Self Love--Primary Path To Healing, Health And Success

Self love is a topic that is almost never discussed. It's not even a concept for the majority of people. What does healthy self love mean, and how does it lead to healing, health and success?

By the nature of childhood (dependency and necessity of learning how life works) many of us humans end up being fed a steady stream of criticism, rebuke, and the opinions of others. We are told how to think, how to feel and how to behave. We are strongly encouraged to conform to standard behavior and seldom allowed to express our uniqueness. We are told to hug and kiss adults we don't want to interact with. We are not allowed or encouraged to make our own decisions.

We are told how to "decide". If we think we know the right thing to do, we are told what the right thing to do would be. The worst part though is being consistently criticized, abused and humiliated, scorned or belittled. This leads us to develop a constant mantra of negative self talk that can follow us all the days of our life unless we purposefully "decommission" it. This is often the most critical part of learning to develop self love. Here are some ideas on developing self love.

1.) Realize that many child rearing techniques are well intentioned, but often end up creating self hating adults who do not trust themselves, and parrot the opinions of the adults who reared them. This in unfortunate, but often is simply the result of parental lack of skill. It is our job to do what it takes to create healthy self respect and self love for ourselves if our upbringing did not provide this. This is easily said but not as easily done.

2.) The most important thing to do is to develop awareness of your negative self talk and replace it with supportive self talk. Start by "capturing" the negative statements you "hear" in your head. Write them down so that you can see exactly what dynamics are at play here. You will likely be shocked when you realize what you are mentally telling yourself all the time. Most of us experience this, but we aren't even aware that it is going on.

Be vigilant about writing these down. You will be amazed at the breadth and depth of negative self talk your inner critic bombards you with. Take each statement and reverse it in such a way that it becomes a self supportive statement. Take the time to do this work; it will really pay off for you. Then, be vigilant about replacing each negative statement with your new self supporting statement.

2.) Learn to trust yourself and your opinions, wishes, and desires. This is not done in a selfish way, just a simple and honest way. Trusting yourself means trusting that "inner voice" (usually felt lower in the body than self talk--which is experienced in the head). This voice might warn us to bring our umbrella, or not walk down a certain street. It is very subtle and usually "mild mannered".

Don't confuse it with parental style admonitions. Some people call it a "gut" feeling because these feelings are frequently experienced in this part of the body. It can feel like a tension or "shrinking" if it's a warning or like a release or expansion if it is a "go" signal. Experiment with becoming more aware of these signals and trusting them.

3.) Self love also means being kind to yourself in a multitude of ways. Taking healthy care of yourself is important. This can mean excellent dental care, exercising, resting, eating healthy, paying attention to and getting care for your health needs. One way to think of this is to pretend that the care you give yourself is the care you would give a well loved child. Likely, you'd take the best care of a child. Why would you do any less for yourself?

Self love is the most direct path to healing, health, and success. It might seem at first that we all love ourselves, but there is likely residue of unloving behavior left over from childhood. You will be amazed as you start to jettison this stuff. Your life will become better, more satisfying and success will be a lot easier. It's a wonderful path to a better life!