Learn To Love Yourself And Advance In Self-knowledge
Loving ourselves well is not just about treating ourselves or doing activities that we like. Learning to love yourself is a path to finding our intrinsic goodness. It is resting deep within us and trusting that we can unfold our potential and abandon causing harm to ourselves.
Throughout our history, we store conditioning, tendencies that limit us with greater or lesser intensity and prevent us from maintaining a state of well-being.
Learned behaviors that protect against hostile, harmful environments or other painful factors that are no longer necessary. In our present they close our hearts, distancing us from potentially beneficial or enriching experiences. Learning to love ourselves is to regain confidence in being able to embrace authentic happiness.
Travel a path of self-knowledge. Explore our mind. How we are, what our predominant emotions are and how they affect us. We can attribute qualities to ourselves that we do not have and deny others by projecting onto others what makes us uncomfortable.
Self-love needs to create an internal bond through honesty and courage. Know our defects to polish them and our qualities to enhance them. If we do not open our hearts to what is inside, we will hardly be able to love each other.
Give us permission to shed our masks. Encounter our reality without disguises or self-deception and embrace what we find.
2. Accept ourselves as we are
Sometimes we reject some of our facets out of shame or pain. We corner them without giving them space, creating suffering and bitterness. We need to accept them. Without excuses or conditions.
Connect with love for ourselves, stop hurting ourselves and allow ourselves to be happy. Abandon passive indulgence towards our conditioning, “I am like this and I am not going to change.” Open an internal space with love and kindness where you can integrate those disapproved and hidden facets. Defrost the ice cubes that we keep in dark and remote places with love and warmth. Only from that unconditional acceptance, can we begin to love ourselves.
3. Understand our conditioning
From the moment we are born we write our history and leave traces on our conscience. Having information about our ancestors, family system, the context in which we grew up will help us understand many unknowns. Expanding the vision of our lives allows us to understand ourselves better.
Comprehension, honesty and a good internal relationship They open our hearts to self-esteem and healthy love. Reviewing our biography may open resentments or unclosed wounds, but we need to do it to release them.
Maybe we need specialized help to walk this path, if so, it is good to seek it. Accumulating reproaches and anger will bring us bitterness. It will not allow us to let go of what hurts us. Loving each other well is helping us be happy, being our best friends. Dust off what distances us from the intrinsic goodness of our hearts and trust it to make it shine.
4. Commit to us
We make work, school, judicial, contractual, marital commitments… And what about us? Where are we?
The most important commitment we can keep is the commitment to ourselves. Connect on a deep level with our hearts. Committing to taking care of ourselves, not harming ourselves and protecting ourselves is a vow that we should renew frequently.
We can review how we want to start this commitment. Make a list of what helps us connect with our heart and what distances us. Incorporate time in our hectic lives to listen to each other. Learn to truly love ourselves, without stinginess or deception.
5. Attend and take care of our three doors: the body, the word and the mind.
To love ourselves well, we have to take care of our body, watch our mind and pay attention to our word. There are three revolving doors to the outside that go straight to the heart. A conscious and vigilant attention to what enters and leaves them shows us a path to learn to love ourselves.
Tune in with our body
The body is the place we inhabit. Through sensory awareness (taste, touch, sight, smell, hearing), we communicate with the outside world. Each stimulus has a bodily resonance. A caress, a stomp, a murmur or a scream have a very different impact.
It is easy for us to live disconnected from the body. We find it difficult to identify our needs or tune into body awareness.
To learn to love ourselves we need to tune the frequency with our body. Learn to listen to it, to respect it. Feed him properly, give him rest, movement, care. If we tune in with full attention to our senses, we will be more selective and careful with what enters our heart: noise, junk food, hyperstimulation, lack of sleep, aggressive images, overinformation… We will better filter what is healthy and block the way to harmful elements. .
The way we look at our body determines how we relate to it. If there is rejection or shame, we will live disintegrated. Our head will go one way and our body the other. We will punish ourselves consciously or unconsciously and we will give rise to illnesses, distortions of our reality or self-harming tendencies. Connecting requires listening, respect and patience.
The body anchors us to the earth so we can aspire to go further.
Watching our word
The word is a very powerful weapon. Spiritual teachers tell us: “When you are alone, observe your mind. When you are with people, watch your word.” Watching the word is also a way of loving ourselves well.
We can speak without words. In these days of confinement, if we spend time alone, becoming aware of our internal dialogues will help us better understand how we communicate. What we tell ourselves and how we do it. This internal word can easily come out of our mouths to encourage or harm other people.
Depending on how we communicate with others, we will receive a response. The relationship with others is part of a good relationship with ourselves. If we take care of the way we communicate, we will provide a meeting space from dialogue and understanding.
Observing our mind
The mind is the boss. The way we behave, communicate, take care of ourselves is born in our mind.
Thoughts or emotions are manifestations of our mind. They arise from it and dissolve in it, like waves in the ocean. If we train ourselves to be vigilant and attentive, we can better manage our internal world so that it does not harm us and is kinder to us. Thoughts in a loop drag us and steal energy. It is good to observe them, and realize that there are many of them that are susceptible to change. Distinguish the negatives and transform them into positives.
When feelings of discouragement appear, accept them, go to the root and turn them around. The challenge is to accept what arises without getting carried away by it.
Conclusion
We need to learn to love ourselves in a healthy way; be our best friends.
When self-esteem is very damaged, it is necessary to seek therapeutic support. Releasing deep-seated conditioning is not easy, because we have many resistances to letting go. They have been our companions for many years. If you decide to commit to learning to love yourself, seek help, do not doubt that it is worth it.
