Love Me Tender

Love Me Tender

Well, you sure are fantastic. Smart, funny, good to look at, that’s you. I can see it so clearly in you. Can you? Do you see how lovable you are?

Some of you are nodding. Some of you are giving me “the look.” Some of you are crying.

Hmm.

I used to be one of the crying ones. I couldn’t imagine anyone finding me lovable. Bad creative questions can really do a number on us. My old favorite was “What’s wrong with me?” Yikes. I had a lot of variations on it, and, because I have such a creative mind, I had thousand “reasons” for why I was so unlovable.  Poor little me.

Thinking like that really does a number on us. Not only does that kind of thinking hurt our own selves, and without reason, but it also hurts the people who love us. Dang.

Choosing to love yourself is an act of great courage. That seems so funny to me, but it really is. At the very least, modern culture looks a bit askance at the notion of self-love, but believe you me, getting there, choosing to love yourself, makes a huge difference in the quality of your own live, and will have a lovely impact on the lives of people around you.

For a lot of us, this is such a foreign notion that we don’t have a clue how even to start. It’s simple. Start like you are starting a courtship relationship. Make some time to take yourself out to a place you like to go, where you can actually spend some time with yourself.

That’s such an important thing, to spend some time with yourself. How do you feel? What do you like to do for fun? What are your favorite foods, places, books, movies, activities? What makes you feel really pampered or nurtured?

Who is your favorite person to see? You know that feeling, when you get all smiley? Imagine looking in the mirror in the morning and feeling that delighted to see your own face. Why am I delighted to greet me?

Why do I love to spend time with me? How am I my biggest supporter? What makes me like me? How have I changed from ignoring me to treating me like a beloved friend.

Being in a loving relationship with ourselves makes everything better. There is never a day when being in a relationship with someone who is cruel, or negatively manipulative, someone who cuts us down, and so on, is better than being alone in a loving relationship with ourselves. Really and truly. If you are in a relationship like that, please love yourself, and get some help to get out. You deserve to be treated well, and the person who is being unkind to you may find their way because they had to deal with the consequences of their bad behavior.
Meanwhile, take time for yourself, to be in your body, to notice how you feel, to be aware of what you like, what you want, where you like to go, and what you like to do, and then to act on that knowledge. Taking care of others is easy when you take care of you, first.

How have I changed from thinking there is virtue is ignoring myself to reaping the benefits of self-love?