Self-love seems to be the hot topic in the personal growth movement these days and when it comes to finding soulmate love, there are a lot of myths that until you love yourself first, you won’t be able to get anyone else to love you.  Can this really be true?

My experience has been that most women (at least in the Northern hemisphere) live with a negative, critical voice in their heads that is often filled with ugly, shaming thoughts, self-doubt, and brings with it feelings of never being “good enough.”

It is a question I am asked all of the time.

HOW?????

When I think back to how I began the process of learning to love myself, it was 10 steps. When I was 19 years old, I read a book called You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay. You know Louise Hay, right? She is one of the most incredible teachers of Self-Love there has ever been. She left this world on August 30th of this year, at the perfect age of 90. She truly was a teacher of absolute unconditional SELF-LOVE. I do the work I do because of this woman’s words, strung together in that amazing book, that I read back in 1990.

It is my personal opinion that most people are unnecessarily insecure. These insecurities can hold people back from being truly happy, and living life to the fullest. Where do these insecurities come from? How can we become more confident?


The need for the approval of others is one of our first learned behaviors. As we started life, many of us learned that we received our parents love when we did things that pleased them. We were met with negativity, or not as much love, when we did things that upset them. Our parents were the gods of our universe at that time, and their love was not only desired instinctually, but was necessary for our survival.

As we move out into the world as individuals, we still feel that the acceptance and praise of others keeps us validated, and defines us as meaningful contributors to society. So this means that a large motivator for doing anything is the expectation of positive feedback from someone else.

When we receive praise, we allow it to lift us up, and we feel good about what we have done. A negative reaction from someone, can make us feel bad, and can even make us question our validity.

People's responses to outside stimulus are based mostly on unconscious neurological brain patterns. In other words, positive or negative judgments are not based on any valid truth. We have low self-esteem because we’ve allowed this to define us as people.

I have always been under the belief that “self love” is selfish…this is not true!   I was brought up in a family of 7 which included my parents and I tended to the younger siblings quite often as my Mom always did for everyone else but not herself.  I am sure this contributed to my belief system  of putting  yourself first is selfish.  I also was under the influence of the church that it was better to give than receive and I felt quilty when I did receive.  Most of my life I would seemingly  put other peoples needs before mine.  I  believe the resentment I have felt was because I didn’t nurture myself, but I was an expert at nurturing others.  After all it is much easier to tend to others than yourself!

It’s hard to imagine a world without Louise Hay in it…she transitioned last week on August 30th – exactly two years after her longtime friend Wayne Dyer passed.

 

For decades, I have admired Louise and looked up to her as my icon for spiritual growth, and aging gracefully and powerfully.

 

I loved her fierce courageousness, her willingness to do and say the right thing with the causes that called to her, and her brilliance, personal style and joie de vivre always inspired me.

I am not sure if it’s the eclipse energy from last week, or the constantly bad news on TV, or Mercury Retrograde, or what, but I have been feeling a bit cranky lately.

 

So, I have been digging deep into my spiritual tool-kit.

 

This morning, I added extra lavender to my bath, while doing rounds of  EFT tapping on “I’m cranky and I totally and completely love myself.”

 

On the way to the grocery store, I listened to one of my favorite spiritual teachers, which was uplifting, and I spent a long time cuddling on the back deck with my cat Max.

Every eclipse of the sun represents symbolically the activation of a frightened part of your personality. While that part is active, it obstructs the experience of your love, which is represented symbolically by the sun. Yet in the midst of that obstruction there is a great deal of power and beauty that is visible physically in a total eclipse of the sun.

You have the perfect parents for your soul’s growth and evolution in this lifetime.

Your parents may not be perfect human beings, as they too are souls on this journey of life and are here to learn lessons like you.

Relationships with parents can be some of the most challenging and difficult to navigate.


Ask yourself: What are the lessons that your soul is seeking to learn with them?

They give birth to you, raise you, and impact so much of who you become.

They simply did the best that they knew how to do at that time of their lives, even though it may not have been what you wanted.

It’s highly unlikely they woke up each day thinking about how they could cause you the most suffering. Likely they were in pain themselves.

Hurt people tend to HURT other people, and the cycle continues.

You can break the cycle and take your power back.

The moment we become aware of the darker workings of the ego and realize that we exist outside of it, we become conscious. This begins the process of recreating our reality and life experience.

 

I, like so many others had developed an inferiority complex due to the misjudgments and misconception my mind had formed around certain experiences of abuse. Once the belief had formed in the back of my mind that I was worthless and unimportant, it started to project it onto other people as a way to reinforce it. Subconsciously they would be prompted to validate these misconceptions. In some cases it just seemed that way.

 

It’s that time of year. A time when you think about your body… and wish it were different. Or … maybe it is always that time of year for you.

The term “love” is used by many people. Most of the time when they use the term love, they are talking about romantic love. They are talking about love that is fused with need, and if you look at the process of falling in love, it’s an interesting process.

You have a heart that is love, but it’s closed to you by your own mind. So you’re like a hungry ghost, looking all the time.

Then you meet somebody, and they have a key that fits in a lock that opens you to your own heart, and you think, “I am in love.”

 

Life at its most fulfilling and expansive is not about fitting in or aspiring to socially promoted goals like a 24/7 career, with accompanying big money, house, car, and investments. It’s also not about finding one “perfect” soul mate and living happily ever after. That’s the Cinderella story they keep trying to get women to buy into so that we forget that who we really are is Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman who has her own unique, independent soul and doesn’t need anyone to make her life perfect. This applies to men looking for one mate to fulfill them too. We are not half-humans searching for the missing part to make us whole. Nor are we necessarily one gender, one expression, one role, or one anything. We are so much more.

 

Everyone has their own unique soul’s journey.

You may not understand it and you may not agree with it.

It doesn’t really matter. It’s their soul’s journey.

Perhaps you love and care for your child, grandchild, spouse, friend so much that you don’t want them to suffer in any way. And so you end up doing too much to help them.

When I first had children, they were my whole world … literally …

MY

WHOLE

WORLD

My life revolved around being a mother. I did the best I could with what I knew at the time, but man, as my son got older, it got tougher. I was worn out from the daily battles … but, I was a “good mom“.

Once in awhile I run across a blog or essay that really causes me to stop and really breathe it in. Reading a good message can cause a shift in me, ignite a eureka, or cause a deep resounding “yes”, perhaps moving me to tears or giving me courage that day to make a change I didn’t know I had to make intellectually, but at the level of the heart, I did. With all the uncertainty in the world it’s wonderful so many people are sharing their thoughts and hopes. Blogging can be a way of keeping conversations alive and bringing people together.