Imagine that you’re roommates with someone who hates you, who hurts you on purpose, who promises to do certain things but never does it. What would your relationship be like? Wouldn’t it be like hell?
Now, imagine that this person is you!! Have you ever abused yourself? Have you ever promised yourself that you would do a certain thing but never did it? Have you ever thought of ending your existence?
Just as you have relationships with other people you also have a relationship with yourself. You do have an inner voice that makes positive or negative judgments about everything around you. There is a voice which tells you that “you are doing your best” or “you are not doing your best; you need to try harder”. There is a voice that tells you that “you need to improve your actions”. There is a voice that gives you hell for the circumstances or events that are beyond your control.
Self love is not something that emanates from the result of certain actions or certain events. It is unconditional love you feel for yourself just because you know you deserve it. Most people base their self love on the result of certain actions. If you really screwed up a task that you were supposed to accomplish, then you don’t love yourself as much. If, on the other hand, somebody says something you’d like to hear to you, then you love yourself a little bit more. This is not the way to go thinking about yourself. Your self-love should be prominent no matter what the circumstances are.
Loving yourself is not equivalent to spoiling yourself because unconditional self acceptance does not indicate having an unrealistic image of yourself. On the contrary, it is very realistic because it brings out your worth to which you had been turning a blind eye for the rest of your life. It sheds light onto that reality that had been neglected for a long time.
When you love yourself, everything you do is motivated by your best interest. This is what makes you accomplish things. This is what makes you love the universe. This is what prevents self abuse. It’s not the obligations, it’s the self-love and acceptance that moves you and inspires you to do or change things.
If you do not love yourself then how can you expect to receive love from your environment?
You cannot do your best if you don’t love yourself and accept yourself as you are now. How can you do your best with the derogatory voices in your head? How can you do your best if there is a perfectionist voice that doesn’t like anything and keeps telling you that you need to do better and better and better and better. You cannot make anything better in the future if you reject yourself now. Because you never get to the future. Now is as close as you can get to the future. So you might as well try to make your present the way you’d like your future to be.
4 comments:
I guess I see it less as a matter of love or hate, and more as a kind of internal agreement, an understanding between the various voices in your head that they are to stay in their places, letting you keep your focus on what really matters. Trying to quiet them down completely seems like an unrealistic goal, and might even be bad for you, since they might be there for a purpose after all. It is very human, very natural to be harsh on yourself sometimes - it's when you take it too seriously that it gets out of hand.
I see harshness more as a reflection of your perfectionist side and I don't think it could ever motivate you to do "what really matters". It's a destructive force. How can you be harsh on yourself and not take it seriously if harshness is supposed to be taken as a sign of the way things are supposed to proceed? It is very difficult to quiet down the voices in your head -even though they are wrong- but it can be learned to let them just exist and to observe them. (I certainly cannot do that at the moment though I'm working on it). Maybe you meant that we should rely on our instincts more because they seem to have a lot more purpose than thoughts or feelings.
what i mean is, those voices are not always wrong. think of it this way: when dealing with other people, negative criticism from them can be constructive if you dont take it personally. if the criticism is irrational, you are free to judge it as such. the same is true for negative criticism from yourself. just dont take it "personally". I think this is a more mature (and easier) way to deal with those voices than to try to block them out altogether.
by not taking it personally, i mean realizing that it's not about somebody loving you or hating you, or judging you in this idealistic manner (that way of thinking leads to obsessive perfectionism). it's really about you aspiring to something "good," and that's simply a matter of having meaning in your life.
I think you have a very good point here. Of course the voices are not always wrong. I'm not suggesting to quiet them down completely. To let them exist and to observe them - that is "not to take them personally" - is my explanation of self love. That way, you can move away from self destructive perfectionism towards doing things for your best interest. I think true love cannot generate restraints or idealistic expectations. It makes you feel valuable for what you are instead of what you will be "in the future".
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