How to Love Yourself Before You Look For Love – Part 1

Shoshana’s Comment: There are many variations of my favorite quote, “You must love yourself before you love another. By accepting yourself and fully being what you are, your simple presence can make others happy.” Learning to love yourself and being yourself is important to having a happy, healthy relationship.

Loving yourself starts with the way you think. Are you a victim of negative self talk, it can make you question your greatness and cost you the love you’re looking for in your life. That’s why you need to learn positive thinking. Focusing on the positive can help you find love within yourself.

Ten Ways to Love Yourself – Part I

By: Christine Hogan

Are you ready to love yourself?

Back in the 1980′s when Whitney Houston sang “The Greatest Love of All,” who among us did not have a tear well up when the words, “The greatest love of all is easy to achieve. Learning to love yourself. It is the greatest love of all?”

How do we learn to love ourselves? In her book, The Power Is Within You, Louise L. Hay describes the “Ten Ways to Love Yourself.” In today’s blog post I will talk about the first five ways.

The first way is do away with self criticism. Negative self talk usually stems from our childhood. Children who feel they are never good enough grow up to feel insecure about their self worth. When we believe these lies we start to think and act in ways that actually make it come true. When we believe that we are bad in some way, it becomes very difficult to counter self criticism. Stop self belittling remarks in their tracks. Become aware of what you say to yourself.

The second way to love yourself is stop what psychologist Albert Ellis calls “awfulizing.” We tend to scare ourselves by making mountains out of molehills. For example, the thought that it would be just awful if something does not go our way, is just that–a thought. And, we DO have the power to control our thoughts. Before we know it, when we scare ourselves, we block out all possibility of experiencing joyful feelings, because we are too afraid that we or what we believe will be rejected in some way.

The third way is to be patient with yourself. If we can treat others with kindness why not treat ourselves kindly also? We are all human, and deserve to cut ourselves a break. This life is a journey we are on, there will be hills and valleys to negotiate. It is all okay. The question to ask ourselves is, “how important is this I am thinking? Will it matter 20 or 30 years from now?”

The fourth way is to be “kind to our minds.” Pushing and striving all the time stresses us out. It is important to give ourselves some quiet relief by meditating and relaxing. Quieting our minds gives us an opportunity to connect to our inner guru and become refreshed. The inner wisdom we need to draw upon presents itself in this quietude.

The fifth way is to praise ourselves. This is a good opportunity to utilize positive affirmations. Criticism weakens us and praise builds us up. Do not wait for others to give you the kudos you need. Praise yourself!

Shoshana’s Comment: Remember to practice these as often as possible or you run the risk of allowing negative self talk to rule your life. Your focus should be on positive thinking.

Start by taking the time to do the things that will allow you to become your authentic self. You can start by learning positive affirmations and eliminating negative self talk. Positive thinking is the way to love yourself more.

Be sure to read the next 5 steps to love yourself in How to Love Yourself Before You Look For Love – Part 2 .

photo credit: Scarleth White