Love Yourself…

What does it mean to love yourself? We are told to love ourselves first. “You have to love yourself to be able to love another person.”  Then we are given the mixed message of not to be  self centered or full of ourselves. How else can we love ourselves unless we focus on ourselves?” Treat yourself as you would treat someone you really love.” How do we know what that means unless we love someone else?  Unless we have felt what it means to be loved, how do we know how to love another? So which can really come first? To really love someone else fully  might require us to allow them to fully love us. If we can not love ourselves we can’t allow ourselves to be loved fully by others, to take it in, feel it, believe it, feel worthy of it, and really receive it.  It feels good to give love.  And  I do think we should give love without any expectation of how it is received and certainly without expectation of getting love in return. However to give love to someone who really receives it is really awesome.

I have been really working on the idea of self love for a while now. I am finding out what that means to me. At first it was a matter of honoring my body and neither pushing myself too hard or allowing myself to become stagnant. Listening to my body and really giving it what it needs in the moment. Sometimes that means resting in yoga or taking a day off of running. Sometimes that means running when I really don’t feel motivated. Sometimes it means staying in a yoga pose even when I’m not motivated to stay in it. Sometimes that is really what I need. Lately it has meant realizing that while I can love and accept my body while carrying the extra 10 pounds, I am not loving myself in keeping 10 extra pounds on me when it doesn’t make me feel good and interferes with my health.  It’s realizing that the self talk has gotten bad and I need to begin telling myself good things, even if I don’t believe those things at first.  Sometimes it means going to the back row in yoga, to stay out of the mirror so I can focus on me inside and not be hard on myself for what I look like on the outside.  Loving myself anyways.  How would I treat me if I were my best friend? I would love myself anyways. I would encourage myself to see my strengths and not focus on the weaknesses. I would say “get out of that mirror if it upsets you so much” “get outside and get some fresh air and sunshine, get in the river, laugh and play more”.

I was going through pictures the past few days looking for pictures of Scott and the boys for a father’s day post for Facebook. In doing so I realized that Scott took a lot of pictures. He isn’t in many of them of course because he was the picture taker and not the other way around.  So finding these pictures was a lot of work. He took tons of pictures of the boys growing up. He took a million pictures of me. I never really noticed  how many pictures he took of me. I know that most of the time I really didn’t want my picture taken, I always felt fat or ugly or something… I have a zit.. I’m in my sweats…I don’t have any makeup on… wait, I’m not ready…

He took a million pictures of me, and I think for the first time I saw them… I could see how he saw me..  I was looking at myself through the eyes of someone who really loved me.  He wasn’t one to tell me I was beautiful or really much of anything about my appearance. I would ask if I looked ok and he would always reply “you look fine”. When pressed as to why he doesn’t say anything he would reply “you always look good, I don’t need to tell you”.  Probably the sweetest thing he ever said was a couple of months after giving birth for the first time and before my waistline returned to normal, I was fretting over what it all looked like and he put his hand on my stomach and said ” I love your belly, it’s where our baby came from.”  He was like that. he didn’t often say much, but when he did it was real and from the heart. Unfortunately I didn’t often feel that same love for myself and most of the time  I never really believed him, either that I looked good or that he thought that I did.  Looking in reverse and seeing all the millions of pictures he took of me I realize that he really must have thought so.  It could look to someone looking in  like he was obsessed with capturing pictures of me. Most of the pictures were not of me posing for the camera and I know that I probably hated these pictures at the time because of that very fact.  I needed to be in control of what I looked like in the picture.  He photographed me sleeping a lot… or eating… reading…knitting…cooking working in the garden.   I would say I look terrible in these pictures and he would say ” but it’s real life”. Looking at the pictures now I realize I don’t look terrible at all. I wish I looked like that now. I can see how perfect my skin was, how much thicker my hair was, what great shape I was in for some of them and I know damn well that I thought I was fat in ever single one of them.  It was more than that though. He captured ME, the REAL ME, my essence exactly as I was and I was perfect then.  Then it begins to settle in  what if  I am perfect now? Perfectly imperfect.  And so I begin to see myself through the eyes of my loving husband.  I begin to look at me just a little different. So I continue to reshape my thoughts….

I accept myself the way I am… flaws and all

I am beautiful the way I am.

But no one is perfect… I am perfect

Everything is exactly as is needs to be

Be beautiful… let go of the need to be beautiful

Love yourself

I begin to affirm…

I am Love

I am Beauty

I am Strength

I am Real

Love

Love

Love

I expand…

Shine your light

Allow light in

Give love

Allow love in

Really receive love

Really give love

Really love yourself

Know what it means to love yourself

Be your own best friend

Best friends are honest

Best friends are nice

Best friends are real

Best friends are present

Love yourself first

Love others so you can  love yourself

Teach yourself to love yourself by loving others the way you want to be loved

Teach others to love you by loving yourself first

Love yourself the way that you would love someone else if only you could love fully… if only you loved yourself first

Which came first the chicken or the egg?

Love came first…

I was pruning my flowers back today and I was thinking about all of this love business and personal growth stuff.  I thought about how you trim off the dead flowers and branches.  This helps the plant by allowing the plant to focus it’s energy on new growth as opposed to the old dead growth. It would eventually fall off on its own but in caring for the plant we help by removing the old stuff for it.  In doing this it allows the plant to grow to be even better than if it were left alone. I realized that as people we are the same. We have these old patterns or beliefs that no longer serve us but we tend to carry them around and continue to give them energy.  If we can let these things go, we can instead  focus on growing new healthier parts of ourselves. Sometimes these things can fall away on their own and sometimes we need someone to help us pull them off.  That is what we do when we love each other. Scott was really good at loving me just the way I was and helping by encouraging me to let go of things at times and showing me things about myself that I didn’t know and helping me to grow.  The pictures he left me are a huge gift in helping me to see that.   Perhaps I can now see these things because I do love myself.

So, I’m not sure of the whole concept anymore of ” in order to love another we need to love ourselves first”, but I do know that we need to love ourselves and love one another.  It may help to be loved first if for no other reason to be able to see that we really are lovable.  It is a big circle.  The more we love the more love we have and who doesn’t want more love? Sounds good to me! So until next time, much love to you and thank you for reading. ❤