The biggest surprise (and a relief ) for me was when I discovered that loving myself has nothing to do with trying to love myself more.
Has everything to do with just being who I am. Being in love with myself just happened because I start to stop hiding me and start discovering who I actually am.
When I first time heard about loving myself more (of course with the hidden motive to get a boyfriend – if I love myself then others will naturally love me more.)
How I tried to Love myself and FAIL
First I used affirmation. I deeply and completely love myself was written on my walls, wardrobe, and other most visited places. Yet the moment when somebody criticized me or was mean to me, all the love that I felt for myself, just vanish. Then I tried with pampering my body. That did not last either. The moment I heard unkind comment at my workplaces from the customer, my body freeze and send me 30 years back into my childhood standing in front of a mean teacher at school. So I uncheck that from my 30 ways of How to love myself. Try a few similar things with no results.
What happened when I gave up LOVING myself
Slowly I get out of options and I just gave up my list. Decided to just spend more time to do what I already love and start to explore what could be interesting to try. At 30 I enroll in drama class and jazz ballet class and find myself among much younger girls. I just follow the subtle impulses that lead me to different activities. Until I start to notice subtle differences between what my logical mind wants me to try and what makes my heart sing. I notice that I actually enjoy my life more, felt more excitement inside me when I woke up in the morning and think less and less how I need somebody to love me.
I discovered that I actually start to feel the love inside me. Inside me was the feeling of love that did not come from anybody else.
That’s how I discovered the secret of loving myself
It was that simple BEING MYSELF – that is the key to self-love.
And now I know what I need to put onto my checklist – 30 steps to loving myself. My heart always had to laugh at my logical mind. My heart knows that there is no magical number of steps. But my logical mind love numbers (The only thing except drawing that I liked in the school was math.)
My checklist for loving myself (being me)
(questions to discover more of who I am and who do I want to became.
Join my heart whisperers tribe and get access to FREE library and download ALL MY questions that lead me (and others) to self love.
Why is so hard to love yourself?
Because you are love, infinite love. There is no more to add to that infinite. When you are trying to love yourself more, you are trying to do things for your personality, for your body, for your emotions. But you can not increase the feeling of love with loving yourself more. What you actually want ( and me too), is to experience more this feeling of love (like first time being in love, being totally accepted as you are by someone, holding little baby for half a minutes in your hands, receiving smile from little child, holding a puppy or experience the love and playfulness from your pet, dog, horse…) You could achieve that only when you totally forget all the steps to get there.
Why is even harder to love yourself in relationship?
We learn in life (usually thru painful events and not receiving love back) that the way to get love is to BE what others WANT you to be.
At first, it starts with your mother, father then the teacher and your friends. I once start analyzing my past and asking myself who would still be my friend if I would show them all of my authentic self?
The answer was NONE. Maybe you were luckier and your answer would be less than zero. But I never meet the person (yet?) who would say ALL of them.
I always hide that I was smart as much as I could. I also hide that my intuition whispered to me about all the hidden motives that my friends have to keep me as a friend.
What happen, when we stop trying to love ourselves?
Loving yourself could easily become another task on your daily to-do list. That is the moment when you change the LOVE into another JOB to do. Another task that you need to check on your to-do list to get something (love?).
The moment you turn the self LOVE into something that you need to work on to get, you start assuming about yourself:
I don’t deserve love.
To deserve love I need to do something (many things) for myself. When love is not an action that will give you a feeling of love.
I was so preoccupied with doing part at the beginning of self-love quest that I forget that there are nobody and nothing to receive that love. I was doing all those self-loving actions and still hiding the big part of myself. And that hidden part was not able to receive and hold all that love that I tried to generate with self-loving actions. I was almost like creating gallons of delicious nectar without having a container to store it.
Fear of being who we are
Now you know that path to self-love is being your authentic self. But that is scary. It was for me. I had to face all kind of fears. I’m too old to try jazz ballet, not flexible enough, they will laugh at me. Or: I always loved writing but all my school essay never receive an award. Why would I tried now, I already know that I don’t have what it takes to share my experience thru writing? And my English is not good enough.
Do you have sometimes similar thoughts? I know that some will be a turn off by my not perfect English. But I also know that for some my writing leads them to my classes and finding the love, they believe that is not possible.
Join my heart whisperers tribe and get access to FREE library and download ALL MY questions that lead me (and others) to self love.
What happen when your partner has a relationship with your pretense self?
When we are afraid of sharing all of ourselves because of fear, that we will lose this person or scared her or him or cause that she/he will run away, we already lost love. Because we are not who we are and we build a relationship with that person as somebody who we are not.
That is a sure way to failure. The pretense part of our self will have a relationship with that person. The pretense self- our roles –we will be in our head not in our heart.
We can not build heart connection (and that is the only way to experience love on the deeper level, without fighting and living our lessons) without being who we are.
W hen others are not prepared to see ‘new’ you
Sometimes it could be scary for our partner and the people close to use when we stop hiding. Be patient with others. S/he needs time to get to know who you really are. Suddenly you are a stranger to your partner. When you are not in a relationship, it’s easier. Do not fear to stop hiding. When you start a relationship without trying to be seen in the best light possible, you will not waste your time dating people who do not love you for whom you are. So being scared to be who you are with the other person is normal. But what is this scared feeling in comparison to all the love that will show up in your life after you are willing to be open and vulnerable?
Your relationship is defined by your self love – or lack of it
Lack of self love -hid ding yourself will cause this:
Without you – heart connection could not exist
When you hide part of you- there are no possibilities for a heart connection. This hidden part of you can’t connect with other parts. Because the role you are playing is not connected to your heart. Your head and mind create that role. In that role, there is no real part of your heart. And you will have a relationship of two personalities. Who will work on their issues and their karma and going thru fight and resistance and pain? And the only thing that is needed here is to stop working on this pretense part of you and there be no issues, karma, or pain to work on. No lessons to learn.
Join my heart whisperers tribe and get access to FREE library and download ALL MY questions that lead me (and others) to self love.
