Author Topic: How to love your self? My self?  (Read 2038 times)

Lupita

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How to love your self? My self?
« on: March 29, 2008, 10:09:06 AM »
How to Love Yourself

Louise Hay offers
these helpful suggestions.
Try them!  They really work.
 
 

1.  Stop all criticism:  Criticism never changes a thing.  Refuse to criticize yourself.  Accept yourself exactly as you are.  Everybody changes.  When you criticize yourself, your changes are negative.  When you approve of yourself, your changes are positive.

2.  Don't scare yourself:   Stop terrorizing yourself with your thoughts.  It's a dreadful way to live.   Find a mental image that gives you pleasure (mine is yellow roses), and immediately switch your scary thought to a pleasure thought.

3.  Be gentle and kind and patient:   Be gentle with yourself.  Be kind to yourself.  Be patient
with yourself as you learn the new ways of thinking.  Treat yourself as you would someone you
really loved.

4.  Be kind to your mind:   Self-hatred is only hating your own thoughts.  Don't hate yourself for having the thoughts.  Gently change the thoughts.

5.  Praise yourself:   Criticism breaks the inner spirit.  Praise builds it up.  Praise yourself as much as you can.  Tell yourself how well you are doing with every little thing.   

6.  Support yourself:   Find ways to support yourself.  Reach out to friends, and allow them to help you.  It is being strong to ask for help when you need it.

7.  Be loving to your negatives:   Acknowledge that you created them to fulfill a need.  Now you are finding new, positive ways to fulfill those needs.  So. lovingly release the old negative patterns.

8.  Take care of your body:   Learn about nutrition.  What kind of fuel does your body need to have optimum energy and vitality?  Learn about exercise.  What kind of exercise can you enjoy?  Cherish and revere the temple you live in.

9.  Mirror work:  Look into your own eyes often.  Express this growing sense of love you have for yourself.   Forgive yourself looking into the mirror.  Talk to your parents looking into the mirror.  Forgive them, too.  At least once a day, say: "I love you, I really love you!"

10.  LOVE YOURSELF - DO IT NOW!   Don't wait until you get well or lose the weight, or get the new job, or find the new relationship.  Begin NOW - do the best you can.


Copyright ©1988 Louise L. Hay
All rights reserved.


Lupita

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Re: How to love your self? My self?
« Reply #1 on: March 29, 2008, 10:13:59 AM »
Iam doing the mirror work, you go to the mirror and look into your eyes and say, I love you. You are wonderful. I do not feel the effects, but I am feeling better. But since I am doing do much I do not know what is making the owrk or just the combination of everything. One important thing is discounting the negative. ignore negative comments. Etc.

Any ideas????

LOve to you all.

Ami

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Re: How to love your self? My self?
« Reply #2 on: March 29, 2008, 10:29:28 AM »
Thanks ,Lupita
 I love Louise Hay. I lost her book and am so happy you posted this.                    Ami
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.        Eleanor Roosevelt

Most of our problems come from losing contact with our instincts,with the age old wisdom stored within us.
   Carl Jung

Gaining Strength

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Re: How to love your self? My self?
« Reply #3 on: March 29, 2008, 09:35:31 PM »
Thanks for posting this Lupita.  When I began working on numer 1 it really change my life.

1.  Stop all criticism:  Criticism never changes a thing.  Refuse to criticize yourself.  Accept yourself exactly as you are.  Everybody changes.  When you criticize yourself, your changes are negative.  When you approve of yourself, your changes are positive.

My little boy has a habit of saying to himself, "I'm an idiot!"  I tell him over and over, "NEVER say that about yourself."  I don't know where he got that but I know so well how terribly, terribly damaging it is to be self-critical and self-condemning. 

It is amazing to me how difficult it was to STOP being self critical.  It was so terribly ingrained.  Thanks Lupita.

hardtotrust

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Re: How to love your self? My self?
« Reply #4 on: March 30, 2008, 09:45:35 PM »
Thanks, Lupita!

In my case I always found very difficult the idea of loving myself. I guess it is something that is conquered in an extremely slow way, that has to be reaffirmed daily.

One thing that worked better for me was, instead of loving myself, respecting myself. In my opinion you can't force anyone to love anyone but you can always demand respect. And we deserve it. From ourselves, including. And many of these items are included in self-respect.

Hugs.


Lupita

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Re: How to love your self? My self?
« Reply #5 on: March 30, 2008, 10:00:49 PM »
If a waiter brings you the wrong order, would you eat it anyway or would you ask him to bring you the correct one?

Do you deserve to be rbought the correct order?

If your girlfriend does not want to please you in anything would you continue to engage in her activities just because you need to be "loved"?

etc, etc, etc, do you need constant aproval form others?  etc etc etc.

That is when we can start, do we deserve respect? do we have to earn respect? do we have to do "something" in order to be loved?  ect ect etc

Iphi

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Re: How to love your self? My self?
« Reply #6 on: March 31, 2008, 11:37:56 AM »
Dear Lupita - I love this list and thank you for sharing it.  Most of these ideas are incredibly foreign to me, yet sound wonderful.  I can't even imagine looking in a mirror and saying 'I love you.'  That is so courageous.  It really is.  It is a very scary idea to me. 

Also, to respect myself, wow!  Maybe even worse than non-love toward myself, is non-respect toward myself.  I have outright disrespected myself habitually and taught others to do so also.  Though I am committed to a different way, I have no idea how to do differently.  The most I have been able to do so far is drop the people who disrespect me and stop myself from placating such people. 

Lupita, hardtotrust and everyone,  I hope to walk along with you as you pursue self-love and self-respect and be your classmate.
Character, which has nothing to do with intellect or skill, can evolve only by increasing our capacity to love, and to become lovable. - Joan Grant

Lupita

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Re: How to love your self? My self?
« Reply #7 on: March 31, 2008, 07:10:04 PM »
Iphi, I understand you so much so much. I did not even have any boudaries, I did not even know what boundaries were. Ecrybody would setp on me, and tresspass my boundaries and then I would feel bad and not knowing why.
I still do not identify my boundaries very well, but improving. That is part of loving your self.
It worked. All this spring brake I was in intensive therapy on my own. Bought a bunch of CDs and listen for hours and hours, every single day. One day I was listening for eleven hours consecutively.
It works. Today I felt nausiated to see my dirty kitchen, I went and washed all my dishes, did not want to go to work leaving my kitcen dirty. I never did that before. I wanted to have a clean kitchen, for the first time in many years. I wanted to see a clean kitchen and got up at five, put my CD and lsiten to it while cleaning my ketchen. I did not feel any desire to eat any sugar, just my vegatables and tofu. I was not deperately hungry at any tie during today.
It works. Those CDs, work. But you have to listen all day for several days for at least one month. I put them on my car in my computer, and listen to it today one hour before work and one hour going to work and one hour coming from work. I am memorizing them, I will be able to recite them.
My friend on the phone told me that is very amazed that how can I recover after so much has happened to me. And I still want to feel good. The CDs. Work. They work.
They sink in my brain little by little.
Love to you all.

Iphi

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Re: How to love your self? My self?
« Reply #8 on: April 01, 2008, 12:56:47 PM »
Quote
I did not even have any boudaries, I did not even know what boundaries were. Ecrybody would setp on me, and tresspass my boundaries and then I would feel bad and not knowing why.

Me too Lupita, absolutely the same experience.  Also I feel that I went with people who would traspass my boundaries because I understood them.  That was my familiar relationship.  I felt that if I did as they bid me, then they would have me around.  I felt if I said 'no' they might discard me immediately, without a backward glance.  So much fear - I had no idea how much.

Then I got strong enough to say 'no' to some of those friends and guess what?  They discarded me immediately!  And they also trashed me as a person!  All I feared.  It really happened!  It felt awful!  But now, I am so happy that happened because it was better for me to be away from them even though I did not feel so at the time - I just felt rejected.  And that I had failed to please.

 I am still struggling with that dynamic, how to learn self-respect how to know that there is so much MORE out there than to be a servant, than to enslave myself to anybody who passes by. 

But Lupita, your sharing about cleaning your kitchen was so meaningful to me.  It is because you saw something you wanted to do for yourself, for your satisfaction, and you did it.  And it felt good.   :D
Character, which has nothing to do with intellect or skill, can evolve only by increasing our capacity to love, and to become lovable. - Joan Grant

Lupita

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Re: How to love your self? My self?
« Reply #9 on: April 01, 2008, 06:29:25 PM »
I discover, listening to Wayn Dyer, that our self importance, makes us very unhappy. If we let go of our self importance, we will be less offended and then suffer less, complete detachment.

That discovering allowed me to stay come today when my student was disrespecting me. I did not care. I helped.

Last week, I was crying for an hour because of this same prick. But now, I do not care. He is 18 years old, there is almost nothing you can do for him at this moment. He has to learn his own lessons.

I liked the suggestion tapes by Bob Gliswold. I just repeat after him and it makes me feel better and calms me down.

Plus the Wayn Dyer and Loui Hay, and 100.00 of CDs I bought. Plus David Burns MD book, and Albert Ellis hwo to be happy no matter what and the  Detachment paradox.

Everything started with my thread on detachment. I lead me to here.

I love this board. Sometimes making threads helps.

Love to you and thank you for your kind words.

Hope that you can start the CDs.

Ami

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Re: How to love your self? My self?
« Reply #10 on: April 01, 2008, 06:48:31 PM »
((((((((((Lupita)))))))))))))                         
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.        Eleanor Roosevelt

Most of our problems come from losing contact with our instincts,with the age old wisdom stored within us.
   Carl Jung

Lupita

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Re: How to love your self? My self?
« Reply #11 on: April 02, 2008, 09:14:00 PM »
Have been doing the mirror work at lkeast once a day, I dont know yet if it is working but I look at my eyes and say I love you and I going to protect you.

Tomorrow I will do it more tha once. Let us see.

I will say you are worthy of love and care and friendsip frm good people.

cats paw

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Re: How to love your self? My self?
« Reply #12 on: April 02, 2008, 09:18:13 PM »
Hi Lupita,

  Wow, you've been busy saturating with books and CD's.

  I was curious about the Detachment Paradox, so I googled it.  It looked very interesting, and from what I read, it looks like it would
  helpful in many applications.

cats paw