes me to do more and more to the world around me.
Forgive your past: Forgiving may or may not be good for the person whom you forgive. But it is definitely good for you. When you forgive the negative situations and negative people in your past, that helps you to heal yourself and gain more love into your life. When you have stored negative emotions they do not open the space for positive things to enter into your life.
Integrity with self: According to me integrity is alignment- Alignment of your thoughts, feelings, what you say and what you do. Many people will have a mismatch. They will think and feel something but say and do the opposite. What you Think, Feel, Say and Do should have alignment, that will give you a lot of confidence and respect for yourself. This will lead to loving yourself more,.
Register your wins: We tend to keep a tight score of our loses in life, we keep a detailed reason why we failed also. But mostly forget to register the wins as we our so caught up in the other process. I want you to register your every single win, doesn’t matter how small it is. Your spouse seeks your help in putting the thread into the needle and you did it. Hurray!!! Register it. Best method is to, at the end of the day, write down your wins in a notebook and keep tracking it. Until the day you feel it in your blood that you are a winner and ‘you are here to win!’
Give: Last in my list but most important. Whatever we want in live, they say “we get it when we give it”. Give can be materials, but more importantly by giving love, sharing our love we also gain more love. Yes, I did say only when you love yourself you can love others. The moment you start loving yourself, spread the love to the world and you shall receive the same in abundance.
Do share your views and comments 🙂
Ganesh Kumar S
EQ Ignitor | Emotional Intelligence Trainer | Entrepreneur | Life Coach | Author
Thank you for the blog. Loved it.
Hi Ganesh, your blog is awesome,very well articulated…
It is very simple and thought provoking. The list to follow is very useful. Normally we do most of things but we never register. You are right.