By Midwest Center Coach Tami Walker
Self-Acceptance is not a way of thinking. It is a way of living that embodies awareness, compassion, and a willingness to enter into experience just as it is in each moment, whether that experience is painful or pleasurable. Ultimately it is the avoidance of pain and the attachment to pleasure that causes all suffering including addictions, mental and emotional distress, violence, and war. If you can learn to accept and love yourself, many of the symptoms of depression and anxiety decrease or even disappear over time.If You Don’t Love Yourself, How Can You Love Anyone?
Let’s face it; most of us are not satisfied with who and what we are. We don’t think we are thin enough, smart enough, capable enough, any sort of enough to have value as a person. We don’t have any positive feelings for ourselves because we only see faults. And that is a very poisonous outlook to have. After all, if you don’t like yourself, how will you learn to love and value someone else?Where Do Feelings of Inadequacy Come From?
For most of us the messages about our shortcomings are learned early in life. Sometimes it is the result of verbal abuse, but it may also be the result of childish teasing, a careless statement made by a parent, or even something innocent taken in the wrong way. “Boy was that dumb!” “Gosh, can’t you do anything right!” “You’d be so pretty if you’d just lose a few pounds.” These are the things that start us down the road to self-loathing. If we believe them and thing of these things as who we are, then we start losing the ability to love ourselves.Then we do the worst thing possible. We pick up these simple statements and internalize them. We start saying them to ourselves over and over. And over time they become more and more poisonous. “Boy was that dumb”, becomes “Boy am I stupid.” “Can’t you do anything right?” becomes “I can’t do anything right”. And so on. We no longer need an outside source to tell us we aren’t the wonderful person we’d like to be. Oh no, we are quite capable of beating ourselves up all by ourselves. Not only will you stop loving yourself, you can become your own worst enemy.
Learning to Give Yourself Love
Self-love may be the greatest and most important love a person ever experiences in their lifetime. However, for so many people, “learning to love yourself” does not seem so “easy to achieve.” For most of us, genuine self-love seems so elusive, so much harder to grasp than we expected. We have a wall of anxiety and perceived failures that prevent us from loving who we are.I have made the analogy that, if you keep giving to others without giving to yourself, it is like pouring water from a vessel. If you pour and pour without ever refilling it, eventually, it will run dry. So, if we are like that vessel, how do we refill, recharge, re-energize, and replenish ourselves, so that we will have energy and love to give to others and to the world? The answer is: by loving and giving to ourselves, first. How do we begin to do this?
Taking the Steps to Love Yourself
There are many ways for us to love and to care for ourselves... The possibilities are infinite and they can drastically improve your perspective and outlook on life. One way to learn to love yourself is to act as if you already do (i.e., “Fake it till you make it”). If you can internalize the negative messages that you tell yourself, you can also learn to internalize the positive things that you tell yourself.Treating Your Body with Love
An important way to love yourself is to nourish and care for your body: eat healthy foods and exercise regularly. You can improve your self-esteem, self-image, and energy levels. You may want to “treat” yourself to things like a massage, yoga, or a gym membership.Taking breaks and having fun are important, as well. You may want to have a night out on the town: go out for a nice dinner, go dancing, and/or attend the theater, a concert, the ballet, or a movie. If you tend to be a workaholic — or if you are more a saver than a spender — then perhaps it is time to take a well-deserved, long-overdue vacation. Of course, treating yourself does not need to involve great expense: you can take a bubble bath, eat dinner at home by candlelight, take a walk on the beach, swim in the ocean (those waters are very healing), or watch a sunset. These are just a few ideas... You can put your own imagination to work to discover the treats that will make you feel most loved.
Use Loving Messages Instead of Negative Self-Talk
Another way to enhance self-love and self-esteem is to be aware of your self-talk. Speak to yourself in ways that are more kind and less mean or abusive. Many of us have very harsh inner critics: “That was so stupid! ... I can’t do anything right! ... What a loser!” Eventually we believe these messages and we start to feel like that is what we are. Instead of seeing a mistake for what it is, we see it as an eternal and integral part of ourselves. Instead of “I made a mistake,” we increase our depression and anxiety by saying “I am a mistake.”We need to replace these negative messages with other, more positive ones. For example, “I made a mistake. That’s okay: That is how I learn. I’ll know better the next time.” With awareness, over time, you can “catch yourself” when your self-talk is negative, and change the message to something more positive and “ego-enhancing.” Over time this can boost your self-esteem and sense of worth.
Pay Attention to Your Self-Talk
Don’t just “catch yourself being wrong.” “Catch yourself being right.” In other words, don’t just catch the voice of your inner critic and stop it from beating up on you. Then you just beat up on yourself for beating up on yourself and you create another cycle of anxiety.When you do something well, or when you find yourself saying the right things to yourself or to others, be sure to reward yourself: acknowledge yourself verbally, give yourself a pat on the back, or treat yourself to something special. Reward yourself the way you would someone you love who has done something well.
Improving Self-Love with Positive Affirmations
Yet another way you can learn to love yourself is by being in the practice of using positive affirmations. Take some time to come up with the qualities that you most want to embody. Choose about two or three to focus on for any one period of time. Then try this for at least a month: Repeat those qualities daily, telling yourself that you are those things, already. Not that you will be them. You are the things you want to be and love right now.Whether or not you currently believe it, say it anyway... For example, take time to tell yourself, each day, “I am happy and successful” or “I am beautiful and bright” or “I love my body: I feel healthy and in balance” or “I am powerful and self-confident” ... whatever qualities you wish to be. You may want to write out these affirmations and post them someplace where you will see them regularly: on the bathroom mirror, on the refrigerator door, etc. Even if, at first, you feel silly or uncomfortable repeating or reading these phrases, you may find that you grow into and become these qualities. It doesn’t matter whether you feel silly, especially if it takes you one step closer to loving and accepting yourself.
So, go ahead. Love yourself. Be good to yourself. Treat yourself well. Replenish yourself. You will discover that, the more you love yourself, the more you will be able to give love to others - and the more others will want to be around you and give back to you. This is a win-win situation. Honest, open love generally creates more love. Loving yourself will ultimately benefit the lives of others you encounter, as well as your own life as you shed the anxious walls around you and learn to connect with yourself and those in your life.
