Love of Self

I was reminded this week just how strange life sometimes is. Just two weeks before my wife passed away with cancer, a friend gave her a book entitled You Can Heal Your Life by Louise L Hay. Of course none of us knew at the time how quickly she would deteriorate and be taken from us. We had expected her to be with us at least a few more months. But that was not to be.

I do not think Maria ever even opened the book let alone read it. It seemed to me almost comical that someone would give her a book about healing just before she died. Over the intervening eight years the book has sat on my bookshelf gathering dust. Every now and then, when books have been packed for one of our frequent moves, or I was searching for something else, I would come across the book and it would bring an ironic smile to my face and I would move on. But this week was different. Something prompted me to pick the book up and start reading it. And I am glad I did as it seems somewhat pertinent to my life right now.

As I have read, I started to actually wonder if fate had meant me as the true recipient of the book and not Maria. Interestingly our friend wrote in the front of the book that he too had been given it many years previously but was not ready for it at the time. It was not until three years later that he finally read the book and it changed his life. Perhaps I needed to wait the eight years before I too was ready for it.

While the aim of the book is about self-healing, its focus is learning to truly love ourselves and to let go of those things that prevent us from doing so. This principle of loving yourself seems so obvious, and yet is so often neglected. Many of us develop feelings of not being good enough, of feeling guilty because we are not perfect. We tell ourselves that we do not try hard enough, that we are too short, too tall, too fat, too thin, too dumb, too ugly, too worthless. We build this picture of us being imperfect, and being something we dislike or even hate.

Loving yourself though is vital to your emotional, spiritual and even physical well-being. In our predominately Christian world were the emphasis is on serving others and developing humility, loving yourself often seems out of place. We almost feel guilty when we allow good thoughts about ourselves to occur. But a love of yourself is central to Christianity and indeed to many religions and philosophies. 

On board a plane, as part of the pre-flight preparations, the flight attendant will instruct passengers in safety procedures in case of an emergency. When demonstrating use of the oxygen mask, part of the instructions is that you should always put on your own mask before trying to help another. Many guidelines for emergencies give this same kind of advice - see to your own immediate needs before trying to help others. These guidelines are not about the "looking after number one" egotistical mentality that many seem to suffer from these days, but a practical approach. It is difficult to assist someone unless you are in a position of stability yourself. The same is true of loving others. When Jesus taught we should love our neighbor, there was a reason he added that we should love them as we love ourselves. It really is impossible to truly love another unless you love yourself first. 

The old TV star, Lucille Ball once said:

“Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. Your really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.”

When we develop a true love of ourselves we develop an inner power to deal with whatever challenges we face. There is an old saying that all the water in the world cannot sink a ship unless it gets inside. When we allow our own criticisms or those of others to take root within us, we start doubting ourselves, feeling we are unworthy, and the love we ought to have towards ourselves diminishes. In effect we fall out of love with our own self and we sink our own boat. The only person that can really pull you down is yourself, and it is time we all stopped allowing ourselves to pull us down.

How we go about rooting out those negative, non-loving thoughts may be varied. There are numerous approaches to tackling it. But all of them seem to center on the idea that our experiences are defined by the way we feel; the way we feel is determined by the thoughts we have; and each of us are able to change our thoughts. Sometimes the weight of the past, and the thought patterns we have developed throughout our life seem unchangeable. But as Hay's book states the point of power is always in the present moment. The past is gone. It is over and done with. What is important is what you are choosing to thinking and believe and say right now. That is what creates the future. So start noticing what you are thinking. Ask yourself do you want this thought to create your future? If the answer is no, then make the resolve to change, make the resolve to truly love yourself and to create the future you want.