How to Love Yourself
For those of you who are already learning to love yourself and those who are just starting to learn, I would like to introduce you to a few ways I call the Ten Steps, which I have introduced to thousands of people over the years.
”Imagine how exciting it would be if each of us had enough power to realize our dreams! Please start loving yourself now!
Many people suffer from a lack of self-esteem in some way. Some people have a hard time loving themselves because they feel they have so-called flaws, and it is impossible to truly love ourselves. We always hear that one cannot truly love others without first loving oneself. What should we do when we see these obstacles that we have created?
10 Ways to Love Yourself
1. Stop beating yourself up
This is the most important, and I mentioned this in Chapter 5. If we tell ourselves that we are already good, no matter what happens, we can easily change our lives. If we feel bad about ourselves, it’s hard to change anything. Each of us needs to change, every day is a new day, and our strengths allow us to adjust our lives.
People who grow up in problematic families have a high sense of responsibility, they are used to brutally negative self-assessment, they grow up in tension and stress, and their childhood gives them the feeling that “there must be something abnormal about me. Some people used to call me “stupid, bad, useless, careless, stupid, annoying, useless, sloppy, dirty” etc. Have you also used these words to call yourself names?
It is necessary to create a feeling of ‘worthiness’ for ourselves. When we feel that we are not good enough, we keep ourselves in misfortune, create illness and pain in our bodies, reject what is good for us, and harm ourselves with food, alcohol and drugs.
We will not feel safe all the time because we are only mortal. Please don’t pretend to be perfect, that puts a lot of pressure on ourselves and makes us not see how we should heal ourselves. Instead, when we see our creativity and individuality, we will appreciate our differences. Everyone plays a unique role in the world, and if we beat ourselves up, it means we are hiding ourselves.
2. Stop making ourselves feel afraid
Many of us always like to scare ourselves, making the situation worse and worse, we think the little things very serious, always expect the worst of life, which is a terrible way to live.
How many of us imagine the worst of things before we go to sleep? Just like a child imagining a ghost under the bed, it’s no wonder you have insomnia. When you were a child, you needed the comfort of your parents, but you are old enough to comfort yourself.
Patients do the same thing, they often plan for the worst or think about how to prepare for their own funeral, they throw away their strength and they think that their life is left with some medical data.
Some people also think this way about friendship, and consider themselves rejected and abandoned if their friends don’t call.
The same goes for work. If someone makes a comment about your work, you think that you are definitely going to be fired, and you create these paralyzing thoughts yourself. These terrible thoughts are actually a negative self-reference.
If you find yourself habitually self-referencing bad things in your mind, replace it with imagining beautiful things, such as beautiful scenery, sunsets, flowers, sports or other things you like. Every time you find yourself scaring yourself, imagine these beautiful images and tell yourself “No, I don’t want these things anymore, I want to think about evening sunsets, roses, beautiful Paris, yachts or waterfall,” and so on. If you keep doing this, you will eventually break this habit, but of course, it takes practice.
3. Take care of yourself patiently
Waring? Arnold once wittily wrote: “Oh, dear God, I pray for patience, I need it now! “Patience” is a very important factor. When one’s wishes are not immediately realized, many people will feel very painful, we want it immediately, we do not have the patience to wait. We are also annoyed when we need to wait in line or at a red light. We need answers, we need to get everything right away, and we often make misfortunes happen in other people’s lives because of our impatience. To be impatient is to refuse to learn, and we want answers without learning or without going through the necessary process.
Consider that your heart is like a barren garden, full of thorns of self-hatred, stones of despair, anger, anxiety, and an old tree called fear to be pruned. How wonderful it would be if these ugly things were removed and the land would become fit for sowing, and you sowed some seeds and planted little trees of joy and success, and the sun would shine on the garden, and you watered and fertilized it and tended it with love and care!
At first, you may not see much change, but please don’t stop, please keep tending it, as long as you are patient enough, your little tree will grow strong, just like your heart, as long as you choose bright thoughts and wait patiently, you will eventually get the life you want!
We all make mistakes, and it’s okay to make mistakes in the learning process. Many people like to blame themselves for not being perfect, and if they think they are not good enough if they can’t do something perfectly in three minutes, then they are not giving themselves a chance.
It takes time to learn anything, and when you first start out, it usually doesn’t feel too good. In order for you to understand what I’m talking about, please take a moment to do an exercise. Please hold both hands together, any way you can, observe, which hand has the thumb on top, then release your hand and hold it again with the other hand’s thumb on top, at first you may feel a little weird or even do it wrong, now do it again, hold both hands together in the first way, then in the second way, the first, the second …. How does it feel? Not so weird anymore! It feels good, doesn’t it! You’re starting to get used to it, and maybe you can learn both methods.
By the same token, when we do things in a new way, we get uncomfortable at first, and then we start jumping to conclusions. Please be patient, and everything will become natural and normal. We will not learn to love ourselves completely in one day, if we can love ourselves a little more every day, in two or three months we will become more loving.
Mistakes are the way to go, mistakes are a valuable thing, they are your teachers, please don’t punish yourself for them. If you are willing to learn from your mistakes and learn to grow, eventually mistakes will lead you to good.
Some people have been adjusting themselves all along but always keep running into problems. We need to reinforce what we have learned instead of throwing our hands in the air in rejection and saying, “What’s the use of this? When we learn a new method, please be gentle with ourselves. Remember the garden I mentioned earlier, when a negative weed appears, please pull it out as soon as possible.
4. Be kind to your mind
Please don’t loathe yourself for having negative thoughts. Thoughts appear to build us up, not to overcome us, and there is no need to blame ourselves for the painful experiences we have had. We can learn to grow from these experiences, take care of our own mind, abandon the feeling of making mistakes, abandon blame, punishment and all the hurt.
Relaxation is very useful, it helps us to feel our strength, tension and fear can only close the power. Just take some time each day to relax your body and mind, no matter what time of day it is, you can take a deep breath, close your eyes and release the tension. As you exhale, gently say to yourself “I love you and everything will be okay” and then how peaceful you will feel that you are creating new thoughts for yourself and that you have no need to live with tension and fear.
In your daily meditations, I suggest, please be still and listen to your inner wisdom. In today’s society, meditation has become mysterious and difficult to succeed. Meditation is the oldest and easiest way to do this. All we have to do is relax and quietly self-refer to words that are good for us such as “love” and “serenity”. OM is an ancient voice that I often use in my workshops and it seems to work. We can also repeat to ourselves “I love myself, I forgive myself, I am forgiven” and then listen to the inner voice.
Some people think that meditation requires stopping all thoughts, but this is not the case; we can only slow down our thoughts and let them float. Some people like to sit on a cushion and write down negative thoughts with a pencil, and it is easy to let the negative thoughts disappear. When we reach a state where we see these following thoughts (Oh, here is fear, anger, here is love, here is disaster, abandonment, here is happiness, please leave it alone for a while, we are starting to use our self power wisely.
Meditate wherever you like, make it a habit, meditate with your attention focused on the supreme power in you, you are connecting to the wisdom within, you can do it however you like, some people meditate while jogging or walking. Don’t think you are doing it wrong just because you are using another method. I like to kneel in the yard and dig in the dirt, for me this is the best way to meditate.
It’s also important to think of positive images, and there are many techniques you can use. Carl. In his book “Recovering Yourself”, Simonton introduces many imagery techniques for cancer patients that are productive.
Imagining enables you to see beautiful, clear scenes and helps you to be self-referential. Many people write to me about the images they imagine when self-referencing, and I tell them that the most important thing is to combine it with their own characteristics, or it won’t work.
For example, one woman who had cancer imagined that the killer cells in her body were fighting and killing the cancer cells. Then she began to wonder if she was doing it the right way and why it wasn’t working. I asked her, “Do you imagine yourself as a killer?” Personally, I think that building a battlefield in yourself brings bad feelings. I suggested to her, gently make some adjustments, and I thought it might be better to imagine that the sun is melting the cancer cells, or that the magician has made the cancer cells disappear. When I had cancer, I imagined that the cool water washed away all the germs from my body. We need to imagine something that does not harm the subconscious mind.
It is not good to keep thinking of a sick relative or friend as a sick person, imagine that they are healthy, offer them good wishes, and remember that it is up to them to heal, and if they can open themselves up, you can give them some tapes that teach imagination and meditation, but if not, just offer them love.
Everyone can imagine, think about your house, think about exciting sex, think about revenge against the person who hurt you, it’s amazing, our hearts can do it.
5. Praise yourself
Blame destroys the inner soul, praise builds the soul. Please recognize your power, we are the embodiment of infinite wisdom, if you despise yourself, you are despising the power that created you, please start with the smallest things and tell yourself that you are great. If you give up after just one try, it will definitely not work. Even if you can only do it for a minute, please try! If you’re learning something new, something you’ve never tried before, trust me, it’s going to get easier and easier for you, do yourself a favor!
When I first spoke at the Church of Religious Science in New York, my heart was pounding. I remember very clearly that it was Friday afternoon and the people listening to the talk wrote questions on paper and gave them to me in a basket, and I answered them on stage one by one and treated them accordingly. When it was all over, I came off the stage and said to myself, “Louise, you did so well the first time, you’re awesome, if you do it six more times, you’ll be a pro for sure. I didn’t belittle myself “Oh, I forgot to say this and that again”, I didn’t want to make myself nervous for the second presentation.
If I belittled myself the first time, I would have belittled myself the second time, and then I would have dreaded the presentation. In the hours that followed, I began to think about where I needed to make some adjustments, I didn’t let myself feel like I was making a mistake, and I was careful to appreciate and congratulate myself on a great performance. From then on, by the time I gave my sixth speech, I was pretty good at it. I think we can apply this method to every aspect of our lives. I often speak at meetings, and it has been good for developing my ability to think independently.
Whether you think you deserve it or not, allow yourself to accept the good things. We have already said that the thought of “not deserving” will cause you to reject the good things, and the thought of “not deserving” will prevent you from getting what you want, so how can we speak positively to ourselves when we think we don’t deserve it?
Do you think you are good enough, smart enough, tall enough, beautiful enough? Do you exist for what? You know, you didn’t come into this world for a few years to get a new car. How do you need to enrich your life? Are you willing to be self-referential, to imagine good things, to want to heal yourself? Are you willing to forgive? Are you willing to meditate? How much effort have you put in to change your life and realize your vision?
6. To help yourself is to love yourself
Find friends who can help you, you are a strong person, you can seek help from friends when you need it, many people are always confident and unwilling to seek help from others, because pride does not want to do so. Instead of trying your best and getting mad at yourself for not doing it right, why not ask for some help next time!
In every city there are groups, “10 Steps” that can help people with various aspects of their problems. In some places, there are also church organizations and therapy groups, so if you can’t find the group you need, you can organize one yourself. It’s not as scary as you might think. Three or two friends who have the same problem get together and work together to find solutions to their problems. If you do it with love, your small group will grow and attract people to join like a magnet. Don’t worry because the meeting place is not big enough when the group expands, the universe will provide everything for you, and if you don’t know how to do it, write to my office and we will give you some advice on how to organize a group that you can stick to and help each other.
In 1985, when I started organizing “Hared” in my home in Los Angeles, the members were only 6 men with AIDS, we didn’t know how to deal with this extreme crisis, I told them that we didn’t just come to sit around and have fun, we had to actively help each other, and now we have meetings every Wednesday night in West Hollywood Park, and the membership is up to 200 people.
It’s a special organization that helps people with AIDS, where everyone is treated well and many people from all over the world come to see how we work because they think they can get help from here, not from me, but from my group, where we all work together, meditate and imagine together. We share information about healing and the latest treatments together. People can lie down on a table at the back of the room and others can pray for the person lying down or hold hands and share healing energy, we can talk to a Science of Mind teacher, and when the meeting is over, we sing together and hug each other, we want to make the person walking out feel better than when they came in, and sometimes that positive help can last for days.
These groups are the new t-bodies of society and have become an effective tool to address the chaos of today. Many ‘new thought’ churches, such as the Church of Religious Thought, have groups that operate every week, and a list of these groups can be found in some of the new magazines and newspapers. Talking to each other is very important, it keeps you going, and I recommend that people with the same problems get together to help each other.
When people get together for the same goal, they bring their pain, confusion and anger, but not to complain, but to find a way to get out and move beyond and then grow themselves.
If you are a dedicated, very self-disciplined, spiritual person, you can achieve success on your own, and it will help you even more if you can join a group where everyone can be a teacher. Therefore, when there is a problem, if possible, I suggest you join a group that suits you.
7. Love your flaws
Flaws are a part of you, just as we are a part of God, the wisdom that created us and does not get sick of us or angry with our children because we make mistakes, he knows that we have done the best we can and he loves what he has created as much as we love ourselves. You and I have made mistakes, and if we are still punishing ourselves, that punishment will become a habit that keeps us from releasing and finding positive solutions.
If you are still saying to yourself “I hate my job, I hate my home, I hate the illness I got, I hate the friendships I have now, I hate this, I hate that”, then very few good things will come your way.
No matter how bad your situation is, there is always a reason for it, or you won’t find an explanation for your life. John Harrison, author of Love Your Illness, says that people who are sick have no explanation. Harrison says that people who are sick should not feel self-conscious because they are sick or have to have surgery; they should congratulate themselves for finding a safe cure. Whatever the problem, we can solve it, and when we realize that, we can find a way to achieve our vision.
Sometimes people with cancer and other malignant diseases have a hard time saying “no” to the authority figures in their lives, and they unconsciously say “no” by creating the disease. I know a woman who was determined to live for herself when she realized that to heal herself she would have to refuse her father’s demands. She began to say “no” to her father, which she found difficult at first, but after continuous effort she succeeded and kept feeling better.
No matter how negative we once were, we can use positive approaches to achieve our ambitions. Most importantly, we need to ask ourselves, “What have these experiences taught me? What can I learn from them?” We generally don’t like to answer these questions, and if we are honest with ourselves and go deep inside ourselves, we can get the answers.
Maybe the answer you get is “The care and attention I receive from my loved ones is short-lived.” Now that you’ve recognized this, try something else that will lead you to success.
In the process of learning to release ourselves, humor is a powerful tool to get us through the stressful years. In Hare Krishna, we set aside part of our time to tell jokes, and sometimes we have a guest called the “funny woman” who makes us laugh. We didn’t have to keep ourselves on edge. A sense of humor is a great therapy. I would like to introduce you to some old comedies, especially when you are in a bad mood, such as Lorraine and Hardy, etc.
When I sit face to face with my patients, I try to make them laugh at their problems. In fact, our lives are like burlesque and soap operas, we are on a trajectory to recover ourselves, and a sense of humor can put us in a broader perspective of life.
8. Take care of your body
The body is your temporary shelter, is a wonderful home, do we need to take care of and love their homes? Look, what you attract to yourself, drugs and alcohol are the most common, because these two things are the most common way to escape from problems. If you are addicted to drugs, it does not mean that you are not a good person, but it means that you have not found a more positive way to meet your needs.
Drugs can trick us by saying “come on, come to me, we’ll be happy together”, and indeed, it will make you feel better while hiding the truth. Although you may not recognize it at first, you will end up losing a lot of money. After a period of drug use, your health deteriorates and then you feel bad all the time. The drugs affect your immune system and cause your body to develop many terrible diseases, and of course, because of the constant use of drugs, you soon become addicted and then start to wonder, what prompted you to try it the first time? Maybe it was the stress that made you try drugs, but why did you get addicted to them?
I’ve never met anyone who loved themselves but made themselves addicted to drugs. We use drugs and alcohol to escape the bad feelings of childhood, and afterwards, we feel worse than before, and even add a lot of guilt. We need to know that it’s safe to let ourselves feel and acknowledge our feelings and realize that they will go away and they won’t stay long.
Overeating is also a form of rejecting self-love. We cannot survive without eating the food that gives us energy to make new cells. Although we understand basic nutrition, we still punish ourselves with food and create obesity.
We have become a nation addicted to junk food, and for decades we have been eating all kinds of processed foods that we call “the great American food,” and we have allowed the confusion of food companies to shape our eating habits. Now, instead of having a course on healthy eating in medical school, it is treated as a special tutorial outside the classroom. Currently, the medical community generally focuses on drugs and surgery. If we want to learn about nutrition, we have to learn about healthy eating ourselves, pay attention to what we eat and understand how it affects our bodies, all of which shows how much we love ourselves.
If you feel sleepy an hour after lunch, you should ask: “What did I eat? Perhaps, you ate something that is not good for your body. Please pay attention to observe which food can make you increase energy and which food will make you have no energy. You can keep concluding right and wrong through experiments, or you can consult a nutritionist who can help you find the answer.
Remember? Some things that are right for one person may not be right for another, and everyone’s body is different. For many people, the Longevity Cookbook is a better way to eat, and the Harvey and Marilyn Approach to Life and Health is good, they are two very different philosophies, and both approaches work. We all have different physical conditions, so we can’t say which method works or doesn’t work, you need to find what works for you.
Please find a workout method that you like and approach your workout with a positive attitude. Many times, you create many obstacles in yourself due to too much influence from others, if you want to change, forgive yourself and stop bringing anger and resentment to yourself. Please self-refer to positive thoughts while exercising, that will help you clear negative thoughts about your body and body image.
We are in a time of rapid development in health technology and we are learning to use a combination of old and new technology, for example, ancient Ayurvedic medicine combined with sound waves. I have been researching how sound can be used to stimulate brain waves and accelerate our learning and healing process. One research study has shown that we can mentally alter the structure of DNA to heal. I think that between now and the end of the 20th century, we can certainly discover a large number of possibilities that are beneficial to humans.
9. Look at yourself in the mirror
I often emphasize the importance of the mirror because we can find the reasons for not loving ourselves by looking in the mirror, and you can use the mirror for many exercises. The first thing I want to do every morning is to look at myself in the mirror and say, “I love you, what do I have to do for you today? How can I make you happy?” Listen to the voice in your heart and act on the voice you hear. You may not hear anything because you are so used to cursing yourself that you don’t know how to respond to positive thoughts anymore.
If something doesn’t go your way today, walk up to the mirror and say, “No matter what happens, I still love you. No matter how things change in the world, only the love you have for yourself will not change; it is the most important thing you have in life. If something good happens to you, go to the mirror and say “thank you” and let yourself know that you have created a wonderful experience for yourself.
You can also learn to ‘forgive’ in the mirror, forgive yourself and others. You can talk to others in the mirror, especially if you are afraid to talk to them directly. You can say all the things you are afraid to say in front of the mirror, clear all the unpleasantness with your parents, your boss, your doctor, your children and your loved ones, and please note one thing, offer them love and acceptance at the end, because that is what you really need.
Those who cannot love themselves are often those who do not know how to forgive, because “unforgiveness” is an obstacle. When we forgive and release, not only do we unburden ourselves, but we open the door to “loving ourselves”, and then we say “Wow, I finally unburdened myself”, and of course we do, because we cannot carry it forever. Dr. John Harrisson said Dr. Harrison said that forgiving yourself and your parents and releasing the past is better than any kind of antibiotic.
It is hard for young children not to love their parents, and once they do stop loving them, it is even harder for them to learn to forgive. When we don’t forgive or can’t release, we bind ourselves to the past and dwell on it, unable to move on to today. If we can’t move on to today, how can we create a better tomorrow for ourselves? The pain of the past will only create more pain for the future.
Self-suggestion in front of the mirror will help us a lot because you will see the truth. When you talk to yourself, if you hear the bad answer “who are you kidding, that can’t be true, you don’t deserve it”, it means that you have received a useful gift. You can only change yourself if you get to the root of the problem. The negative thoughts you get are shackles towards freedom, turn these negative thoughts into positive self-nudges such as “Now, I deserve good things and I am willing to let good experiences into my life. Keep self-referencing like this until it becomes part of your life.
I once saw a man change his family through “self-referencing”. “Many people in Hare Krishna come from broken homes where their parents basically don’t talk to them, and I ask them to self-refer: “I have great communication and interaction with everyone in my family, including my mother, and we have a lot of love and warmth between us! I suggested to them that whenever they thought of their home and family, they stand in front of the mirror and self-refer to themselves over and over again. It was amazing. After three, six or nine months, they were able to bring their parents to the party.
10. Please start loving yourself now
Please stop procrastinating. “Dissatisfied with yourself” is a habit pattern. If you can love yourself, accept yourself and be satisfied with yourself now, you will feel happy when something good comes along. If you learn to love yourself, you will be able to love and accept others.
We can’t change others, so let’s not bother about them first. We don’t have to spend so much effort to change others, if we spend half of our effort on ourselves, we can change ourselves. When we change ourselves, others will respond to us differently than before.
You can’t replace others. Everyone has to learn a particular life experience. What you have to do is, learn your experience, learn to love yourself first, and then others will behave in a way that doesn’t frustrate you. If you meet negative and unwilling to change yourself now, then you need to love yourself more in order to get rid of such a person.
During a presentation, a woman told me that her husband was very negative and she did not want her two young sons to be affected by him. I suggested to her that she self-refer to her husband that he was good, wonderful, helpful, and that he was showing his best side. I asked her to tell herself what she wanted her husband to be like and to self-refer to what she wanted him to be whenever he behaved badly. If no matter how much she self-referenced, it was still the same, then she should have gotten the answer that their relationship was not working.
Since the divorce rate in the U.S. is on the rise, I think women should ask themselves, “Can I raise my children independently?” before having children. Single-parent families are becoming more common these days, and the woman is usually the one who has to bear the burden of raising the children. There was a time in America when marriages were strong, and now that times have changed, it’s a phenomenon to ponder.
There have been no good relationships, we have allowed ourselves to be disappointed, and our thinking is: “I don’t deserve love, I will put up with this behavior because I deserve to be treated this way, surely no one needs me.
I know, I like to make everything very simple and repeat it over and over again, but I really believe that the best way to help us solve our problems is: to love everything about ourselves, and it’s amazing how the electric waves of love we send out attract the people we love.