How much love do you have for yourself and others?
How do you even know if you love yourself?
Do you even need to love yourself?
Ask yourself this:
- Do you show up for yourself?
- Do you say you will go to the gym and actually show up when you say you will?
- Keep your commitments to yourself on your calendar?
- Do you eat like you love your body?
- Do you have confidence in your ability to achieve anything you set your mind to do?
If you said no to all or some of those, then you don’t have respect, integrity and love for yourself.
And, we need to work on that….
Why?
Your job, your goals, time management, finances, productivity and health all depend on how much you love yourself and what you think you deserve.
If you don’t love yourself, then…
- you’ll constantly make excuses on why you didn’t show up for yourself
- won’t take your health seriously and not live your best life each day with nourishing your body
- put others opinion of you first before your own
- have a very low self esteem
- you’ll think you don’t deserve a raise at work
- your finances will be suffering
- you won’t want to share your voice
Sound familiar?
The key here is you can’t live your dream life, without loving yourself first.
Love is the foundation of all things, and you know we’ve all heard the saying; ‘love is the strongest force on this earth’, but why the heck did they never mention — loving yourself is the first step!
So, my next point is do you even know what love really is and what it means to you?
Do you have a hard time finding love in your life?
Well, if you want more love, know that you can LEARN to love.
When I learned this fact, my whole world changed. It’s in the same realm as ‘You can’t love someone, until you learn to love yourself.’
When you choose to love yourself, in return, you get to have more love in your life.
Why Would You Want to Choose Love?
Firstly, if you want to feel true happiness, you have to mindfully choose love each day.
Secondly, because love is the strongest, most powerful feeling we can all experience. It’s the most peaceful, calming and out-of-this world amazing feeling. It’s true joy and contentment.
Lastly (and most importantly), having true love and respect for yourself is an adventure. It’s contradictory to what society expects of you. Be a daredevil, I say, and have immense true love, integrity and respect. Stand tall and be proud of who you are.
So, here’s what you need to know: Love is always an option.
You have the choice yourself. You have the choice to love yourself or not to love yourself. Yes, it’s this simple, but think about it, most of us don’t choose love.
To show you this fact; Dove came up with an alarming result in their research with women:
- Only 4% of women around the world consider themselves beautiful (up from 2% in 2004)
- Only 11% of girls globally are comfortable describing themselves as ‘beautiful’
These statistics are wildly low. As women, we have to learn to love ourselves and show what it means to be a powerful woman.
When you don’t love, you can’t feel love (insert mind blown emoji here).
So, lets get good at this love thing…
Think of someone in your life that you love unconditionally. For me, that could be my my sister, nephew and niece.
Really think about how much you love them. How you shower them with love and how you think they are absolutely perfect without having to change anything about themselves.
You have unconditional love for this person.
Well, no reason, you can’t have the emotion of love towards yourself, either.
Here Are The Three Simple Steps To Having More Love In Your Life:
Step 1: Choose the Emotion of Love
Here’s the truth, you can have unconditional love for yourself, too.
You can choose to have this feeling. Yep, love is just a feeling because it is an emotion.
You can choose the feelings you have and not have.
For example, you can choose to get angry at a situation or let the situation be what it is and choose to feel peace in your heart instead of anger.
It’s the same with the emotion of love. Instead of having hate in your heart towards yourself and others, you can choose to have love.
Feelings are fleeting, right? They come and go. Well, love is the same way, but the reason we stay ‘in love’ is because we choose to commit to that person. Who we love is just as much of a choice as it is a feeling. Since love is a choice, mindfully, each day, choose to be in the state of feeling love. Loving towards yourself and others. Trust me, it feels better feeling love throughout your day than feeling any other emotions out there.
Hmm, maybe that’s why people always say “choose love”….
So, the real work begins now. You have to constantly see the good in yourself, instead of judging and seeing the bad.
Practice with others as well. You have to work on yourself and improve yourself each day because you can choose to be your best version of yourself, and in turn, get to show up to this world with giving back all that you can.
Step 2: Get Really Good At Being Loving
As you can get good at anything, you can also get good at giving love and being more loving. This right here is a game changer. So, if you want more love in your life, just get good at being more loving.
Since love is an emotion, you can choose to bring up the emotion of love throughout your day.
Here’s another mind blowing fact; you can choose to love your alcoholic dad, emotionally draining mom or the heartbreaking ex-boyfriend, but it doesn’t mean you have to have them in your life.
All you have to do is have love in your heart for them and move on. It feels much better to have love then hate or anger or any other resentful emotion, so why not have a positive one?
Step 3: Make a Habit of Showing Up to Your Commitments
You show up at work everyday. You show up for your friends. You show up for a loved one. But, why do you never show up for yourself?
For instance, how many times do you write on your calendar that you will do something and you don’t do it? You say you will go to the gym and you snooze instead of showing up.
I want you to practice getting in the habit of showing up for yourself. When you say you will do something, don’t make any excuses and do everything in your power to make sure you do the thing you said you will do. Have full integrity for yourself.
You wouldn’t want your friend to get mad at you if you didn’t show up for your plans, right? Well, don’t disappoint yourself, either.
Summary –
The more you practice showing up with love in your life, and less anger and bitterness, the more joy, peacefulness and contentment you will feel.
If you choose anger, you are the only one feeling anger — not the person you are angry with — always remember this.
Also remember, when you don’t CHOOSE love, you don’t feel love.
Remember the person you love unconditionally, and then, choose to feel that way towards yourself. Choose to give yourself immense amounts of kindness and love.
In short, focus on making it an intention each day of feeling the immense love you have for others to have for yourself.
Love yourself because you are worthy. You are needed. You matter and you have so much to give back to this world.
If you need help with learning to love yourself, your life, the people around you and become a Warrior Woman, my coaching is open. Apply for the program here.
Much love,
Ozzy
Resources: “Our Research.” Dove US, www.dove.com/us/en/stories/about-dove/our-research.html.
