Love Yourself- You are not a Trophy

You are not someone’s trophy.  You are your own significant, beautiful self, with something important to give to the world.Maybe you already know this, but I think if you are a like a lot of us females, you don’t.  I think that most women, from  a very early age, learn to worry a lot about what other people think and to spend their wholes lives discovering what other people think they should do and then trying as hard as they can to do it.

When you look at the messages the media sends women, it’s not hard to understand why.  Magazines, movies, and television shows teach women that if we are thin enough, beautiful enough, hot enough, or whatever, we will be adored by people around us, especially men, and all our dreams will come true.  We will live happily ever after.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be loved or wanting to be happy.  The problem is that when we try to be happy or loved by worrying about and trying to do what everyone else thinks we should do, we leave out the most significant person in the equation:  ourselves.  We are in the best position to discover what makes us happy, what talents and gifts we have, and the steps we need to make to become whole, happy people.  Discovering these things is not easy most of the time, but we are in a far better position to do these things for ourselves than someone else is.

And really, this is where our happiness lies:  in being whole, happy people.  Frequently, becoming whole, happy people will lead us to being loved by others or to developing meaningful relationships.  However, we have to start with what is most important- loving, listening to, discovering, and celebrating who we are.

Love yourself because you are you.  You are not a trophy.

The Most Important Friend in Your Life- You

The most influential friend you will ever have in your life is YOU. Did you ever think about that?  You are with yourself all the time.  The thoughts you think about yourself and the things you say to yourself influence you more than anything anyone else could say to you.  If you tell yourself you are worthless, that you will never amount to anything, and that no one cares about you, you will believe yourself.

That we are the most important friend in our own life and that we often speak really negative and discouraging things to ourselves is one of the reasons, I think, we so often go about in our lives looking for affirmation and acceptance from other people.  It is why we worry so much about what other people think about us.  When we reject ourselves and become, as the saying goes, our own worst enemy, this leaves a big void in our lives.  We are alienate and estranged from ourselves, and in this estrangement, we form a negative identity.  Therefore, we wander around looking for someone to fill this void, affirm our worth, and give us some kind of positive identity.

The problem is that other people cannot do this for us.  We are the closest to ourselves and know the most about ourselves.  So, really, if we don’t believe in our own worth, we won’t believe other people who tell us we are worthy.  If we don’t forge our own identity, we won’t really believe in or accept, ultimately, the identity that someone else tries to forge for us. It will always feel inauthentic because that is what it will be. The word “identity” comes from the Latin word “idem”, meaning “the same”.  Our identity is the same as who we are. It is what we create every minute of the day through the choices we make.  So, we can’t import some identity from someone else.

Interestingly, although our friendship to ourselves is the most significant friendship we will ever have, I don’t think many of us know how to be a good friend to ourselves.  This is something we certainly need to talk about, and we will in another post.  But for today, think about these two questions: How good of a friend are you to yourself?  How could you be a better friend?

Welcome to Peaceful Health, Exuberant Living!

Peaceful health, exuberant living:  Doesn’t that sound wonderful?  Who wouldn’t want to achieve good health peacefully and live a life full of excitement and joy?  When it comes down to it, I think this is what we all want- a life spent pursuing the passions and activities that give us joy, and the energy and vitality to do it.

Unfortunately, I think most of us, including myself sometimes, are not sure how to make this happen.  I think this is so for many reasons.  Perhaps we are alienated from our true selves and have problems knowing what actually brings us joy and exuberance.  Perhaps we are so busy, we don’t have time to care for ourselves or even understand what it means to care for ourselves appropriately.  Perhaps we are too influenced by other people who, to be quite honest, are not a very good influence on us.  Perhaps we are enmeshed in bad habits encouraged by our culture such as the consumption of poor quality food and the development of sedentary habits.  There are many reasons, and you can probably think of other ones, that we end up living lives that are less than peaceful, less than healthy, less than exuberant.

All is not gloom and doom, however.  Awareness of the problem is an amazing first step, and I think through discussing these issues, learning more, and making small changes over time (or big ones, if that works), we gain a powerful momentum that eventually transforms our life.  So that is what this blog is about- discussing, learning, and making little and big changes that transform our lives and allow us to be peaceful, joyful, and free to love ourselves and those around us.

Let’s get going!