Do You Love Yourself?

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Spring is here! The days are getting longer, and the weather is getting warmer. As the Earth adjusts its thermostat, it’s the perfect time for us to do the same. Today, I want to talk about self-love.

Before you roll your eyes and say, yeah, yeah—know that self-love, or your self-image, is what dictates your internal thermostatic set point for how much good you allow into your life.

A thermostat regulates the heat in a room, so it doesn’t move up or down very much. Your internal thermostatic set point does the same thing: It keeps things status quo. No matter how much you want to improve an area of your life, your internal thermostat will only fluctuate as much as your self-image will allow.

This means that all areas of your life are governed by your individual set points. This includes good health, financial success, love, and how much fun you have. It’s possible to have different set points in different areas; however, success in one area is often at the expense of something else. For example, you may have financial success, but it has negatively affected your health and relations. Or you may have good solid relationships, but you haven’t achieved the vocational status you desire.

If I were to ask, “Do you love yourself?” What would you say? Take a moment to think about it and answer the question honestly—just to yourself. Your answer may be, yes. But how often do you see your reflection in the mirror and think something negative to yourself? How often do you have negative self-talk? How often—when you make a mistake or wished you had done something differently—are you hard on yourself?

Notice when someone offers to do something nice for you: Do you say, “That’s okay, I can do it.” Or, do you say, “Thank you, that would be wonderful!” When someone gives you a compliment, do you say, “Thank you” and really accept it, or do you wonder what they want, or say, “It was nothing” or “This old dress?”

Our reactions are indicators of the truth of how we feel about ourselves. Self-love is all inclusive. To increase our self-love, we must replace the self-critic. The degree to which we can truly love ourselves directly correlates to what we think we deserve or think we can have: the financial freedom, the loving relationships.

We all stand in the middle of our results. In fact, we are a perfect match for our results. As we raise up our self-image, we raise up our level of self-love. The formula for success is a simple formula, but it’s not always easy to implement. This is because we have old, well-established patterns of which we often aren’t aware.



How do you start to raise up your self-image? How do you start to love yourself more?

First: If it feels hard to even consider loving yourself more, begin by being more aware of God’s love for you. If you don’t resonate with the word God, then replace it with whatever works for you: Life, Universe, Spirit, Eternal love. Do you believe that God is a loving God? Do you believe that God loves all creatures? Remind yourself that you are included in this infinite love. Once, when I was doing Chi Gong, I experienced the feeling universal love. It was so beautiful and over-powering that I cried. This love is always available to us, we just need to put our attention on it and let it in.

Second: Write a vision of a life you would love to be living and who you would be in that life. Start to imagine yourself having the level of success or having the loving partner that you see in your vision. By doing this, you are giving your vision energy. You aren’t coming from the conditions in your life, you are coming from your vision. And then, more and more of the time, you will notice that you are being that person—not the person you started out to be.

It is necessary for there to be congruency with who you are being in your vision and with the actions you take. If you are envisioning that you love yourself, then take good care of your body, mind and spirit and take action steps that support that.

Third: Start to notice what you’re noticing—begin to be aware of your thoughts. Notice when you have negative self-talk and when you are putting yourself down. Stay committed to loving yourself gently. As you notice what you are noticing, replace any negative thoughts. Don’t beat yourself up over negative thoughts because that would be perpetuating negativity. Beating yourself up will also train you to not want to notice when you are off track in your thinking or when you are having contractive thoughts.

Send a beam of love to your negative thought. Instead of fighting it, love it; it’s been there to protect you. You can thank it and tell it you don’t need it anymore and replace it with a positive thought.

Fourth: An activity that can help increase self-love is to write the following: I, [insert your name], make a sincere commitment to loving myself now and forever.

Write the sentence once with your dominant hand and then once with your nondominant hand. Just scrawl it out the best you can. Your nondominant hand is directly connected to your subconscious mind. Repeat this and write it once more with your dominant hand and then again with your other hand. Then place it somewhere you can see it every day.

Often, because we’re not like everyone else, we think something is wrong with us. We think we should be… you fill in the blank. But what if the thing that you thought made you not fit in were the very thing that made you stand out?

Increasing your self-love and self-image will make it possible to bring more and more good into your life. Give these four ways to achieve more self-love a try or come up with a few of your own. What have you got to lose?

If you’d like help creating a vision for a life you’d love, I’d like to offer you a Complimentary Discovery Session.  Click here for more information (scroll to bottom) and to schedule a time. https://www.cynhannah.com/discovery-session/

 

The tomato behind The Three Tomatoes.
Cheryl Benton, aka the “head tomato” is founder and publisher of The Three Tomatoes, a digital lifestyle magazine for “women who aren’t kids”. Having lived and worked for many years in New York City, the land of size zero twenty-somethings, she was truly starting to feel like an invisible woman. She created The Three Tomatoes just for the fun of it as the antidote for invisibility and sent it to 60 friends. Today she has thousands of friends and is chief cheerleader for smart, savvy women who want to live their lives fully at every age and every stage. She is the author of the novel, "Can You See Us Now?" and co-author of a humorous books of quips, "Martini Wisdom." Because she's lived a long time, her full bio won't fit here. If you want the "blah, blah, blah", read more. www.thethreetomatoes.com/about-the-head-tomato

Cheryl Benton

The tomato behind The Three Tomatoes. Cheryl Benton, aka the “head tomato” is founder and publisher of The Three Tomatoes, a digital lifestyle magazine for “women who aren’t kids”. Having lived and worked for many years in New York City, the land of size zero twenty-somethings, she was truly starting to feel like an invisible woman. She created The Three Tomatoes just for the fun of it as the antidote for invisibility and sent it to 60 friends. Today she has thousands of friends and is chief cheerleader for smart, savvy women who want to live their lives fully at every age and every stage. She is the author of the novel, "Can You See Us Now?" and co-author of a humorous books of quips, "Martini Wisdom." Because she's lived a long time, her full bio won't fit here. If you want the "blah, blah, blah", read more. www.thethreetomatoes.com/about-the-head-tomato

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