Love of Self is Paramount

“My primary relationship is with myself — all others are mirrors of it. As I learn to love myself, I automatically receive the love and appreciation that I desire from others. If I am committed to myself and to living my truth, I will attract others with equal commitment. My willingness to be intimate with my own deep feelings creates the space for intimacy with another.”
—Shakti Gawain

When we love ourselves we don’t allow other people to use or abuse us. Therefore it is imperative that we begin where we are and work on loving ourselves first, before ever trying to have a deep intimate relationship with another person.

Most of us aren’t very good at self-love. We may have been taught that it is selfish. Perhaps we never thought much about loving ourselves. If we don’t love our self, we cannot truly love another because we will not be able to be vulnerable enough with that person to let them see all of who we are.

When we don’t love who we are it shows in our relationships because we give other people power over us. If we don’t love who we are and feel good about ourselves, then we are not able to set and keep boundaries. People will control or manipulate us and keep us anxious and off track because we allow them to do that when we don’t take care of us.

If we don’t know how to have self love, we learn by starting where we are. We act as if. Perhaps we start with one thing that we already know we love about ourselves and go from there. I personally love my independence. It was borne out of instability in my family of origin and it wasn’t until later in life that I realized that it was something of value no matter how it came to be. However, I have given up that independence in relationships in the past because I didn’t love myself enough.

Your starting point could be a value that you discovered about yourself; something that you already know you love about you. Then you find another thing about yourself that has value and you own it and love that about yourself. And it grows from there.

When we begin the process of loving who we are we discover things about ourselves that we may have not thought about before.

Love yourself. Start right this moment and begin to nurture and love you as much as you try to love and nurture others.
 

If You’re OK With You, Then You’re OK

“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power. If you realize that you have enough, you are truly rich.”
—Tao Te Ching

In all reality there is only one person we can truly know and that person is our self. No matter how many people we share our thoughts, feelings, dreams, ideas, goals, everything that is in us with, the other person still does not know us as we know ourselves.

Life is a wonderful teacher and it is important to have people who we may use as sounding boards. There is freedom in sharing who we are with others as long as they are the type of person we feel safe sharing with.

And while sharing ourselves is good, we must still fully know ourselves as only we can. We must look ourselves in the mirror and know who we are and what we are. It is in this that we can see where we are going and what we need to work on. These are things others may help us with, but things that only we can really do.

If we can honestly live with who we are that’s all that really matters.

Feelings Are Better Off Felt

“Following your feelings will lead you to their source. Only through emotions can you encounter the force field of your own soul.”
—Gary Zukav

When we deny our feelings and bury them deep inside without allowing ourselves to let them wash over and through us, they will fester inside and cause us much distress, even physical illness.

Relationship feelings are especially tough. Sometimes we know that we must find an end to a relationship with a friend or love interest simply because it just is not healthy. But we may find we don’t want to let the person go; we hang on tightly to the good feelings and deny the not so good emotions.

Whatever our feelings are, it’s OK to feel them. It’s OK to feel lonely, sad, or angry, just as it’s OK to feel contentment or happiness. Feelings are just that; feelings.

When we are feeling unsure of what to do, we can meditate and pray, but we need to always allow ourselves to feel. We can cry, scream, stomp our feet, whatever we need to do to feel what we feel. Talking to someone not emotionally involved in the situation may help; someone who is safe for us to share honestly with.

We may want to avoid our feelings by using drugs, drinking, exercising, overeating, or any number of ways we can come up with, but we won’t get our answers by covering up the problems.

The worst thing we can do it bury the emotion and deny that it exists. We feel the feeling and wait for the answers. The answers will come if we are willing to hear them.

Feeling our feelings is the only way to move on.

Resentments Only Hurt the One Holding Them

“When you hold resentment toward another, you are bound to that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and get free.”
—Catherine Ponder

Resentments can tear us apart and the other person may not even know that we are angry. They fester inside of us and come out in ways we never would intend for them to come out. We may lash out at a coworker who has done absolutely nothing to deserve our wrath. Or we may come home from work or school and take the resentment out on someone in our family who is innocent.

Resentments live in us like poison and affect every part of our being; spiritual, emotional, physical, and mental. To rid ourselves of the resentment we must forgive the other person, no matter how badly they may have wronged us. In the best of circumstances we would talk it out with the person we have the resentment against, but sometimes that is just not going to be a possibility and we just have to deal with it within ourselves.

Let it go. Let them go if you have to, if that’s the best situation, but let the resentment go. Pray about it and give it to your Higher Power. It won’t disappear overnight since it has been there a while, but eventually it will go away and you will find freedom in the release. The other person will be free of angry energy and thoughts that you are sending their way too.

When you release resentments you free yourself.

Relationships Don’t Have Road Maps

“Never idealize others. They will never live up to your expectations. Don’t over-analyze your relationships. Stop playing games. A growing relationship can only be nurtured by genuineness.”
—Leo F. Buscaglia

Relationships, like everything else in life, need honesty and directness. Having friends isn’t something difficult to do if we have boundaries and do not expect perfection from ourselves or others.

Sometimes we expect those we know to live up to some ideal that we have set for what we think a relationship is supposed to look like. There aren’t rules about how any particular relationship must be done.

We must throw out any preconceived notion of what we think a certain relationship should be. Every relationship is different. But that’s not to say that there aren’t things in every relationship that should be present: honesty, directness, sharing, forgiveness, love, integrity. We cannot truly have lasting relationships that are not built on good values. And those values must be present on both sides of the relationship.

We don’t have a road map of how week one, month two, year one will be, we simply go about the relationship as it comes on a day-by-day basis. We understand that there will be days we will not like the other person, nor they us. We understand that we both will be hurt from time to time by the other person. We continue our friendship anyway, if it is built upon sound principles.

If, however, one person is unable to be honest, direct, forgiving, loving, or willing to share, then the relationship will not survive. We must then let go and move on in our lives. We may go through a grieving process because we care for the person, but we also must take loving care of ourselves and end something that is not healthy.

Relationships that cause more pain than joy must end. 

All Work and No Play …

“Be aware of wonder. Live a balanced life — learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.”
—Robert Fulghum

Life is a busy occupation. We have so much that fills our days, so many chores and demands at our jobs or by our families. But we don’t have to spend all of our time working or doing, we can play and just be sometimes.

What we must strive for is balance. We must try to find time to have fun; to play, whatever way we each do that. We relax in the ways we know how and if we don’t know how to relax, we learn how.

We balance work with play, stress with relaxation, hanging on with letting go. We try to really live life rather than simply do it by putting our heads down and charging like bulls through life making sure we get it all done and do it all right.

If we don’t take time out for fun and relaxation one day we will wake up and wonder where our lives went. All of that hard work and bull-headed-get-it-done-at-all-costs attitude may have brought on its share of stress along with the physical ailments that go with that.

Stop today and think about how you spend your days and weeks. Is there time in there to relax and play? If there isn’t now is the time to find that time. Schedule it in if you have to. But do it.

Relaxing and playing are important parts of our lives too.

Direct Communication is the Best Communication

“Say what you mean and mean what you say.”
—Unknown

Directness in any relationship is the best way to operate. It’s not always easy to say what we mean rather than leave the other person guessing, but it’s important that we are direct.

Any time we don’t say what we mean the other person is left to interpret what they think we are thinking. This can lead to all kinds of problems as we all know, because it has happened to all of us. We assume the other person is thinking one thing only to find out that we are sorely mistaken. It can make for hurt feelings and arguments.

No matter how difficult we find it, being direct is the only way to be. Better to say now that we aren’t in agreement on an issue, situation, or relationship, than have it come out later down the road when feelings are sure to be hurt more than in the beginning.

Directness keeps us honest and away from lies. It frees us to have healthy relationships of all kinds; personal, professional, with our children or parents. We can say what we mean and mean what we say. After all, it is our right to do just that.

Being direct with those with which we have contact is the best way to be.

Keep Trying Your Best, but Let Go of Perfectionism

“Aim for success, not perfection. Never give up your right to be wrong, because then you will lose the ability to learn new things and move forward with your life.”
—Dr. David M. Burns

We live in a society that teaches us to be the best. We need to make the best grades and score highest on tests to get scholarships and acceptance into the best schools. We are also told to be the best athletes if that’s what we do, leading many to use illegal enhancement drugs to be stars. We think we must have perfect families, be perfect employees, and on and on.

When we seek perfection from those we love, what we are saying is that they must walk on eggshells lest they be human. We are all human beings who make mistakes. We ought to not seek perfection from ourselves either or we will spend our lives unhappy and in turmoil because it is impossible to be perfect.

When someone we care about hurts us, it’s OK to say, “You hurt me when you ….” What isn’t OK is to not let them know that they hurt you or to hold it against them forever. If we shut out every person who is less than perfect we will find ourselves living one very lonely life.

However, we don’t let people walk all over us and continually hurt us with no remorse or attempts not to do us wrong. What we do though is allow them to be human, just as we are human.

Remember that no person in this world is perfect at anything. Give others and yourself a break.

If at First You Don’t Succeed; Try a Different Way

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
—Albert Einstein

Sometimes in life we find that we cannot seem to overcome a particular hurdle. No matter how many times we are faced with the same issue, the results are the same. And many times that is because we keep doing things the same way, expecting a different outcome.

It could be that we just don’t realize we are stuck in a pattern and it’s possible that we don’t know a different way to handle the situation. It is at that point that we must stop and think about what we are doing and how we can do it in a different way.

We may try another way to succeed at clearing the hurdle and may once again fail, but at least we are trying new ways to do something. We try again using another method until eventually we find what works and we are on to the next lesson.

Sometimes we have to think outside the box and use our imaginations to find a new solution to an old problem. Once we acknowledge that the way we are doing something is not working and seek a new solution, we are on our way to freedom.

We must break the pattern in our lives to find freedom from insanity.
 

Habits Can Be Replaced

“Habits … the only reason they persist is that they are offering some satisfaction. You allow them to persist by not seeking any other, better form of satisfying the same needs. Every habit, good or bad, is acquired and learned in the same way — by finding that it is a means of satisfaction.”
—Juliene Berk

We are creatures of habit which is visible in all areas of our lives, both in the things that are healthy for us and those that are not healthy.

Routine is not a bad thing as long as we aren’t stuck in a rut. Some things we do routinely are actually very healthy. For example, reading our daily meditation books is a healthy activity. Praying every day is good. Having a workout routine and sticking to it is healthy. All of these done in a routine manner will become habit and we will miss doing them when we get too busy.

Getting bogged down in the mire and muck of life’s everyday activities, however, can get us stuck before we even realize it. And with that “stuckness” we’ll suffer depression, anxiety, and laziness. It can happen before we realize it; then we may find it almost impossible to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and make that change that’s got to be made in our lives.

When we do make the changes necessary to rid ourselves of our bad habits we can replace then with healthy habits. We can replace smoking with trips the gym; we can replace negative thinking with positive thinking; whatever our bad habit is, we can find something healthy to put in its place.

Take a look at your habits and see which ones need to be replaced.