If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a million times. You have to love yourself first!
Yeah what? I had absolutely no idea what people were talking about. I was a giver, and I had learned to give and give, and just maybe someday someone would love me in return.
Kindness towards self? Caring and nurturing towards self? Giving to self?
These are the things I needed to learn to understand love. And more.
My most profound learning experience was when the one person in the world that I had tried to love deeply, to whom I had dedicated 2 decades of my life, had worked so hard to get it right, had stood beside, walked beside, supported and fought for, stood there in front of me and regurgitated their perspective of my efforts. How pitifully wrong I had been, how much damage I had done them, how hurt and rejected they had felt, how I had ruined their life.
THIS was a defining moment.
It was at that moment that I discovered great compassion for myself. For all my mistakes, wrong turns, misplaced judgments, poor decisions, bad choices, misaligned beliefs, the hurt I caused others, never intended, and most of all for just being me in a world where we allow our perceptions to define us. At that moment I came to realise what it means to be human.
Only then was I able to fully understand love. And only then did I realise the qualities of unconditional love – that deep, heart-felt caring, with empathy grounded in lived experience, immersed in a chalice of compassion, first for self, then for others.
Before self-love
Nobody valued me. My parents didn’t value me, my family didn’t value me, my bosses didn’t value my work. My colleagues didn’t value my input and my friends didn’t value my friendship.
On closer examination I discovered that I was overly critical and very protective of myself. A heart that had been broken too many times was locked away inside a …wait for it… a coffin. Can you believe that? Yes! With every heartbreak it was my practice to view that as “another nail in the coffin.
Armouring our hearts is our response to heartbreak when our heartbreak is just too painful to bear. It's not uncommon for it to show up in our body by diminishing our immune system function and/or inhibiting our breathing.
With and without self-love
I want to make this point. Your body is truly an awesome instrument of support and information. And it responds in direct accord with your intentions and your emotions.
The energies of our heart chakra help us to love ourselves.
We can allow these energies to express our love openly and fully, or we can lock them away and become protective, possessive and altogether cranky by being over-critical, feeling guilty and becoming a bit of a martyr – poor me!
When we separate ourselves from self-love, our body responds accordingly and so it is not uncommon to develop physical conditions. These are generally related to any of the organs and glands in the vicinity.
How your body responds
Our immune system is about protecting us. That’s its job and that’s its psychology.
When we shut down our heart energies, and become overly protective of ourselves, we are saying to our body that we are unable to process these emotions and unable to manage life. We are in effect saying that we are unable to live fully.
One way that our immune system may respond is to step right up in its effort to support us. It may become overly protective to the point of where it may indiscriminately protect us from ourselves, such as might happen with autoimmune diseases and some immune system cancers.
Our immune system is mirroring our behaviour, doing just as we are, indiscriminately protecting ourselves by guarding our hearts from threats, real or imagined.
Are you aware that our thymus gland, a very important immune system gland situated in our mid-chest, is shrivelled and diminished in most people. So much so that the medical community still regard this as "normal". Normal it may be, but natural it is not. In my opinion it is more a reflection of the heart armouring that is so common in our society, than a natural state of health. There's no denying that our immune systems, as a population, are seriously compromised.
Other possibilities
For me, my body reacted to my lack of emotional well-being by creating the condition of asthma. In medical terms this is called a psychosomatic illness, and illness that is related to emotional distress. I've come to realise that most illness are psychosomatic, and the science of Epigenetics is now supporting this finding. Our emotions are an environmental factor.
Our heart chakra anchors our life force - our breathing. Anything that interferes with our breathing is another way to shut out our emotions and shut out our life - smoking, hyperventilating, lung conditions like bronchitis, pneumonia.
Anytime anything threatened me, my lungs would seize up and the bronchi would shut down, and SHUT LIFE OUT!
Over time I discovered that any change at all would send me into mild anxiety and my lungs would go BAM! Shut down! “NOPE WE AREN’T GOING THERE. You want to keep your life out and we are making sure we help you as best we can!”
These are just a couple of examples of how disruptions to the natural psychology of our body’s organs and tissues eventually play out as physical conditions.
The heart chakra’s natural psychology is of self-love and compassion, balance and giving.
You too can find love
I’ve conquered the self-love dilemma. I’ve done that through being my own best friend, loving myself completely, being selfish, by making sure that the most important relationship in my life is the one I have with myself. YOU CAN TOO!
I’ve questioned and released every belief that I’ve had about doing for others, about being selfish, about putting others first – all considered great virtues in our Western society. In the right context these virtues serve us well, but not until we have first turned them towards ourselves and healed our own broken heart.
Self-love in business
You’ll find that self-love spills over into all areas of your life, including your business. You will become the CREATOR of your business, knowing that every decision and choice is a new learning and creative experience. You’ll understand that there are people who want your love and others for whom your love is not a good match.
Feeling good is the fast track to self-love
You can achieve this by making sure every single decision you make is one that feels good to you. My book, Commit to Feel Good, is a great resource to get started. You'll find the pdf version in my store.
Committing to knowing yourself deeply and honestly is the path to self love through SELF-MASTERY. Follow this link for more information and to make a time to connect to discuss your concerns and how we can work together.
In the meantime, FEEL GOOD!
Access to the right words, the right actions at the right time and the right place. The NEW best version of YOU is about SELF-MASTERY.
I’m a Well-being and Self-Mastery Mentor and Certified BodyTalk Practitioner. You are welcome to seek more information here. If you're ready to learn to live fully with ease and grace, let's talk. Make a time here to discuss your immediate concerns. If I can help you I'll let you know.
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