Tag: self love

Really, You Have No Idea How Connected and Important You Are

There’s no denying that the world can feel chaotic, making it easy to feel insignificant amidst the hustle and bustle of everyday life. As if that weren’t enough, my friend Norman often reminds me of how small we are by pointing out the existence of multiple galaxies, universes, and countless versions of ourselves living different lives in other timelines and dimensions.

Yet, when we look around, we see significance in others—people who have made valuable contributions to their lives, families, and communities. It’s common to compare and think, “What’s the point if I haven’t made a major impact?”

This mindset can make you feel small, as if you’re using resources that might better serve someone whose life appears more meaningful. But consider this: even a seemingly insignificant pebble can create ripples when thrown into a still lake, altering the entire body of water. Your life is much like that pebble.

Every time you share a laugh with friends, that moment changes everything. It starts with those around you but resonates beyond, affecting others they interact with and creating a ripple effect that extends to people and places far removed from the original moment. A single moment of laughter can influence work environments, social circles, and even news headlines elsewhere across the country.

When you encourage someone feeling down or celebrating their successes, you see the immediate impact, but remember the ripple effect. These small acts are like fibers woven into the tapestry of life, adding beauty and significance in ways that might seem minor but are genuinely profound.

You contribute to making the world a better, more beautiful place in these moments. Your presence and actions have a lasting impact, no matter how small they may seem. We are all blessed by your participation, and life is more pleasant and vibrant because of you.

Your Unseen Influence

1. The Ripple Effect

Imagine dropping a pebble into a still pond. The ripples spread outward, touching distant shores. Similarly, your actions, no matter how small, create ripples. A smile brightens someone’s day; a kind word lifts a burden.

These seemingly insignificant gestures echo through time, shaping lives you may never directly encounter.

2. The Power of Your Beingness

Every breath you take and your heartbeat send out vibrations; your mere presence of being influences the energy around you. Think of it as a cosmic dance, with your steps affecting the rhythm of the universe. Even when you feel insignificant, remember that your existence matters. You alter the course of events simply by being here.

3. The Unexpressed Thoughts

Our minds hum with unspoken thoughts, dreams, hopes, and hidden ideas. But these thoughts are not inert. They vibrate, resonating with the collective consciousness. Your unexpressed creativity, compassion, and love contribute to the world’s vibrational tapestry. Even in silence, you make a difference.

Embracing Your Impact

1. Reflecting on Others

Consider those who’ve touched your life: the mentors, friends, and strangers. Their influence lingers, guiding your choices and shaping your path. Now imagine the reverse: someone out there, perhaps unaware, draws strength from your journey. Your struggles, victories, and resilience inspire them. Your story matters.

2. The Gift of Time

Time is both finite and infinite. While we can’t add minutes to our days, we can infuse them purposefully. Reach out to someone, lend an ear, and share wisdom. These moments, spent in genuine connection, ripple outward. Your time becomes a gift, multiplying its impact as it touches others.

3. Transforming Pain

Depression, too, has its role. It’s not a curse but a catalyst. Use its weight to fuel your purpose. Channel your emotions into acts of kindness, advocacy, or creativity. Let your struggles be the compost for growth. By doing so, you amplify your influence, turning darkness into light.

See You for You

See yourself for who you really are and recognize your value. The world is better because of you: what is seen and what is not, the noticeable and noisy and the reserved and quiet. Your life is like a finely tuned instrument harmonizing with countless others in the symphony of life. Embrace your role, for even in the shadows, you cast light.

Remember: You are the pebble, the ripple, the cosmic dance. Your impact echoes far beyond what meets the eye.

God bless you for you.

 

Cheaters Have Nothing to do with You

It’s easy to internalize your frustrations if you’ve been with a partner who has been unfaithful. Cheaters have nothing to do with you. If you’re monogamous and committed to someone who is a cheater, when he or she has left, you might start questioning yourself. “What did I do?” or alternatively, “What’s wrong with me?” amongst other self-deprecating questions. When the truth is it’s about the cheater, not you.

Cheaters are gonna cheat. That’s just the way it is. You can change a cheater, it’s just the way they are hard-wired. Can a cheater change into a loving, caring, monogamous, and faithful partner? Yes. But you cannot change them. Only the cheater can change his or her life that drastically. Nothing you can do can change them.

Your first instinct is to blame yourself because you lack the full lovingness for yourself, so you question your worthiness, as all your insecurities rise to the surface, making you feel worse and worse about yourself, while the happy-go-lucky cheater is off on his or her next conquest.

Nothing is wrong with you. You are perfect in every way, only you do not realize it or know that all the love you seek resides within you waiting to be set loose in all its power and glory.

Lacking this true love from within, you will submit yourself to the endless abuse of not feeling as though you are not enough, questioning your authentic beauty, or over criticizing your income, weight, choice of apparel, hairstyle, mannerisms, possessions, family, beliefs, or any other endless possibilities that might make you feel less than worthy.

The choices other people make, the things they do, have nothing to do with you. You are for more inconsequential in the lives of people who have little or no regard for you than you might think. People just say or do stuff because their lives have led them to say or do this or that. That is all.

If it wouldn’t have been you, it would have been someone else.

You are not responsible for the life your ex- has lived up to this point and you can never know what is going on inside someone else’s head or heart.

In most (if not all) cases of infidelity or the inability for someone to make a long-term commitment comes from a lifetime of insecurity, fear, and/or abuse, every detail of which could never be fully known by any other person.

It’s up to you to look after your own feelings and sense of worthiness. You need to not let anyone have control over how you feel. In this way, you can reclaim your power from anyone who has threatened your otherwise sense of wellbeing.

If you let others to be responsible for how you feel, you would be just like your ex- who is constantly needing someone else to make him or her feel good. And when you make someone else responsible for how you feel, it works, but not for long.

If someone doesn’t like you the way you want them to, don’t feel bad. Be grateful that you found out when you did, because it could have been much worse had your relationship been allowed to continue in its dysfunction.

Your value is not determined by anyone or anything outside of yourself. Your preciousness comes from the love within yourself. Allowed to grow within yourself your love can expand and overflow to others and the world around you.

Without this unlimited source of love enveloping you, the best you can do is to mitigate your emotional state, with all its contradictions and inconsistencies, the best you can by applying emotional bandages (other people and what they think of you).

You are perfect, with all your imperfections, just the way you are.

You were born in love, full of love, and worthy of love, for you (in your truest essence) are love personified. Even if no one else recognizes your sacred divinity, it still remains true; you are pure love.

You don’t have to prove yourself to anyone, ever.

You love yourself enough to walk away from any relationship which is not in alignment with your highest and best.

You and your love is all the love you need, and when the right person shows up with a vibrational frequency with is alignment with your highest and best, nothing can stand in your way.

Great love is on its way to you.

Settling Into Your Power

Settling into your power is a state of being where you maintain a calm, loving, peaceful disposition regardless of circumstances. Settling into your power is finding that safe, serene, and sacred space inside you, where you are impenetrable by anyone or anything that might try to threaten your ability to see the good in all things.

Only the most powerful person in the world could accomplish such a feat, and you are the most powerful person in the world if you choose to be.

All this awesome power resides within you. It is the power of love, and you can learn to wield this power with elegance and grace, if you approach it with respect and tender humility, for “love does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.” ~ St. Paul (1 Corinthians 13:4-5).

You’re going about your business, maintaining your sacred space, being open to growth, change, and expansion in love, when someone or something threatens to upset your love vibration.

To allow someone to compromise your serenity is to give away your power to another person, circumstance, or situation. In the event your sacred space is breached by some outside force, it feels like an abusive assault, but you can regain your power when you are first consciously aware of the compromise, if you choose.

Seeing the disruption through the eyes of love, allows you to see life and this present circumstance as sacred as all life. Instead of seeing anything as a personal assault on you, you can see things as they are, realizing that life simply happens all around us, and sometimes it can knock you off balance when you intersect with it.

In love, you can compassionately empathize with the person or situation, allowing it just to be, you can safely and securely return to your state of love when you decide to, virtually unshaken.

Settling into your power is a grounded position where you accept full responsibility for your beingness, where you are the master of your fate, your beliefs, strengths, gifts, special abilities, purpose, message, passion, and mission.

Approaching life in the power of love is the highest state of freedom enjoyed by those who resonate in the vibration of love, and if you are empowered by this high state of love, your resolve cannot be shaken (not for long) by outside forces.

From this vantage point you can embrace the expectation that anyone needs to understand or approve of your highly regarded insights, because as you expand in consciousness, you may begin to see things in a radically different light than others who are unable to experience the state of empowered and expansive love.

No one can truly understand you, no matter how hard they try (bless them for trying), because only you can know you with all your fears, shadows, flaws, and extraordinary abilities, in your fullness.

Just as you hope to be loved and respected by others without judgment, you honor others and allow them to be whatever they choose to be, believe whatever it is they hold tight to, for this is the love response.

Even if directed specifically at you, you can respect someone else’s opinion as their own, without feeling threatened. They have the right to believe whatever they choose to believe, and you have no need to defend yourself because you love them, and you love yourself.

You understand that different people have different beliefs, and you have no compulsion to correct anyone or expectation that they will fully understand you. Even so, you love and hope that regardless of our differences we can remain friendly and love one another.

Since you no longer rely on the opinions and acceptance of others to put yourself in a state of wellbeing or happiness, you are free to allow the love that wells up from within you to overflow to others around you, unconditionally, for you are forever free in the fullness of love.

Want Love? You Got Love

Do you want love? You’ve already got it.

All the love you could ever desire is lying dormant, deep inside of you, waiting to be discovered. Let’s meet this love that’s already a part of you.

Imagine there’s a little four-year-old child living within you—a child who is naturally loving, caring, and deeply sensitive. This child relies on you for their sense of safety and wellbeing.

 

Now, ask yourself: what would you say to this child to make them feel secure? How would you nurture them to feel respected, self-confident, joyful, and loved?

On the other hand, what might you say or do that could hurt this child? Could you unintentionally make them feel fearful, neglected, or unloved?

While this might seem like a silly exercise, there is a little one who lives inside you who wants to talk to you, and this is a crucial step toward understanding the essence of love within you. This child represents your inner self—the neglected, vulnerable part of you that has been hiding in the shadows, afraid to burden you. For too long, this inner child has felt unseen and unheard.

Isn’t it time you finally met this little one?

The Key to Unlocking True Love

When you embrace your inner child, offering love, care, and reassurance, something incredible happens. As your inner child feels safe, secure, and excited to reconnect with you, your capacity to love yourself—and others—grows exponentially.

Neglecting this child, however, causes love within you to wither. Left unattended, your inner child may manifest frustration through emotional outbursts or even tantrums, disrupting your life in unexpected ways.

The truth is, loving yourself is the foundation for loving others. You can go through the motions of showing kindness and affection, but to share authentic, life-giving love, you must first cultivate it within yourself. Without that love energy flowing inside, any outward expression is simply a kind gesture—nice, but not transformative.

Your inner child longs to be loved by you. By nurturing and cherishing this part of yourself, you build the love energy that sustains and overflows into your relationships.

Love Starts Within

True, lasting love begins with you. You must honor and cherish yourself before expecting to love—or be loved by—someone else.

If your heart is empty and someone else’s love fills you up, that good feeling will inevitably fade. Without a wellspring of love within, you may become dependent on others to feel whole, leading to unhealthy cycles of seeking love outside yourself.

This is how love addiction begins: constantly craving external validation to fill an internal void. But when your heart is full, love becomes something you give freely, not something you desperately seek.

Authentic love is an energetic exchange. When the love within you overflows, it naturally reflects back from others who are also overflowing with love. This mutual exchange creates a profound, sustainable connection—a reflection of the awakening love energy emerging in humanity today.

You Are Whole

You are already complete. You don’t need another person to “complete” you or to fill a perceived gap. You are not broken or incomplete.

When your heart overflows with love, you no longer need to seek it outside yourself. Yet, the beauty of life lies in love’s reflection—the way it intermingles and grows when shared with another.

Love Without Struggle

Love is not about struggle, control, or manipulation. It’s not about bargaining, conquering, or clinging. True love flows effortlessly, without fear or conditions. It doesn’t need guarantees or expectations.

Love is sacred, fearless, and safe. It protects, trusts, honors, and hopes. Authentic love overflows naturally, like water finding its level, seeking the path where it can flow freely.

This kind of love is pure, like the bond between a loving mother and her newborn baby. There’s no jealousy, no contracts, no trading “this for that.” Just pure, unfiltered love that simply is.

Are You Ready for Authentic Love?

If you’re ready for a deeper, more fulfilling love, start within. Meet your inner child. Nurture them. Love them.

As you fill your own heart with love, you’ll find that love flows effortlessly into every corner of your life. You won’t need to struggle, strain, or seek love. Instead, you’ll discover the joy of letting love flow naturally—both within yourself and with others.

Love begins with you. Are you ready to embrace it?

 

You and Your Puppets

There is you. Then, there is the “you” which you present to others. No one knows the real you, except for you, and you create a disguise which you operate, like a puppet, to present to the world. After one realizes the efficacy of puppeteering, you create an army of puppets to represent yourself in any situation and circumstance.

You expend a great deal of effort adorning your puppet(s) to present to particular audiences. You clothe and accessorize and present each puppet in such a way to have a particular impact on others, or to get what you want or need from others to make you feel good about yourself.

Masquerading is an effective way to interact with the world, but it doesn’t work that well with you, because you know the real you who dresses up your puppet(s), surrounds him/her with supporting evidence. You adorn your puppet’s environment to validate his/her personality by decorating his/her home, earning certificates and take taking photos to hang on the wall, driving a particular kind of vehicle, and a myriad of other supporting evidence to in essence prove to the world that your puppet is the real deal.

You’re constantly looking for new ways to support the identity of your puppet. Every time you think this is the one thing that will finally cement your puppet’s identity, it satisfies for a moment, then you discover it just didn’t quite accomplish you intended purpose, like you thought it would. So, you seek out another piece of supporting evidence.

You surround your persona with collections of supporting evidence which could be anything from material items to acts of service to others, or even vices or debilitating disease. All in an effort to convince the world to accept the identity you’ve designed for yourself. But no matter how hard you try, you know this is all an act. Regardless of how much time, effort, and finances you’ve dedicated for supporting your persona, as pretty or magnificent it is, you know it is all a worthless façade.

Then there is the most valuable and precious activity of life, and that is the real and authentic personal work performed by and on the behalf of the puppeteer. Unlike the things you do to support the identity of your puppet(s), the effort you put forth to support your true self which stays hidden from the external world, it is the best and most intimate thing you can do for yourself. This is your deep inner work.

There is great contrast between your deep inner work which cannot be seen by others, and the external representation of yourself which can be acknowledged and revered by others. The support and admiration you received from others creates an addiction to the maintenance of your façade, which clouds your judgment, preventing you from seeing the value in expending efforts to conduct your intimately private deep inner work.

Once you start to look deeply inside yourself, if you dare, you can start adorning your inner self, the real you, with mindfulness, self-care, support, therapy, forgiveness, and unconditional love. Just as you adorn your public persona(s), you beautify your inner self, connecting to that greater part of you which is a higher energetic vibration than could ever be represented by any material possession.

Nothing gives you such lasting satisfaction as doing your deep inner work. And as you conduct this deeply personal and intimate work on yourself, you can influence your persona(s) in ways that can offer glimpses of the changes taking place inside the puppeteer.

These subtle nuances cannot be hidden, as they can be seen by the trained eye, every time you pull a string, redecorate the surroundings, or operate your puppet.

Empowered by the energy emitted from your heart of hearts, your deep inner work begins to affect the world around you in even the smallest of ways like a pebble creating a ripple effect which radiates throughout the otherwise still pond of life.

You are love. Embracing your love life, loving yourself, all the deeply intimate and harrowing parts of yourself as all being in divine order, is the greatest love-work of all.

You are doing it. As you do, you create hope and inspire others to shift the focus of their lives from keeping up appearances to focusing within, and life by life, heart by heart, the world evolves and becomes a better place.

God bless you for all that you do.

You can’t expect someone else’s love to make you feel loved

You can’t expect someone else’s love to make you feel loved. When I see a friend, or love and romance client place so much emphasis on feeling loved from someone else, I can’t help but see trouble ahead.

You know how it goes. These are the kind of souls so dependent on receiving validating love from another person that they feel desperately alone, with declining self-worth, when they’re not feeling deeply connected to someone else.

When they’re in love with someone, their whole life centers around the object of their affection, which is glorious and feels so real, while things are good. When things are bad, they are the worst, and when the relationship ends, it is devastatingly tragic.

I’m no stranger to this type of love which is both selfless and selfish at the same time. I loved like that. I didn’t know there was any other way to feel loved, except to feel it from someone else.

It wasn’t until I learned to find the source of my love within that I came to know that true love originates within my heart and spills over to those around me. It’s a completely different approach to love.

Now, when I see people struggling with seeking love from outside themselves I can empathize with them and support them in the best way that I can while they continue to ride the love rollercoaster of their own making.

Not everyone is open to the idea of finding the unlimited source of love which when it is discovered, you realize that it has been there all the time, though this has been hidden from you all your life. So, it’s somewhat of a shock when you discover it.

It shakes up everything you know. Most people are just not able to conceive of such a concept, so they remain in their self abusive cycle of seeking love from someone or something outside themselves.

To say, you can’t expect someone else’s love to make you feel loved, is not completely valid because being loved by someone else does make you feel incredibly good. Not unlike the high from using cocaine. It’s no surprise how addicting it can be.

It’s choice, one you must honor. Be there to rejoice with them when they are in the throes of love. Support them, letting your love spill out over them when they need it, when it all falls apart.

You can’t expect someone to understand a concept which is completely foreign to them. To try to explain the idea of loving yourself and having unconditional love for others, you might as well be speaking a different language. They are unable to hear you.

This concept is so wildly opposed to anything they understand about love, it is just not within their reach. And I understand because I was there, too.

It takes a great deal of personal, deep inner work, to get there, but it is so worth it.

For those who are open to the idea, whose hearts are fertile ground for loving at the next level, Awakening to True Love is there for you to explore the possibilities.

Exponential love, personal growth, and expansion awaits those who dare to love completely in an entirely new way.

See you at the Soulmate Wizardry event.

Suppressed Emotions Kill

When you bottle up your emotions, push them down, cover them up, and insist on just going on through life ignoring your feelings and living a life of emotional denial, you are committing murder. You are committing suicide because suppressed emotions kill you.

It’s a socially acceptable manner of suicide, not as blatant or open as hanging yourself, taking a bottle of pills, or as dramatic as throwing yourself off a bridge or blowing your brains out, but your suppressed emotions are killing you.

In his groundbreaking work, Bernie Siegel in Love, Medicine and Miracles: Lessons Learned about Self-Healing from a Surgeon’s Experience with Exceptional Patients, implicitly defines the number one cause of disease and premature death from medical maladies is pent-up emotions.

If caught early enough to reverse the effects of a lifetime of suppressed emotions, the patient who finds healthy ways to express himself or herself, live a better life, and find happiness, become the most exceptional patients, experiencing full reversal or remission of their condition and fatal prognosis.

Most people on Mother Nature’s death row have put themselves there by not wanting to rock the boat, express their feelings, or being proactive in looking after themselves. They accept their lot in life as being in service to others, selflessly, without any regard for looking after themselves.

If you don’t look after yourself, who will?

I pray you are ready to receive this. If you are not, there is no judgment here. After all, we’re all doing the best we can with what we have. If your heart and mind are open, consider this:

If you are living a life with health challenges, consider who you are putting first in your life. If you are not putting your own health, wellness, and happiness first, and not expressing all the emotions you keep hidden away, the things that make you sad, angry, hurt, disrespected, or unworthy, your illness(es) is of your own making.

\This includes all disease (which could be redefined as “dis-ease”). If you’re not happy, your body is not happy, and your immune system disregards your body just as much as you do. If you will not stand up and fight for you, neither will your body, and you will fall victim to disease and premature death. But you will die a hero.

Friends, family, and society will put you on a pedestal after you’ve died and tell stories about how you selflessly served others, even as your own body was suffering in decay. (Even though you may have silently wished for death to come knocking, just so you could get some peace.)

Or, you could become an exceptional patient. You could find the keys to the life you’ve always wanted and deserved, even though you may have denied yourself access to it in the past. You could uncover your unique, purpose, message, passion, and/or mission and start living a better life, your best life, and make the world a better place.

You can enjoy all the good things this life has been holding for you, just waiting for you to reach out for it, including all the love and happiness you’ve ever dreamed of.

But don’t believe me. Don’t believe Bernie Siegel, or anyone else. If you decide to change your life, while there is still time, and live the life that is your birthright, only you can do this thing. Only you can make the transformation from sickness to massively thriving by choosing to become an exceptional patient.

Every day, someone who stood at death’s door awakens and starts to live life with openness, honesty, self-love with ebullient vitality and energy, staving off any self-imposed death sentence, achieving their highest and best.

Let it be you.

You can live a better life, your best life, and make the world a better place.

Today, let it be you.

Love’s Prayer for You

You are the most amazing person I’ve never met. You have an incredible story of life and love that has me and others sitting on the edge of our seats, just waiting to see what’s going to happen next. If your life were a book, it would be an encompassing page-turner. If a film, we are in awe of the life you’ve lived until this moment, and we are watching, waiting, and cheering you on from the aisles, knowing that you are going to let your heroic virtues envelop you, enabling you to rise and step into the fullness of your power and purpose.

You and your story are so encouraging and enlightening. You are an inspiration to all, and we know that as you embrace all that you are, it gives us all hope that we can do the same, no matter what challenges or obstacles we might face in life. You are our hero. But,

What if you’re not feeling it?

What if you’re at one of those uncomfortable (possibly most difficult) chapters in your life? You know you’ve come to this planet with a divine purpose, message, passion, and mission. You know you are called to live a better life, your best life, and to make the world a better place, but right now, from this scene of your life, you just cannot see it. It just seems like it’s just not possible from here.

Do not fear, for love is with you; do not be dismayed, for you are love.

Know You Are Loved

You are a product of the creator of all life on this planet. Everything that is tangible in this life is held together in perfect balance by the energy of pure love. Just the fact that you are here, reading these words if proof that you are loved and that your life has tremendous value.

Feel the Loving Embrace

If you would close your eyes and see from your heart, you could see the love all around you, swirling in perfect harmony in and through all things. If you are not feeling it from within, you can just reach out and call it to you, and wrap yourself in a thick blanket of pure love energy.

You can feel its warmth and you feel safe and secure wrapped in love’s loving embrace.

No Matter What’s Happening

You can be surrounded by chaos and not feeling emotionally stable. You might be frightened, unworthy, sad, lonely, even helpless, yet you are loved. You are love. And when you’re just not feeling it, all you have to do is to close your eyes and reach out and grab it.

Buried deep within your physical heart is a love generator which emits a powerful forcefield. As long as you heart beats, you can reach out and tune in to the love all around you. You can attune your built-in love generator with the love energy which surrounds and permeates all things and recharge your love energy from the unlimited source.

You Are Love

When you turn on your love generator and connect to the vast love energy, you have the unlimited supply of flowing through your body. You become love; a powerful love machine empowered to send this love to anyone or anything which comes to mind, just by the power of your thought.

Send Love to the World

Holding a visual image of someone or something in your mind and sending love to them delivers an instantaneous surge of love to that person, place, or thing. You can do this because you are love. Try a little sending love to the world.

Love’s Prayer for You

I pray you know you are loved.

You feel the love holding you in loving embrace.

No matter what is happening in life at this moment, know you are loved.

You are love.

Share a little love with the world if only from your heart in thought.

I love you.

Amen

God bless you and yours this holiday season.

~David M Masters

Self Esteem Confidence Appreciation Love

Self-esteem

Self-esteem could be better referred to as your feeling of self-worth as a reflection from the mirror of your outer world, family, and/or society and it is conditional based upon external valuation.

Self-esteem is, “I like myself because I look a particular way.” Or, “I like myself because I do a good job at work,” or, “I like myself because I’m a nice person.”

If you are very critical of yourself, you could probably use some focused attention on raising your self-esteem.

Some personality types exude a false sense of self-esteem, which becomes apparent when they meet life’s challenges, allowing situational circumstances to cause their entire world to fall apart.

Low self-esteem represents a continuum that spans from mild to chronic and is usually marked by fear, unworthiness, reclusiveness, lack of motivation, fatigue, insomnia, assurance-seeking, including checking one’s phone often for some assurance that one’s life might have value. Chronic low self-esteem can lead to suicidal thoughts.

Self-confidence

Self-confident people base the value of themselves on their own valuation more so than on the opinion or seeking approval, of others. Self-confidence is the upgrade to self-esteem. You are competent and confident in yourself and your strengths, understand that you have shortcomings, but when life throws you a curveball, your self-esteem may slump in tune with the situation, but your self-confidence, though it may slip momentarily, will always return to your baseline of self-confidence, enabling you weather most any storm.

If you have good self-confidence, you have a positive inner-dialogue or self-talk, you don’t beat yourself up for missteps, do not seek to blame yourself or others, and are not prone to give much credence to the rumor mill or what others might think. You realize that life is a balancing of give-and-take, ups-and-downs.

Your self-confidence enables you to experience the challenges we face in life without being totally devastated. You can go through hard times and come out on the other side feeling okay about yourself and the world.

Self-acceptance

Self-acceptance is the attribute which trumps self-esteem every time, because self-acceptance asserts, “I’m okay,” no matter what. It’s not based on other’s opinions or what anyone else thinks about you. Self-acceptance resides within you, independently, enabling you to feel good about your strengths as well as embracing your weaknesses as part of your unique character.

You accept yourself for what and who you are and are not prone to bouts of self-deprecating guilt because you can forgive yourself. You realize that it is what it is, and you’re just doing the best with what you have in the moment, which may not always be as right as it could be, or worked out the way you intended, but you meant well, and you can forgive yourself when things don’t work out as planned.

If you accept yourself the way you are, you may not be motivated to engage in much self-improvement because you’re all good just the way you are.

Accepting yourself allows the real you to shine through, without worrying about what others might think. You can relax, be more open and honest about who you are, what you’re feeling, and what you want or need. Self-acceptance is a powerful attribute in love and relationships, ushering in transparency in communication and life, leading to deeper connections and greater intimacy, while also enabling you to allow others to be who they are without judgment.

Self-love

Less enlightened folks will caution against the idea of self-love because they believe loving yourself leads to selfishness, unrestricted indulgences, and egotistical or narcissistic tendencies, which are actually demonstrable personality traits indicating a lack of self-love. You can understand why one might confuse these considering our society’s fear-based programming.

A lack of self-love is also expressed by one’s ability to hate; to hate others and one’s self.

We can manage to express love to others in the absence of great self-love, though this is laborious and is contradictory to the sacred charge to, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31). Tis better to serve from a cup overflowing.

Lack of self-love is also what motivates us to find love outside of ourselves, which rarely, if ever, provides us the quality of love we seek and long for. Since it is highly unlikely to find and sustain this divine love outside ourselves (though it may feel as though it has been attained in the short-term) relationships decline in love, even if they do manage to stay together.

You were born with the true source of love, though since birth it has been hidden within you, it still is there waiting. It is the Holy Grail tucked away inside your heart, buried in your treasure chest, waiting to be discovered by you. You are the only person who can find, embrace and release its awesome power.

Self-love is powered by the source of all life, a sacred inner appreciation for yourself, regardless of anything external. It represents the connection to divine love that was lost at birth, or soon thereafter. It cannot be worked for or earned, it is a powerful free gift via the real-time connection, and sees you as perfect, as you see yourself through the eyes of God.

Self-love accepts you unconditionally and has the unfailing respect, compassion, and love for you and everything you think and do, regardless, as well as empowering you to love others unconditionally, as your love overflows to them.

Self-love lights the way to experiencing greater love and connection with everyone, and everything everywhere. This love tethers you to original source love and thereby all life.

Go Love Yourself

You’ve heard all this talk about loving yourself, and you’ve met people who have gone through this process with exemplary results, but there’s something about loving yourself that just doesn’t sound right. Not to worry, we are the result of our social and familial programming and we were trained not to think in this way. Add to that all the images and fears from our childhood that follow us around like monsters in the shadows even to this day, and it’s no surprise there’s little chance that you might consider loving yourself.

How can I love myself?

Loving yourself is a process, it just doesn’t happen overnight.

Realizing that currently, you represent the product of your past, your programming, and your upbringing is the first step. Many of us have childhood beliefs that follow us forever, like, “everyone else comes first,” unworthiness, self-deprecation, lack of trust, fear of abandonment, etc… Ideations that will haunt us until we are able to recognize them, face them and defeat our own inner demons.

Much of what comprises your thought process, your fears and beliefs about the way things are just aren’t true. Loving yourself starts with embracing the idea that somewhere inside of you there has always been an authentic individual who is uniquely empowered and utterly amazing. This is the real you, the you that came to this planet with a unique set of talents, skills, and abilities to share with the greater community as well as your own message and mission.

Sadly, this knowledge was beaten out of you, as it was also taken from us all, as we were programmed to accept our place in the socialized world where we live. When you first appeared here, you knew who you were and what your purpose in life was, but all that had been replaced by programming by the time you were five-to-seven-years-old.

As you love yourself, you free yourself from the shackles of old thoughts and actions. You reclaim your true self by loving and respecting who you are and finding peace in your sacred space. It requires the deprogramming of old programming and patterns that ‘til now have defined your reality.

Paying attention to thoughts, ideas and unsubstantiated fears that may pop up in your awareness, recognizing them for what they are (a popular acronym for FEAR is False Evidence Appearing Real, which seems to be apropos), dealing with them and discovering new ideas that present unimpeded limitless opportunity.

The process starts with a simple prayer,

“I am ready to let go of all the fears and entrapments of my past. I am ready to release all the falsehoods and see me for who I really am.”

That’s it. It’s a simple prayer, which reaches outside of yourself for guidance and support. Your societal façade will start to fade as you vector in energetic waves in support of your prayer. Repeating this prayer for thirty to forty days will begin to attract messages and guidance. You must be aware, alert, and attentive to see the messages as they are brought to your awareness.

You might see common themes in advertising, television programs, in news stories, articles, blogs, in topics of conversation, overheard when eavesdropping on other people’s conversations. You might feel drawn to a particular television program, book, seminar, or meet someone new who might have a special word for you. The possibilities are endless.

You have started the process, but it not enough just to start it, you must take action, do the work, read the book(s), ask the questions, and keep moving in the direction of knowing yourself doing the work of changing your thought processes, and loving yourself even more.

You will be surrounded by an invisible energy, like a bubble, which will protect you as you stay in this exploratory and transformative vibration. Be open to receiving as new knowledge unfolds before you and have faith that your prayer is being answered in just the right way because it’s different for every person.

Not taking action on these benevolent gifts which are being bestowed upon you would be a stark denial of the power which is answering your prayer, and you wouldn’t do that.

Your journey to go love yourself has begun.