Is it easier to love someone else – or yourself?
For me, I found it much easier to love someone else – or did I? Actually, when I was young I longed to love another and never thought about me. I guess I believed deep down that if someone loved me and I loved them, I would feel good and be fine.
What about you? What do you believe about love? Do you believe that all you need to do is find the love of your life and all will be fine?
The answer is: it depends. If you grew up in a warm loving family atmosphere and got lots of love and nurturing – with appropriate limits – there is a good chance that you will find the love of your life and live happily ever after. About 50% of long-term relationships are like this. The secret of their success – they already have come to love themselves Loving themselves, they feel worthy to find mates they can respect, trust and believe in. They feel worthy of a good lovingneed-satisfying relationship and they settle for no less.
Do you have that kind of love? Or do you long for it? Rose, brought up in a divorced household by a critical father and depressed mother, married a man similar to her childhood experience. To this day, she longs for a warm nurturing mutually need-satisfying relationship but can’t find enough worthiness in her to make the break. She is afraid to explore new possibilities. Why? She doesn’t believe anyone better will want her. Very sad!
Lindsay, feeling as unloved and unworthy as Rose, found another way of getting all the love she needed, She bought not one but two dogs who gave her all the unconditional love she wanted. She loves the way her dogs leap onto the bed and night and curl up at her feet. Whereas Lindsay’s husband seems to give her lots of love and caring, Lindsay is so self-critical that her husband’s love isn’t felt very often. Only the dogs get through. How sad!
Our Conclusion
Our conclusion at Extraordinary Self Programs is that love is not blind. It really depends on each person’s own insides. If you feel loving and worthy on the inside, your life will most likely mirror that on the outside. If you weren’t blessed with that secure, nurturing childhood, but instead grew up in a cold or critical or controlling or depressive household, your chances of finding the love of your life go down. Fortunately, there is an antidote called “Learning to Love Yourself.” – not easy for someone who has self-critical or depressive or controlling insides.
Learning to love yourself is like redecorating your home – not easy but possible. It is not a simple or one-day process. If you want to learn to love yourself more, first you need to commit to it long-term. Then get busy. It will take commitment, time and learning new skills and abilities.
Learning to Love Yourself
To get you started, let’s break learning to love yourself down into categories and focus on each. You will need to:
Notice what you are thinking and feeling inside as much as possible. Mindfulness turned inward is what this is about. Ask yourself all day long: What am I thinking? What am I feeling? What inner images am I seeing? Write down your explorations when you have the time. Keeping a journal will help you get a good sense of what your everyday internal world is like. Notice when you are self-critical, jealous, angry, depressed.
Identify your triggers. Triggers are external events and internal thoughts, feelings and images that shift your narrative or the story you are telling yourself. Maybe you are expecting someone to be kind to you and they aren’t. That could set off a negative chain of self-critical thoughts and feelings, for example.
Learn to detach from your triggers – Yes, you can learn to step back and observe what is going on in you without reacting mentally and emotionally. Not the easiest skill to learn but well worth it. Is it doable? Yes, doctors, therapists, teachers, actors, politicians and millions of others have learned to detach. Detaching gives you the ability to reset or change what is going on inside you. We at Extraordinary Self Programs specialize in teaching how to detach while staying connected. It is an art!
Shift thoughts while detached – If you are noticing negative thoughts toward you and/or toward another, STOP and start to ask yourself how these negative thoughts serve you. If they harm more than hurt, write them down and then write down more useful replacements. Read your script over and over until the shift becomes automatic.
Shift beliefs – Sometimes your thoughts have deep roots in your core beliefs, such as “I am not loveable.” Or “I am not worthy enough. Or “ I don’t deserve.” You will need to root these beliefs out and shift them to: “I need to learn to…”.
Shift feelings – As your thoughts and beliefs change in a positive direction, your feelings will come along. While this shift is difficult, It helps to remember any good times where you felt good on the inside to speed up the shift. Or think of people who love you and remember the feeling. You can do this. Never give up here. It is the hardest part for most people.
Shift decisions and actions – When you are feeling good about yourself, so much shifts. You think about how you can self-care and nurture yourself, or find a great friend, or make more money, or attract that love relationship. You stay away from what brings you down. You make different decisions, often to “Yes, I will.” from ”No, I won’t.” You define what you need and you go for it. You set higher goals, learn as you go and stop stopping yourself.
Learning to love Yourself is the Best Gift
Learning to love yourself is the best gift you can give you and opens you up to so much outside gift giving – bringing you more and more happiness and love from the outside and from the inside. Please take the gift of this blog, echoing what we want for you.
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