Loving ourselves unconditionally....

iVillage Member
Registered: 11-18-2003
Loving ourselves unconditionally....
3
Tue, 05-25-2004 - 8:30am
For those struggling today...a positive thought/meditation....

Love yourself into health and a good life of your own. Love yourself into relationships that work. Love yourself into peace, happiness, joy, success and contentment.

We can stop treating ourselves the way others treated us, if they behaved in a less than healthy way. If we have learned to see ourselves critically, conditionally, and in a diminishing and punishing way, it's time TO STOP. Other people treated us that way, but itse even worse to treat ourselves that way now.

People who love themselves are truly able to love others and let others love them. People who love themselves and hold themselves in high esteem are those who give the most, contribute the most, love the most.

How do we love ourselves? By FORCING it at first. By FAKING IT if necessary. By "acting as if". By working as hard at loving ourselves as we have at not liking ourselves.

Embrace and love all of yourself--past, present and future. FORGIVE yourself quickly, and AS OFTEN as necessary. Compliment yourself. Pat yourself on the back when necessary. Discipline yourself when necessary. Ask for what YOU need. Learn to be good to yourself.

LEARN to stop your pain, even when that means making difficult decisions. Do not unnecessarily deprive yourself. Sometimes, give yourself what you want, just because you want it.

When you make MISTAKES, LET THEM GO. We learn, we grow, and we learn some more. And through it all, we love ourselves.

One day, we'll wake up, look in the mirror, and find that loving ourselves has become habitual. Self-love will take hold and become a guiding force in our life.

Meditation:

Today I work at loving myself. I will work as hard at loving myself as I have at not liking myself. Help me LET GO of self-hateful behaviors. Help me replace those with behaviors that reflect self love. Today, God, help me know I'm lovable and capable of giving and receiving love.

courtesy: Melody Beattie, The Language of Letting Go.


**I think that all of us here, to some extent or another, were looking for love in all the wrong places. People who truly love themselves do not engage in such self destructive behaviors...and affairs are truly self destructive. This does not mean that the parties involved are malicious or cruel....but affairs are really fantasy based relationships that only end in pain and misery. Let us all be courageous and search within ourselves to find those missing pieces and voids and find a way to fill them ourselves....NOT through relationships, food, shopping, alcohol/drugs, etc. Let us learn to love ourselves again and to recall that we are all children of God.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-16-2004
Tue, 05-25-2004 - 8:38am
Namaste, Dharma... You can't know just how much your posts like this really help. Thank you for sharing.

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-08-2003
Tue, 05-25-2004 - 1:53pm
Great stuff, Dharma! I need reminders like this post all the time because on any given day I can run with self-destruction.

I had kind of an unpleasant T session this morning. I'm still processing it, but when I can actually "get down" with my feelings I'll probably need to post some cleaned-up version on this board. So I've not been my usual perky self and I haven't felt like participating in life the past few days.

Nonetheless, I attended my very first yoga class last night. I typically do a home practice (I love, love, love Mark Blanchard's tapes - he's my yoga babe!) and I looked at that as taking care of myself. Truthfully, after so many years of NOT taking care of myself, or loving myself, I'm not even sure if I know what loving myself is! Do you understand???? I guess I used to think that "loving myself" meant making sure I was happy. I'm not sure that's accurate anymore, because some of the things that make me happy, well,... they're just not safe or legal! LOL. I'm trying to re-learn how to love myself with things like making a doctor's appointment when something is wrong, getting my hair cut at appropriate intervals no matter how busy I am at work or home, insisting that I need at least one hour to myself every day to either do yoga or go to a recovery meeting, eating healthy foods and getting my family together every evening for the dreaded sit down dinner time, getting some sleep at night, etc.

From what I can tell, this is "acting as if." I'm not sure I KNOW how to love myself, but I'm open to learning from other people when I think I see them "loving" themself. I'm pretty sure that "loving myself" is not a shopping spree (although that feels darned good sometimes!), overeating, or telling people off because they've made me angry. I try to avoid anything that seems like it has the capacity to cause harm and chaos in my life or the lives of others.

So Master Dharma, help me out here. How do you love yourself????? I'm totally serious when I tell you that I don't always know how to do it, and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone...

Namaste, Mo.

mo 7-18-10

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anonymous user
Tue, 05-25-2004 - 11:31pm
"LEARN to stop your pain, even when that means making difficult decisions."

First of all, thanks for posting this. I think "Language of Letting Go" is my favorite recovery book of all times. The above quote really struck me from the passage. Mostly because today I have been WALLOWING in obsessive and negative thoughts. It's freakin' driving me crazy. I know that I am making a choice to obsess even though it feels like it is out of my control. But I know that a part of me is wanting to wallow, for what reason I don't know yet and I know it is not healthy. but there is this split second where I can feel myself choosing to go there. Can anyone relate? Is this part of the process? When does it stop?