My blogging buddy Daylle Deanna Schwartz emailed me about a 31-day self-love challenge to kick off 2013 in January by writing about love. Receive her FREE ebook, How Do I Love Me? Let Me Count The Ways.
What a great idea to write articles on self-love especially with this shift in consciousness to embody love!
Below is a revised post I wrote in January 2011. Enjoy!
To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance” – Oscar Wilde
Fear and unworthiness are two main issues that powerfully affect self-confidence and self-esteem. How we feel about ourselves affects every aspect of our lives: business success, relationships, happiness, health & wellness….
Do you…
- Call yourself names when you feel you made a mistake?
- Sabotage your best intentions and break self-agreements?
- Focus more on what you feel is bad and wrong about you rather than celebrate what makes you amazing?
When we lack feelings of self-worth and self-love, we don’t allow ourselves to receive the good that is being offered to us in so many ways. Ouch!
We often associate our value and lovability with our roles, our jobs, our responsibilities and how we serve others.
Too often we focus on what we most need to change and what is wrong with us rather than seeing what is right and valuable about who we really are. If I had a $1.00 for every time I heard people’s pain about feeling inadequate and worthless, I would have quite a bit of money.
Self-love, compassion, forgiveness…..are often qualities we withhold from ourselves without realizing it. When we are harboring negative feeling towards ourselves we neglect, punish, and deny ourselves the very things we need most to experience the best of life.
No one can beat you up better than you, right?
My good friend Anita Pathik Law used to ask me, “Whose rules are those?” when she heard me being too tough on myself rather than being forgiving. I had never considered myself a perfectionist so it was a surprise to discover that there are times when my standards and rules about who I think I should be…. sets me up for feeling awful if I fail to live up to them. Yuk!
We came into this life filled with love and wonder. Life circumstances, cultural conditioning, relationships, has wired us to question our true value and to feel we are not good enough.
You are not broken
You do not need to be fixed
You need to wake up and remember who you really are!
Below is an adapted exercise from my 4-week mini journey into Self-Love in my Pathways to Awakening program
I invite you to acknowledge what you do AND celebrate who you are.
1. What I love about myself is (acknowledge a quality, strength, or gift about yourself that you are proud of and willing to own.
2. What makes me fabulous, wonderfull, lovable, and valuable is.
3. What I am most proud of is (I invite you to BRAG. Yup, you heard me – its crowing time. Stand up and tell it like it is, baby! Whoo-hoo!)
Use extra paper to fill in your answer! 
Let’s take this farther….
Begin each day by looking at yourself in the mirror and say out loud
(Your name) You are fabulous, lovable, wonderfull, and valuable!
Turn it into a declaration. Stand strong and say out loud
I am fabulous, lovable, wonderfull, and valuable!
Say these statements with ownership, pride, passion…Breathe into the words, and take them into you heart and body! Let go of feeling foolish or self-conscious. It’s time to own the truth about who you really are!
Now it’s your turn to be the recipient, ok?
Invite others to celebrate YOU! In the next 24 hours, email close trusted friends for feedback. Ask them:
What you love about me?
What do you think is wonderfull and fabulous about me?
What do you value most about me?
The first time I did this exercise I had to breathe quite a bit to take the love in. WOW!
*This exercise invites you to receive love from others that you might be deflecting and discarding. Give yourself the gift of feeling and receiving love – from yourself and the people who are crazy about you.
If you do not love yourself, how can you truly love another?
And how can you expect others to love you?
Ready to fall in deeper love with your Self?
