What does loving yourself mean to you? We hear about it a lot these days. What does it really boil down to for you, personally?
Whenever I read yet another self help book, in the hope to revolutionize my life, I always read along the lines that no matter what rituals we do, how many kilograms we loose, how much we earn or have financially, our emotional wellbeing and happiness is closely linked to how much we love, value, appreciate and like ourselves.
Many of us are on this roller-coaster of achieving, earning, accomplishing, decorating our lives with expensive and shiny objects or things. While there is nothing wrong with having and enjoying a lot, it is never a substitute for love. Or liking yourself. When I see intelligent, talented hardworking people so invested and dependent on their status, job or that Porsche they drive as as source of their ‘lovability‘, I wonder what reasons they will have left to be happy with themselves if all of those things get removed from them?
Loving ourselves. I am on this topic for a very long 10 years or more. And now, looking back, I understand how clueless or mistaken I was, when I tried to interpret and apply the logic of unconditional love.
To me, loving yourself is the voice/loving and warm presence inside you. This quiet presence is soft, caring, and gentle and remains intact and un-shattered by whatever is going on on the surface. The most important characteristic of this inner core is that it quietly and persistently insists, that YOU are worthy, enough, and deserve to feel good, to be treated kindly, and you are allowed to enjoy life and ARE LOVED. It is a persistent quiet celebration of you, gladness that you are here, it is an inner forgiving hug that wraps you after a disastrous mistake and strokes your hair, looking through this as a mere mistake, which has no impact whatsoever on how wonderful, loved, appreciated and forever worthy of love and good you are.
This presence waits quietly and tries to whisper the truth and reminds you of your enoughness, when you frantically chase next BIG THING that you think will fix you or (hopefully) make you cool and worthy and lovable.
This presence knows that we may have made mistakes, wrong decisions; have hurt others or ourselves around us. It is aware that we have for years gave our power away and made external situations or people the judges of just how much respect, acceptance or love we shall give to ourselves. No matter how big the mistake, or how grave is the crime in terms of the judgments and rules of this world, this presence in never interested in punishment, blame or scolding. It is not aware of what those things are. It is calmly aware of our forever present and inalienable worth, innocence and loveliness.
Lets calmly and persistently insist that we are good. We are enough. We are worthy. And we deserve to feel and experience gladness for/of being ourselves.