7February'12
Self-Love this Valentine’s Day
Valentine’s day is only a week away. The thing I like about Valentine’s day is that it reminds me that I am continually learning to love myself along my journey with health. I am happy and excited to share the following blog post with you. It has been written by the ‘self-love and prosperity coach’ Glenn Moore. It was first published on the website www.nurturewithlove.com where hand-crafted ‘love-bags’, perfect for Valentine’s Day can be purchased.
Self Love
Glenn Moore, www.mooredynamicprosperity.co.uk, is a self-love and prosperity coach. He is accredited as a Coach by the Institute of Leadership and Management, having been awarded a Distinction in his accreditation programme. He is a certified trainer of NLP and an Insight Leadership Graduate. Glenn is an intuitive and passionate coach and I am deeply grateful to him for writing the following piece about self-love:
There is tremendous value in self-love.
Love is the energy which fills our heart and soul, and much more! It’s the essence of all that is. Learning to love yourself is learning to connect with your true self.
Many of us think of the love we experience as being outside of ourselves, but it really comes from within. Ultimately, you are the source of your love. This is the love that you feel, that makes you happy. As Don Miguel Ruiz says:
“The whole world can love you, but that love will not make you happy.
What will make you happy is the love coming out of you.”
To love yourself, you must accept yourself, as you are, exactly as you are; warts and all, so to speak, the whole package. As Bruno Mars sings: “you are perfect, just the way you are…” Accept it. Believe it.
Accepting yourself as you are means accepting not only the you that is successful, popular, wealthy and happy but also the you that is afraid, angry, impatient, insecure, vulnerable and anything else you might not like about yourself. It means accepting yourself whatever others may say, or believe or do to you.
Self-love is total acceptance. It requires patience, tolerance, kindness and compassion. It requires trust, honesty, gratitude and forgiveness. It’s being kind to yourself, being grateful for who you are. It is to appreciate yourself. When you appreciate yourself, you increase your value and thereby your self-esteem. What is appreciated increases, like wealth or money.
When you love yourself, you are true to yourself. You are authentic. You put your needs first. Remember the oxygen-mask principle: you place your own oxygen mask on before helping others with theirs. This is not selfish. It’s self-centred. As Michael Brown says, “the most loving person in the world is the person who is self-centred.”
Self-love means releasing the need or urge to control or manage everything around you, as if you were in charge of the whole Universe.
You’re not!
It means monitoring your thoughts, your self-talk, eliminating all ‘self flagellation’, as I call it – that is beating yourself up mentally and emotionally, telling yourself that you ‘should’ be this or you ‘should’ be that, or you ‘should’ have done this or you ‘should’ have done that. Stop ‘shoulding’ on yourself. Next time you catch yourself, stop! How does that ‘should’ make you feel? If it doesn’t make you feel good, why say it??
Stop judging or criticising yourself. The Universe does not judge. It was Mother Theresa who said: “if you judge others, you can’t love them”. That goes for you too! So if you judge yourself, you can’t love yourself!
A wonderful thing that I have observed from my coaching clients is that when they stop judging themselves, they notice that others – their friends, family and colleagues – have stopped judging them too! Better yet, they stop thinking that others judge them. In other words, when you stop judging yourself, you won’t even think that others judge you!
The need for approval – which is really another form of self-judgment – is another barrier to break through, and you can break through it! Focus on who you are and what you want, not what others want from you. When you love yourself, you don’t need anyone’s approval. Your approval cup is full!
To set the ball rolling, decide that you are going to love yourself. That’s it. You just decide. You set the intention. This is because you create your reality with your intentions.
Next, focus on accepting yourself as you are right now. Monitor your thoughts. Change your thoughts about yourself, and also what you say about yourself to others. Change from judgmental to loving, and from critical to compassionate, and from negative to positive.
Think about love! To think about love is to see through the eyes of love, to be inspired and uplifted by love.
Talk about love! To speak of love is to share love by your words which encourages others to do so. Include the word love in every conversation you have – it doesn’t matter how. Just do it as Nike would say! The aim is to maintain your focus on love. Just by focussing on love, you bring it more and more into your consciousness, bringing yourself ever closer to the love you want for yourself.
Read about love! To read about love is to stay focussed and attentive to love. Whenever you come across the word love online, or in a book or magazine, read it out aloud, or highlight it, or underline it. Love, like the music August Rush refers to in the film of that name, is all around us. All you have to do is look! And listen! And feel it.
Listen to love songs. And ask yourself every morning: “how can I love myself more today?
Compliment others. Complimenting is another form of expressing love and appreciation. I won’t go into an explanation here but when you compliment others, you also compliment yourself. Trust me on this. Or, if you don’t believe it, try it anyway. Notice how good you feel when you compliment others!
Repeating affirmations can help. For example, affirm to yourself: “I love myself”, or “I love you!”. Give it energy when you say it. Say it like you really mean it!
If, at first, you do not feel entirely comfortable with the word ‘love’ in your affirmation, say “I like myself”. But still remember to keep love in your thoughts and conversations.
Affirmations do not work for everyone all of the time but one way to increase the odds is to say them out aloud in front of the mirror, looking yourself straight in the eye! Do this regularly and for at least 5 minutes.
We are all moving into a place of self-love, I believe, as part of our evolution, part of our growth and maturation. When you work and focus on your own self-love, you are not just helping yourself, you are helping everyone around you to raise their own vibration, their love frequency. What they see in you, they will see in themselves.
The value of self-love is infinite. Everyone has his or her own unique experience. You could feel a greater sense of lightness and joy, a greater connection with others, a genuine well-being. Your confidence can soar, as can your courage. Your body could really benefit. It thrives on the energy of love. Genuine feelings of love and appreciation give the body a positive message that boosts and sustains health. Some say that all healing starts with love. For me, self-love is the most empowering feel-good you can have.
Above all, when you love yourself, you inspire and empower others to love themselves. Love inspires more love. It could be the greatest gift you ever give to the world…
February 2012
Please contact Glen if you are interested in his coaching programmes:
www.mooredynamicprosperity.co.uk
www.youtube.com/user/GlennSM28
twitter@lovelifemoore
facebook.com/glennmoore28
