SELF-LOVE. THE GREATEST LOVE OF ALL
Volume 9

The Essence Of Relationships

Let’s start with the basics. Consider all your relationships. All of them begin with an individual connecting with one or more individuals. In short, each and every type of relationship starts with you.

Ask yourself this – what type of relationship is the most important to you? Some may say, “A romantic relationship.” Others may state, “My relationship with my family”, and so on. It is however the relationship between you and yourself that is the most important.

This relationship between you and yourself refers to self-love. Since every form of relationship starts with you, it is very important to love yourself first. When you have a healthy positive relationship with yourself, the result will be equally wonderful relationships with others.

Self-Love Defined

Self-love consists of two parts, both of which are vital to increase your self-esteem and make you feel complete from the inside out.

The first is loving yourself externally. Most of us are extremely good at this. It refers to loving yourself through external activities. This could mean planning a vacation to detach from a hectic lifestyle, signing up for spa sessions, exercising, choosing to eat healthy food, etc.

One of the ways to love yourself, which many take for granted, is grooming yourself. Consider your hairstyle, makeup and clothes that you choose to wear. Basically it’s all about pampering and nurturing yourself from head to toe.

The second part is loving yourself internally. As most people are unfamiliar with this concept, they neglect it. As children, many of us were not taught how to do this or why we should do it. Our observations of the outside world mainly taught us how to love ourselves externally. Loving yourself internally simply means loving yourself through your own thoughts and emotions.

How Much Do You Love Yourself?

Answer the following questions with a “Yes” or “No”.

1. Do you constantly have negative mind chatter?
2. Do you constantly judge yourself negatively or feel unworthy?
3. Do you feel insecure about how people may think and feel about you?
4. Do you always live life based on what others think you should or should not do, rather than based on your own choices?
5. Do you always feel agitated or irritated by other people’s actions?

If all your answers are “NO”, it means that you are thinking and feeling positive about yourself. It is certainly easier for you to build a positive relationship with yourself and others.

If most of your answers are “YES”, please do look into starting your self-love journey as soon as possible.

The Multifold Benefits Of Self-Love

1. Confidence & Self-Esteem

Self-love is very important in any type of relationship. It helps to enhance individual confidence and self-esteem, which plays a vital role in building up a person’s self-worth. A healthy sense of self-worth helps attract more abundance into your life.

2. Independence & Freedom

Loving yourself in terms of placing a high value on yourself also translates into being more independent, especially in terms of emotional independence. It empowers people to be less dependent on others (e.g. family, spouse or children) for love,  emotional support and nurturing. The possibility to feel like a victim in any situation is less compared to other individuals.

3. Harmonious Relationships

High self-love allows you to feel more love and compassion toward others. Naturally, this creates more harmonious relationships between you and others as your behavior becomes more giving toward others. Study those who have high self-love. You will notice they tend to be more caring, kinder and more compassionate than most people. They extend these to the others around them with no expectation of getting anything in return. Being less judgmental, they create a safe space for others to be themselves too. In short you’ll have an environment filled with harmony.

I always imagine a world where everyone loves themselves very much and feel compassion for others. In that world, there is peace, hope and harmony.

4. Self-Love Promotes Self-Recognition

Think of how people (and this also refers to me in the past) are always looking for external approval or recognition. I used to wonder why my efforts were not recognized especially by the people whose opinion I cared about and by my superiors at work. This was after having given my best to deliver what they wanted. I yearned for their attention and wanted verbal praise and recognition.

In my job, I remember bringing the matter up to my immediate superior. I poured my heart out about how I felt I was not acknowledged by our CFO as he had increased other people’s salary more than mine. His action had made me feel small and unworthy. It “dis-encouraged” me from putting in the extra effort at work from then on.

However, after years of struggling with similar issues of self-worth, I realized that it is not about them praising, rewarding or acknowledging me. There’s no denying that rewards and even a promotion are very important in one’s career but I had come to realize that self-acknowledgement or self-recognition were also important, if not more important, than external acknowledgement or recognition.

Self-recognition is part of self-love. It is important for an individual to feel complete in herself so that she need not depend on others to feel worthy. Recognition from others is after all external and it can’t fill up the empty space within you. Only self-love can fill that void. After all, recognizing and acknowledging yourself is far easier than waiting for others to do so.

5. Adaptability To Change

A person with high levels of self-love has low resistance toward the changes and challenges in life. Instead they welcome life changes. They have high levels of acceptance toward people, the environment and life in general.

6. Happiness & Fulfillment

Barbara Fredrickson, a positive psychology researcher from the University of North Carolina, found that people with more positive emotions (e.g. love, happiness and joy) see more possibilities in life compared to people who always have negative emotions (e.g. like anger and fear). In short, people with high levels of self-love are more positive and hopeful and so they live happier lives.

7. Better Health

Those with less negativity will also be healthier. Practicing self-love means you would be more health-conscious as you are more mindful of food choices for your physical wellbeing, because you love yourself !

8. Solutions Are Easily Found

When there is love within you, there are solutions for every challenge that comes your way. All judgment and expectation toward yourself and others will also be automatically dropped.

Unlike what many believe, loving yourself is not selfish. It is actually the first step in learning how to love, bringing more abundance, health and happiness into your life.

Meditation to ignite the love in you again

Step 1
Close your eyes.
Bring yourself to relax through your breathing.
Once you are relaxed, focus on feeling peace in your heart.

Step 2
Recall one experience of love. It could be the first time you fell in love, the birth of your first child, or any particular memory that is able to spark the feeling of love again.
Gather the love in your heart.

Step 3
Once you are ready, allow the love to flow out from your heart like a fountain, allow the love to flow out to every part of your body until every cell of your body feels love.
Allow that love to nurture your body.

Step 4
Once you are ready, bring yourself back. Feel your physical body filled with the flow of love.
Slowly open up your eyes with love.