By Noujoud Yassine
The Myth Of Self Love
Self Love isn’t something that happens to you, based on what OTHERS think of you, or based on some RESULT you’ve achieved.
Self Love is a more internal shift in how you feel about yourself.
Self Love is respecting your own feelings and needs as much as (or more than) others’ feelings and needs, so you have no trouble setting boundaries and saying “no.”
Our parents, the society, religious leaders and authority figures tell us all the time what we need to be . We cling tightly to this false idea of ourselves , while stuffing down the “real you” with food, drugs, entertainment or any other form of addictions.
You see , There was a time when my fears and others expectations of me held me to a life that wasn’t my own.
It took me years of denying who I really was and what really mattered to me before I was able to love myself enough to start to change my life … I had put in so much of my energy trying to keep the façade of my “perfect life” alive, while my spirit and heart paid the price. The real me had been shrinking smaller and smaller and smaller.
Until one day it happened and I confronted myself
How much longer do I have to endure this?
I asked myself often ;
Why do we give away our power to others and feel that whatever we do, it’s never good enough?
Why do we always think it’s our fault when someone doesn’t call us back or return a text?
Why do we often feel that we’re not as smart, attractive, accomplished or admired as others, and therefore, will never have love or the kind of life we dream about?
You know why ?
Because loving ourselves enough to confront ourselves is so challenging , it goes against everything you may have been told will make you happy.
Trust me it all is in our own mind .
Society tells us that marrying a handsome, ambitious and financially affluent man is the epitome of what you should want as a woman, so you chase “chemistry” and end up with the wrong man most of the time.
The media says you have to make a lot of money and have an impressive title to be successful, so you work a job that drains you because you don’t want to be seen as a failure.
And the list can go on …
Tho we may say we want self love, and we may have an idea of how it can help us live a better life, but we don’t know a thing about how to have it.
Now look inwards and check
Who is the real you ?
And remember
When you have Self Love, the choices you make every day keep you centered and coming back to what you know to be true for you. You can’t help but meet the right people, attract the right opportunities, and live the life you want.
you don’t have Self Love, you’ll always be chasing the quick-fix or the temporary distraction, or blaming others for what’s going wrong in your life. And you’ll always end up in the same place: loveless, insecure, struggling and frustrated.
However loving yourself cannot come from beating yourself up until you wear yourself down. It cannot come from wishing it away or thinking it away.
Healing can only come from the inside , through you …