If I were to mention the word “love” to you, what ends up coming to your mind? Does your heart swell up and feel warm and expansive, or does it shrink with an accompanying tightness in your chest?
Do you feel like you have a lot of love in your life, or do you feel as though you are significantly lacking? Are you craving and wanting love?
Do you love yourself? Do you love others?
Speaking of loving yourself, if you were going to quantify the amount of love you feel for yourself, what level of self-love would you say you have these days? Put it on a scale of 1–10!
…
What does it mean to have self-love?
Self-love can often be misunderstood. It often gets confused for a type of “self-care” where you end up pampering yourself and treating yourself nicely for a day or maybe longer. A little pampering now and then isn’t a bad thing, but it’s not what actual self-love is all about.
Self-love is trusting yourself.
Self-love is respecting yourself.
Self-love is reverence for yourself and what you’ve been through.
Self-love is unapologetically doing what you know to be best for you.
Self-love rarely means doing what is easiest or what feels good at the moment. It is about going to the gym when you are feeling tired because you love yourself enough to give yourself the gift of a healthy body. It is about accepting yourself for your flaws while actively working on improving upon those flaws.
…
Loving others
Have you ever heard the saying “you can’t love somebody else until you can fully love yourself”?
Sounds nice, sounds profound, and sounds true, but it’s kind of bullshit.
Humans can be pretty brutal to themselves, are you one of these people? For many of you out there, if you spoke to a friend in the same way you speak to yourself, that friend would want to have nothing to do with you pretty quickly. Social media and our culture of comparison and keeping up with the Jone’s have only intensified this harsh self-criticism and judgment. It is much easier to feel feelings of love for other people when you don’t feel like you measure up to society’s standards. Maybe you have someone in your life you look up to, and in them, you have something to aspire to.
You could easily love a family member or maybe a close friend even if you don’t have those feelings for yourself.
This might seem contradictory to the title of this piece but just stay with me.
Photo by Brian Lundquist on Unsplash
Increasing the love in your life
Experiencing greater amounts of love in your life is always going to start with you! This is bigger than just loving your Mom and Dad and your Aunt Susie.
You want to be able to have some level of admiration and respect for the person looking back at you in the mirror. You gain respect and admiration for the man or woman in the mirror by doing the difficult and often painful work to address your shortcomings while also pushing yourself in a direction of living a life you love and are excited about.
When you live a life you love and can genuinely say you are proud of, things start working out in your favor more often. Suddenly, the right people find their way into your life. You feel excited and grateful for the day which lies ahead for you because you are doing things that bring you enjoyment and fulfillment.
You love and feel joy for what you get to experience every day.
You value yourself and hold yourself in high esteem for being the X-factor in bringing about the life you have been wanting.
Because of all the joy and excitement you feel, you bring that energy to your interactions with other people. On top of that, you have attracted so many of the right people into your life at the same time.
…
It’s so simple, but not easy
What do you want out of your life? What are you holding back on and not going after? Do you feel satisfied with the relationships you have?
This includes your current friends.
It includes your relationship with your family.
It includes your relationship with yourself!
It’s time for you to get real with yourself and for you to get out of your comfort zone. Get real about the life you envision and desire for yourself. Sometimes it takes trial and error, but that’s okay.
You are only a couple of right moves away completely changing the course of your life for the better! Love yourself enough to take the steps you need to take.
You will experience incredible love in your life, my friend, trust yourself and trust in the process!
—
This post was previously published on medium.com.
***
You may also like these posts on The Good Men Project:
White Fragility: Talking to White People About Racism | Escape the “Act Like a Man” Box | The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer | What We Talk About When We Talk About Men |
—
Photo credit: MI PHAM on Unsplash