Its very easy to say that we need to love ourselves. Wrap ourselves in a deep hug, be kinder to ourselves etc. I think sometimes people think that this means if you feel like a spending spree go do it – or drink excessively in the name of self love and support. Are these really expressions of self love? At one stage in my life I thought so. I could justify a spend or behaviour under the guise of self love. But really all I was doing was medicating myself from my issues.

A wise person who I admired and respected once said to me, “You know if we loved ourselves in the same earnest and deep way that we love another, there would be far less ‘self’ problems.”

But what does loving yourself more deeply mean? For someone It could mean that you honour yourself enough to remove yourself from people who harm you or emotionally abuse you. For others its that they love themselves enough to put themselves first. Another person I know wants to practice love by not gossiping, blaming, and justifying and making excuses.

If we take our self-love a bit deeper, one would need to examine the secret judgements we make in our heads of others? You know what I mean, the silent criticism that we project onto others, often with eye rolling thrown in…….When hubby doesn’t clean up correctly correctly and you quietly think, God he’s done it again, he so hopeless when he cleans, he misses everything… or if you start talking about someone negatively as soon as they leave the room. The thing is, when we judge others or feel our buttons are being ‘pushed’ by what people say and do, we are really just projecting our own feelings. We are accusing or being annoyed with the very things that we reject and disown in ourselves. Sometimes it can be a fear we haven’t event acknowledged. To love ourselves more deeply, I believe we have to be willing to work on these triggers and how we react to others. I discovered one a few years back. I have had in the past, issues around money and deserving coming from a ‘lack’ and poverty conscious in my childhood. I noticed one day a man sitting in a very nice, very expensive car with the top down. I noticed later that I had muttered to myself, ‘poser’. Now I am embarrassed when I think back now, but when I used to have a poor relationship with money, I can see why I made reaction. It was masking some deeper belief that I held around money.

If we want to love ourselves more deeply we need to be really honest about our judgement of people and what that is really reflecting about us.

Until next week

Huge Hugs to all

Andy x