Begin By Loving Yourself

Do you love yourself? I don’t just mean do you think you’re really cool. I mean do you show yourself some love occasionally? Or do you just give and give to others? How long do you think you can keep up the one-way flow?

How can you truly love others if you don’t love yourself first?

You can’t give what you don’t have. I know so many beautiful, loving people who give so much to others but suffer silently because they are not receiving love back. If you can learn to love yourself, and proactively show yourself some love, you will have a rich and renewable resource with which to love others.

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Say NO

Learn to say NO to people, even to those you love. Love doesn’t always have to say yes when agreeing to do things you really don’t want to do, just to make someone else happy. Instead, compromise by doing something you that makes you both happy.

Go through your friendships and relationships and get clear on how you would like to show love and respect to those people. Don’t agree to do something you don’t want to do. It’s no fun for either of you. Find the areas you both enjoy and engage in those activities together.

Guard Your Energy

Every day that you wake up, in your bed, you have a choice to make it a good day or a bad day by your decisions and actions. As you go through your day, sometimes things will happen outside your control. Only you can decide how you will let these events affect you. You can choose your emotions, you can choose the meanings you assign to events, and you can choose your reactions.

By guarding your energy as soon as you randomly start feeling down or sense a lower dense energy vibration, it will affect, not only you but everyone else that’s sensitive to these sort of energies around you, as well. To show love to yourself, choose positive thoughts, feelings, emotions and reactions to everything life throws at you.

If you’ve been completely knocked off your feet, lean on your friends for support. Clear or shake of the excessive dense energy, re-center and re-align yourself, ground your energy then get back in the game with a reframed mindset and move forward. Sometimes we do need friends to lift us back up, but you can work on learning to reframe you’re experiences as they happen so that you are not knocked down so often.

Carve Out Some Me-Time

I know you’re busy and there’s lots to do every day. I know a lot of people who spend most of their day assisting others, whether personally or professionally. That said, it’s vital that you intentionally take time to restore, recharge, and repair yourself each day, and sometimes the only way to get some me-time is to carve it out in stone!

Allow up to 20 minutes a day completely to yourself, by yourself and with no other obligations until you’ve had your time to recharge your internal batter, which I refer to as powering up.

Sit in a quiet room, listen to some alpha brain wave meditatio, on a very low volume and either read a magazine, write in your develop journal and have a cup of coffee or tea.

Take a bath, or a long warm shower. Take a walk or even just sit in nature. It really doesn’t matter which relaxing thing you decide to do just make certain that you literally UNPLUG yourself completely. In fact, turn off your cell phone and leave the laptop behind. Don’t answer the phone, and don’t respond to requests for help.

Be vigilant about your me-time. Don‘t let anyone or anything disturb you during this time. If you’ve never carved out time for yourself, you’ll be amazed at what happens when you start doing this. It’s like putting fresh batteries in your body. You come back restored and replenished and ready to give some more.

When my kids were young I spent a lot of time attending to their needs, and I felt myself becoming energetically depleted and sometimes frustrated and angry. My fuse became very short. So I started taking every Thursday morning to go have lunch with a friend. I noticed that when I got home, I was ready and raring to see my kids again, totally restored and recharged and ready to be a great mom. Sometimes to love others more, you have to step back and love yourself first.

Use Your Love Strategy On Yourself

What makes you feel loved? Gary Chapman wrote a fantastic series of books related to the five love languages that I absolutely love! What is your love strategy?

Words of praise

Everyone loves and enjoys it when someone pays you a compliment or tells you how great you’re doing. When you receive praise and compliments from someone, take a minute to pause, allow yourself to actually feel those positive emotion, smile and say thank you.

Physical affection

We all like it when someone gives you a hug when you feel down, and we all enjoy physical touch and affection from our partner or spouse because it let’s us know by showing us that we are loved, lovable and cared for.

Gifts

When someone gives us a gift we have a tendency to feel loved, apprexisted, and thought of. An example would be you recroving flowers or hand made note or card as a token of affection. It’s no different if you do this for yourself. It may feel a little odd, at first but don’t allow those feelings to defeat the purpose of the exercise.

Acts of service

When someone does something for unexpectedly nice for you, you feel loved and appreciated, like when your spouse takes out the garbage or picks up the kids even when it’s your turn to do so. Always remember to accept and acknowledge what just happened, internalize those wonderful feelings and emotions, openly express your gratitude to the one doing and appreciate/accept the love.

Quality time

We all like it when someone we love spends quality time with us. Like taking a long walk or listening to one another talk for hours, or going on a long trip with together, just because.

Now, determine your love strategy and give it to yourself! In the same order as above, try these ideas:

Words of praise

Pay yourself a compliment. Write yourself a letter telling yourself what you love about you. Write “You are lovable” on your mirror and read it every morning, out loud, five times.

Physical affection

Get a massage, hug yourself, or make your bed the most luxuriously snuggly place you can imagine. Get slippers. Go plush.

Gifts

Give yourself a gift. A small trinket, a piece of jewelry, a foot massager for under your desk. Send yourself flowers every week. Be your own gift-giver. After all, you know what you like, so no guess work or returns involved.

Acts of service

Go to a restaurant and let someone else cook for you. Hire a cleaning service to clean your house so you don’t have to. Pay someone to run errands for you. You can actually give yourself acts of service as odd as that sounds.

Quality time

Spend quality time with yourself. Mark off an entire afternoon to engage in an activity you love. Go to lunch and a movie. Take a long walk on the beach. Sit in the park and read a book.

Actively love yourself using the same strategy you have with others.

Do What You Love

One of the greatest ways to love yourself is to make sure that you are spending your days doing what you love, whether that’s professionally or personally. When you go to a job you hate, your negative energy exudes out into your office environment and affects others.

When you go to a job you love, your positive energy washes over others and they end up having a better day. I’m sure you’ve seen this in action yourself. You owe it to yourself and to others to do what you love, and to do what makes you happy.

The same is true for your evenings and weekends. If you’re at a job you hate all day and you come home grumpy and depressed, that’s no fun for your family. Likewise if you’re a stay-at-home parent and you’d rather be working, you’re injecting a lot of negative energy into the home.

One of the greatest gifts you can give your family, friends, and co-workers is to love yourself enough to insist that your day is spent doing something you love and that makes you happy.

Forgive Others

Holding onto a grudge or carrying deep seeded anger and resentment towards others only burdens you. Every morning you have to pick up that grudge again and carry it around with you all day. You have to send hateful thoughts to other people. It’s like putting poison in a cup and sending it to your enemy hoping they will receive and drink it.

Why not decide to forgive? When you forgive someone, it doesn’t mean you forget what happened. It means you free yourself from the burning, negative energy that’s inside your body eating away at your true, authentic peacefulness that lives side you.

Tomorrow morning, instead of picking up that grudge, pick up a cup of forgiveness and drink it. Let it go. Give it up. Let them be. Move on. Concentrate on your own life and your own future, and leave the past in the past. Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself. Whatever was done to you, decide you learned a valuable lesson, and move forward. If you need to extract some meaning from the experience, help other people who may have been hurt in a similar way.

Reward Yourself

This is one of my favorite ways to show myself some love. Indulge in a reward. Do you reward yourself for a job well done? How about a life well lived? Go on, reward yourself. Sometimes after I finish a huge project, release a product, or complete a training, I take a day off. Other times I reward myself with a new book, or a night out, or a nice meal at a restaurant.

Keep a list of rewards, and as you tackle new challenges in your life, attach a reward to completing one. It’s guilt-free and you’re worth it! Indulge.

Plant a Tree in Your Soul

Sometimes loving yourself means taking the time to plant a seed that won’t bear fruit for years. Love yourself enough to make a long term plan that will ensure your happiness. I know people who worked intensely for 10 years to make enough money to be financially independent by age 35 and never have to work again in their lives.

If you’re in a job or relationship you hate, or your health isn’t what you want it to be, make a plan change it. Then start taking actions today that will get you where you want to be tomorrow. Tune in to what your heart really desires. How do you really want to spend your life? Then make a plan to transition.

Keep a Journal

Journaling is a great way to show yourself some love. It’s like having a deep conversation with yourself, and it’s on paper so literally get it OUT of you and on paper. You can look back on it later to see where you were and how far you’ve come. Grab a blank book or an online journaling program and start writing down your thoughts, fears, feelings, and successes. A journal is a great place to vent when you are angry and have no one else to vent to. Share your feelings, and release your burdens.

Be Grateful

Gratitude is a super high vibration. When you are in a state of gratitude and feeling blessed you become more resourceful than you can imagine. Use your journal or just grab a piece of paper each morning and write down 10 things for which you are grateful. Being in a state of gratitude restores and resets you. Gratitude helps you show love to yourself and to others.

What are some other ways you show yourself some love? Come up with your own methods, and use them often. The more you’re willing to show yourself some love, the more love you will have to give to others. It’s a win-win for everyone!

“To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

The most important decision of your life, the one that will affect every other decision you make, is the commitment to love and accept yourself. It directly affects the quality of your relationships, your work, your free time, your faith, and your future. Loving ourselves isn’t a one time event. It’s an endless, ongoing process. It begins with you, enfolding yourself in your own affection and appreciation.

Talk yourself happy

Use affirmations to train your mind to become true to yourself. Put a wrist band on your right wrist. When you’re participating in self-criticism, move the band to your left wrist.

Get emotionally honest

Let go of numbing your feelings. Shopping, eating, and drinking are examples of avoiding discomfort, sadness, and pain. Mindfully breathe your way through your feelings and emotions.

Expand your interests

Try something new. Learn a language. Go places you’ve never been. Do things you haven’t done before. You have a right to an awesome life.

Enjoy life enhancing activities

Find exercise you like. Discover healthy foods that are good for you. Turn off technology for a day and spend time doing things that make you feel alive.

Become willing to surrender

Breathe, relax, and let go. You can never see the whole picture. You don’t know what anything is for. Stop fighting against yourself by thinking and desiring people and events in your life should be different. Your plan may be different from your soul’s intentions.

Work on personal and spiritual development

Be willing to surrender and grow. Life is a journey. We are here to learn and love on a deeper level. Take penguin steps and life becomes difficult. One step at a time is enough to proceed forward.

Own your potential

Love yourself enough to believe in the limitless opportunities available to you. Take action and create a beautiful life for yourself.

Be patient with yourself

Let go of urgency and fear. Relax and transform striving into thriving. Trust in yourself, do good work, and you will see results.

Live in appreciation

Train your mind to be grateful. Appreciate your talents, beauty, and brilliance. Love your imperfectly perfect self.

Be guided by your intuition

All answers come from within. Look for signs and pay attention to your gut feelings. You’ll hear two inner voices when you need to make a decision. The quiet voice is your higher self; the loud voice is your ego. Always go with the quieter voice.

Do what honors and respects you

Don’t participate in activities that bring you down. Don’t allow toxic people in your life. Love everyone, but be discerning on who you allow into your life.

Accept uncertainty

Suffering comes from living in the pain of the past or the fear of the future. Put your attention on the present moment and be at peace.

Forgive yourself

Learn from your mistakes and go forward. Use this affirmation, “I forgive myself for judging myself for __________ (fill in the blank i.e.: for getting sick, for acting out, for not doing your best).

Discover the power of fun

Self-love requires time to relax, play, and create face-to-face interaction with others. Our fast-paced world creates a goal setting, competitive craziness that doesn’t leave room for play. Dr. Stuart Brow says, “The opposite of play isn’t work, it is depression.”

Be real

Speak up and speak out. Allow yourself to be seen, known, and heard. Get comfortable with intimacy (in-to-me-see).

Focus on the positive

Go to your heart and dwell on and praise yourself for what you get right in all areas.

My recommendation for you is to go back to basics, with pen to paper and create yourself a GOAL SHEET and spell out your plans and goals. Use any or all of the above strategies that I've listed and begin working on ONE at a time. Start small as you don't want to dive into this plan, head first, and overwhelm yourself.

You can choose one per day, three per day or even one-three per week. Just go at your own pace, be very thorough and mindful when doing so. This will help you really get in there and FOCUS on yourself, for a change. If you feel like you get to a point where you feel stuck, book a private, one-on-one session, with me and I'll take the time to help get you back on track, again.

There is NO right or wrong way to love and respect yourself. There isn't so don't feel like you have to go about it a certain way or you'll be judged. It doesn't work that way and don't let anyone ever tell you any different.

I hope you'll find this article helpful and useful for yourself, your loved one or even your client as a starting point of beginning a new journey for yourself and I wish you nothing but the best.

Love, Light and Many Blessings, my friend.

Toni Schuler - Psychic Medium

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