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“To fall in love with yourself is the first secret to happiness.” -Robert Morely

Once upon a time not too long ago I was very mean, inconsiderate, berating and unforgiving. I was very quick to judge and point out every single flaw and even at times made ‘joking’ comments about those flaws. I sound like a total b*tch don’t I? What if I told you I only treated myself this way? I could never treat another person like this. Why? Well, because that is just wrong. So, why was I so comfortable treating myself this badly?

For most of my life I have felt unloved and abandoned. It doesn’t mean I have to live the rest of my life feeling that way. However, I can’t begin to accept love until I learned to love myself. If I don’t love myself, I will not feel worthy of love so I won’t be open to anyone else’s love. This also works the other way around, if I can’t love myself, I can’t truly love others.

One day a couple of years ago I decided it was time for me to start taking responsibility for making myself happy and start loving myself. I knew this was going to be very awkward and very difficult since my relationship with myself had always been a hate/hate one.

I started wondering how much differently my life would have been if I could just travel back to when I was about 7 years old and told myself that I am loved. Since I can’t time-travel, I decided to use 7-year-old me as my motivation to change the way I talk to myself. Would you tell 7- year-old you that you are an idiot for forgetting to do something? I wouldn’t. I would be way nicer to 7-year-old me.

Mentally, I stopped calling myself things like lazy, dumb, idiot, stupid. So instead of saying something like, “I’m such an idiot! I can’t believe I missed my exit!” Now I say, “Wow, I was so distracted that I missed my exit, it’s ok I’ll take the next one, make a u-turn and start paying more attention to the road. Good thing I didn’t miss 2 exits!” I know it sounds very weird, but it works. If I think of myself as a young child, I am more patient, understanding, compassionate and more open to accepting my flaws and still love myself.

For years I debated whether I should share this journey of mine and I finally took the plunge. We go around taking care of other people we often forget to take care of ourselves. This blog and facebook page was put together so I can remind others to love themselves. Knowing that the journey to loving ourselves is a complicated one, I wanted to share the methods that worked for me in hopes that it helps you too.

Today, when you talk to yourself or about yourself, do you do it in a loving way? Let me know in the comments if I am alone in this or if you too have/had an issue with how you are/were treating yourself. Sometimes putting things in writing helps!

Here are some articles & blogs I found while doing some research. (*I am not an affiliate and I am not working with any of the websites in my Reading List.)