Radical Self-Love: Part One of Four

Welcome to Part One of a Four Part Series about LOVE....Radical Self-Love!!!

This is the season of love we are entering into...right?  February is all about Valentine's Day and being in love.  Walking into the grocery store or the clothing store or watching ads on television...it is all about love.  Red hearts, lingerie, chocolate candies, roses....Ah.....  All this love has to start somewhere, and that somewhere is YOU!  If you do not love yourself, how will others see you for the goddess you are?  This is the first of a four part series on Radical Self-Love.

It all starts in the womb.  Warren Buffet was interviewed this past weekend on CBS this morning.  He was not born into his wealth, he created it.  And now, at 82 he is giving a lot of it away.  What does he attribute to his success?  When interviewed he said that it all began in the womb...with luck.  He was born a white male in the 1930's, not another race, not female.  Now, when he says this he is not bashing the other alternatives...he is clearly honoring and respecting and acknowledging his luck.  By luck, our mother takes good care of her body while we are bathing in the warm amniotic fluid provided by mom.  By luck we are born into a set of circumstances that are healthy.  That our environment is stable and loving with all the right messages to go out into the world and hold our head high with self-confidence and self-love.  But, not many of us start out with such luck or grace.  We begin the battle towards self-acceptance and self-love very early on.  

So, how do we clear this negative start to life? This poor fate?  Maybe it was the verbal abuse you endured as a kid, or being told you too fat, too sensitive, too ________(fill in the blank).  Or maybe you received the best kind of love your caretakers could give you, but there were mixed messages intertwined in those loving messages and you just never felt like you measured up.  Or, you felt your brother was loved more than you.  Or, your parents worked so damn hard to create a good life, but the message became, "work over me."  Whatever your beginnings were, it is now time to take control over those messages and release the control they have over you to be the best you that you can be.  Here are a couple of exercises to do just that:

·      It has been said, 'time heals all wounds.' I do not agree.  The wounds remain. In time, the mind, potecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens.  But it is never gone.

~Rose Kennedy

Okay, this is one way to look at things.  And, it is true, time does heal and the memories may never be gone; but, what if we made our peace with the past and chose to stay mindfully in the present, looking towards what we do have control over and that is the future.  What if we radically forgave the past and decided to take what lessons it had to offer to us?  Instead of being the victim survivors of our stories, we could be heroic thrivers of our future.  Things, sometimes bad things, happen for a reason and it is up to us to decide to turn these difficulties into life lessons.  By not forgiving the past, we are only hurting ourselves and stopping ourselves from reaching our highest potential.  Make peace with your past.  Symbolically, write down your victim story and burn it, sending it up to the skies.

·         Release beliefs....One of the first things we talk about at Hot Pink YOUniversity is setting up an environment in our lives that is friendly for creating a life of passion and joy!  Letting go of beliefs that have no business showing up in your life is numero uno.  Where did these beliefs come from?  How are they currently serving you?  Like sunglasses looking out onto our world, beliefs create our thoughts and that creates our feelings and that dictates our actions.  But, you have control over what you believe in...you can trade in your outdated sunglasses for a new pair.  What do you want to believe in?....write that down.  Post it somewhere to remind yourself daily that you have traded in your sunglasses for a new pair that rock!  Any beliefs you had before were created by someone else's reality, by your interpretation of life experiences, the media, friends, etc.....those were all just opinions and not facts.  Create what you want to believe about yourself.

·         What changes do you want to make?  Don't get overwhelmed with the big picture...focus in on what is your next best step towards making that happen.  Whether it is health goals, relationship goals, or financial goals that would support better feelings about yourself...get out of stuck and into the next micro-action towards that goal. 

It is not easy, this self-love thing.  But it needs to come from within.  If we always seek external validation from others for our self-worth, we will always be shackled to that person and locked into where they are at in their own lives.  Let's say your partner has a bad day.  The person oozing and bathing in self-love can put that into perspective and rationally think through, not make it about them.  The person in lack of self-love owns everyone's mood, everyone's bad day, and everyone's opinion.  Think of the freedom being so in love with yourself can bring?

Be Kind, Be Gentle, Be YOU!

Christie Gause-Bemis
One of three of the women of Hot Pink YOUniversity.  Christie is a psychotherapist in private practice.  She is a mama, a wife, a writer, and an artist.  Visit www.hotpinkyou.com for more information.  Email at info@hotpinkyou.com.

Part Two of Radical Self-Love is going to tackle the kicks that life can give us along the way to chip away at self-love.