What would your life be like if each day if you actually loved yourself?
What if each day you got out of bed with a quiet confidence? If you drew from within yourself at each moment, and within every interaction a genuine love and respect for who you are?
What if, each time you looked in the mirror you said "There is NOTHING I would change?" and meant it?
What if you loved yourself, the same way that you love a child? As though you need nothing from them, you just love them -unconditionally.
Or, the way that you love someone when you first fall in love with them, maybe they’re no Brad Pitt and they're definitely not PERFECT but it 100% does not matter. You just LOVE them so much.
As though you could see your own flaws, and you work on them, but you still take you as you are. With amazing LOVE and importantly, compassionate forgiveness.
Nothing to prove or gain by peacocking, belittling others, competing, misleading, concealing or boasting. Just genuine skin deep self-love. Knowing your value and worth are innate, not needing others to “see you.” You just go on shining like you do. What if EVERYBODY was like that? Ironically, self-love is not selfish.
We have all forgotten: You don't need to be perfect to deserve love.
If a toddler falls, you don't say: "Oh, you idiot, learn to walk!"
If your father lost his job you wouldn't say: "You're a failure!"
If a friend bags out their weight you comfort them, right?
If you had a friend who talks like your inner dialogue you would need to break up.
We are soft animals, we thrive in loving environments.
How are we to learn to love ourselves?
Step One is: Cultivating Self-Compassion.
Accepting our imperfections and celebrating our differences is not really taught in our society. We opt to change or condemn the aspect of ourselves before we accept ourselves, but this is precisely where to start to cultivate Self-Love.
Kristen Neff, Associate Professor in the University of Texas at Austin's department of Educational Psychology, has devoted decades to studying the effects of Self-Compassion as well as developing interventions to assist people develop self-compassion.
According to Neff: Self-esteem produces far fewer benefits compared to Self-compassion.
So, first off, what’s the difference between Self-compassion and Self-esteem?
“Self-esteem is a global evaluation of self-worth. A judgement. Am I good person, or, am I a bad person? In (modern western) culture, to have High Self-Esteem, you have to feel special and above average. (How do you know you’re above average? Comparing yourself favorably to others.)
If I told any one of you, your work performance, Oh, it’s average, or you’re an average mother, or if you told me afterwards that this (article) was average, I’d be crushed. It’s not OK to be average, it’s considered an insult to be average.
So, what’s the problem with that? If all of us have to be above average at the same time…?
Are the words ‘logical impossibility’ springing to mind here? So, what happens if we all have to feel above average is we start playing these little games, we start to subtly find ways to puff ourselves up and put others down.
Self-Compassion is not a way of judging ourselves positively. Self-Compassion is a way of relating to ourselves kindly. Embracing ourselves as we are, flaws and all.” –Kristin Neff.
When we pin our self-approval to being better than everybody else, we create an environment where nobody can be content with themselves, we are locked into out-doing each other, constantly striving and measuring ourselves by standards which might not even be that important to us, personally. Our society hasn’t gotten it right just yet.
So, why can’t we just love ourselves without needing to be the best?
Lack of self-love is just your bodies misguided way of attempting to keep you safe. It’s actually a survival mechanism.
Your stone-age brain is attempting to give you the best life possible, by making you aware of what we will call your “pack–status.” That is: Where you fall into the social hierarchy of your surrounding community.
Logically we all want to strive to the front of the evolutionary pack, there are a great many rewards for being concluded as being “better” than those around you. It’s more likely you will secure the best mate, get the highest paying job, win peoples respect or affection and in turn secure personal safety in your community. Societies don’t sacrifice their chieftains or medicine-women, they sacrifice virgins, being those lower on the socio-economic ladder, with fewer viable skills which the hoard utelises.
Needing to be the best at everything, all the time is a biological urge programmed to ensure our survival, and as such activates our survival instincts, like ‘fight or flight.’ We may activate our survival reflexes for things which at least on the surface have very little to do with life or death. Competition for a promotion, a friend looking “better than you” in a bikini around your husband, receiving an F on a paper, all these things can cause a stress response, and spark fierce competition, because we interpret them as threats to our survival.
Rather ironically, these stressors of perceiving ourselves as being “below-average” actually hampers our ability to be our best.
Negative thoughts about ourselves activate your stress response, and chronic stress can:
So, on one hand we have this biological urge to exceed our competitors which generates stress and negative self-talk. On the other hand, it is really rewarding to be motivated to strive for greatness. We need to continue to evolve for the sake of living our best life, our own survival and to dawn new and better ways of living on our planet. So, we do actually need negative feedback to let us know when a behavior is not good for us. We also need to make sure that we aren’t constantly stressing ourselves out over our insecurities, but how?
What we must do is put less energy into building our Self-Esteem and put more energy into Cultivating Self-Love. Self-Love says my continued growth is a healthy expression of that love which I have for myself, Self-Esteem says I need to compete for my worthiness.
So, how do we develop a mindset geared toward great self-love?
Learn and apply the Five Self-Love Concepts.
There is a tendency in humanity to think of ourselves as separate, different to others, however we are very much the same. What is the one thing which you have in common with every single person on this planet? What do you think it is?
What connects us is a common struggle: Being human and being imperfect.
Each and every one of us make mistakes. Suffering is a Universal experience. However, we tend not to believe our same struggles, suffering or imperfection apply to the other people we share our planet with.
Everyone has particular talents, everyone has shortcomings. We are each unique. Everything and everyone is perfect, until it’s being compared to something else. Even a positive quality has a shadow, and each weakness a gift. Like the yin/yang symbol. It is in this Universal law that we are each held in equilibrium and held as equals among other men.
When you genuinely accept that we are all equal, it can have a profound effect on the way you live and how you see yourself and others, it may even improve your relationships to others, which has a very positive impact on your longevity and pack-security.
Your construct of your ideal life/body is unrealistic and may be developed from misleading images. Some come from Social media, where your peers can openly promote their best angles in competition for pack-status. Some come from misleading images which marketers are using to sell you products. We are easily manipulated by our fear of being “inferior” to others, and advertisers know how to create urgency for products, selling an unrealistic standard.
It’s not just media which deceives us about the standards which we are to aspire to. People are far readier to broadcast their successes. Before genuinely getting close to someone, you only see a small portion of the “real me” in others. Parents, teachers and authority figures are no exception, they have a standard which they are expected to project, from the time you were born: adults sheltered you from certain aspects of their life experience. The truth of our inner natures can often be surprising to others.
Also, our loved ones’ condition us into believing we need to be a certain way to make them love us.
When we deconstruct the distorted images we’ve been subjected to, our perspective of how we are “supposed to be” may become more fluid and tolerant. We may even begin to allow our most unique qualities to surface and shine, while giving others permission to do the same.
When we were just in a cave, surrounded our tribe, focusing on survival, mating, and food we were exposed to so fewer “threats” to our pack-status. We saw the other members in their vulnerable, intimate moments, we made more balanced evaluations about who they were. In this information age, we see so much from social media, tv, print etc. which does not reflect the entire reality, rather the highlights. It’s our nervous systems job to constantly seek out mates, food and survival threats, this includes potential threats to our pack-status, so you cannot help but become aware and get disappointed with yourself when you see an image of Miranda Kerr in Lingerie or read an article about Richard Branson running a multi-billion-dollar empire. You forget that these people are real, flawed human-beings. Behind the image they project, they have real suffering and imperfections, just like you. We don’t see what life is like behind the lense. Forgive yourself and others when they err, too. Nobody is perfect, but we are all extraordinary. Do not demand perfection before you meter out your love to others, either.
The ability to forgive and love in the face of human frailty is a virtue. Cultivate it and watch your relationships and self-confidence transform.
Most of us are waiting to be better before we can love ourselves. We do need goals but, even if you lived up to the standard you hope to obtain it doesn’t guarantee you will be happy for long.
A person’s appreciation for something they strive for declines once it is acquired. The Hedonic Adaptation is a term that was first coined in 1971 by Psychologists Phillip Brickman and Donald Campbell. This principle demonstrates how our expectation and desire rise in equal measure to match our level of wellbeing. The only antidote is to constantly work at cultivating appreciation for yourself, as you are now.
If your ability to approve of yourself is always dependent on realizing your next milestone, it will always be out of reach. It’s unlikely you will remain proud of yourself after the next significant personal growth spurt for very long, unless you learn to find appreciation for yourself exactly as you are, at each step of the way.
Exercise:
Historically, we readily use negative feedback from our environment to motivate us to improve ourselves and our pack status.
Example: After your wife regrettably leaves you, you finally pay attention to the advice she has been giving you for 13 years and seek help for your addiction.
The truth is that most of us develop negative beliefs about ourselves and use that criticism to wake ourselves up, hoping to embody a better version of ourselves. This is stressful and wounds our sense of “self-love.”
We know now, that low self-esteem is a survival mechanism. Your inner caveman wants you to win at everything so you survive another day. There’s actually a pretty ingenious hack to satiate that part of you. To take loving, small consistent actions to improve yourself. Doing something in service of your goals satiates the part of you that won’t stop pointing out your imperfections. Of course, you should love and forgive yourself for what you cannot (yet) change too, remember, progress, not perfection!
Make the commitment, right now that self-development is a form of self-love and self-respect. You now honour the agreements to consistently work on yourself in a healthy way, and forgive yourself when you err.
When trying to take a balanced stance in achieving personal growth it is important to both appreciate what is, and be eager to grow. A good question to qualify the integrity of a personal growth pursuit is “What would I do if I REALLY loved myself?”
Binge and Purge? No.
Doing exercise I love, like dancing, walking on the beach or making love? Yes.
Taking time out for good sleep. Yes
So, with everything that you are doing, ask yourself 100x a day, “What would I do if I truly loved myself?”
Exercise:
Take some time now to imagine how it feels to really love yourself. From that state write what you would be doing differently if you REALLY loved yourself.
At least 15 things in each column:
Column 1: What I NO LONGER DO now that I REALLY love myself.
Column 2: What I begin to do now that I REALLY love myself.
Erin Ricketts is a Kinesiologist from Sydney’s Northern Beaches. She specializes in emotional healing and helping people shift their mindset to achieve incredible goals.
Erin runs Group Coaching Programs to help people cultivate Revolutionary Self-Love. Tailored specifically to her clients’ individual needs. For more information call 0404 130 289