Tag: Look Within

Truly Love Yourself

I’ve always heard that you have to love yourself before you can truly love someone else. To be honest, I never really believed that until recently. I always thought that I have plenty of love to give, why couldn’t I possibly love someone completely without 100% loving myself first? I have started to realize why.

We are our own worst critics, possibly because we know ourselves as no one else does, also we know all of our faults and our past. I’m sure that many of you have been given a compliment from someone and you appreciated it so much, yet you didn’t believe it to be true. Maybe you were told that you are a good communicator, that you are attractive, smart, and funny. It was great to hear a sincere compliment from someone, but you didn’t feel it inside and that took some of the joy away from those wonderful words. We are putting distance between ourselves and those that we love when we don’t truly love and have confidence in ourselves.

The act of loving oneself is not saying that you love yourself and your qualities 100% of the time. We all have things that we do not like about ourselves, however, the art of loving yourself comes down to forgiving yourself, being at peace with your past, having confidence in who you are and what you stand for, and truly being able to look in the mirror and tell yourself that you are proud and happy of who you have become.

When we love ourselves wholly, it opens up a brand new world for us to find, we are then able to sincerely love someone else as we can finally share pieces of ourselves that we may have hidden before accepting ourselves.
For those of you that love yourself unconditionally, I am very proud of you for reaching this level of confidence and peace. For those of you that have yet to reach this, I have faith that you will get there and I understand because I have been in your place, sometimes I still find myself there, but I can bring myself back.

The biggest step that I feel has been the most helpful in my life is negating every destructive thought with something positive, or at the very least, neutral. For example, if you are working on a challenging project at work and you are ready to give up, instead of telling yourself “I can’t do this, I am always a failure,” negate that thought to tell yourself that you acknowledge that the project is difficult, but you are trying your best and giving it your all. If you feel that you are not good at relationships you might feel that it’s all your fault and that no one loves you. Instead of this approach, negate that thought to tell yourself that you will work hard on communicating your feelings and that sometimes people are not always compatible.

Start working on all aspects of yourself until you are happy and can confidently say that you love yourself. Once you have mastered loving yourself, the whole world opens up to you and it is then that you will truly be ready to love someone else with your entire heart and soul. Get out a journal, or a piece of paper and write down all of the things that you love about yourself and the things that you are grateful for, you will find out what a mood booster this is!

Advertisement

I Knew That Was Going to Happen

Have you ever just been going about your life when all of a sudden you are hit with a very strong gut feeling, an urge/push, a premonition about something that ended up happening? That little feeling is called intuition.

Having a sense of intuition is something that is innate, it is inside us all, but in varying degrees. Some of us are extremely in tune with our ability by either gift, or simply working on strengthening the ability and others are not in tune, or even possibly not aware that they possess such a trait. You may have noticed for example when someone calls, or sends you a text message, you may automatically get a sense of who is contacting you before you even reach your phone…that’s intuition!

Ever since I was a little girl I had a very strong intuition, this ability has only grown as an adult. I’ve always been interested in this topic and I do try hard to strengthen this ability, so perhaps that is why I notice it more as an adult. When you are at one with your intuition, you will notice that it just “feels right” and you feel at peace. Have you ever gone against your gut feeling? How did that make you feel? Chances are it made you feel pretty uncomfortable and worried. Our bodies are telling us information all of the time. We can discover some pretty amazing things if we sit down to listen to what it has to say.

Try to follow your gut feelings because most of the time they will be correct. Your mind and heart can get in the way of a lot of things, including messages that your true inner self is trying to tell you. I have such a passion and interest on this topic. Please feel free to share any intuitive experiences that you have had!

Look in the Mirror

When I was younger I focused a lot of my energy outward. I was always helping others and being there for them, it made me happy and still does to this day. What I wasn’t realizing was that I spent all of my energy helping others, that I had no energy left to take care of myself.

I was told many times in my younger years that I needed to focus more inward because my energy was always being focused out and away from me. I understood what was meant by this, but I didn’t feel that I needed to at that time. My happiness depended on other people and I failed to look within to find happiness. It took many years and many burnouts to finally understand the importance of what I was being told. I finally understood the importance of self-reflection and working to better myself and become the best version of me that I could.

I still very much love to take care of other people to this day, but my sole happiness does not depend on it anymore. I used to have to constantly be expending energy on others in order to feel happy and I have learned that in order to help others, I need to focus inward and help myself first! Take time to take care of the person that you see looking back at you in the mirror, so that you can put the best you out there in the world!