Falling In Love With Yourself
Until you know yourself literally inside and out, you'll never be able to move forward and share the whole of yourself with anybody else. Loving yourself, is absolutely key if you're to get love back from other people.
The way we relate to ourselves determines how we interact with, and love, other people. It's about recognizing and accepting your attributes, your flaws and your personality traits. It's about listening to the voice of your own heart - your inner lover - that very real heartbeat that tells you when something special is about to happen, and that you deserve every moment of joy that comes with it.
The easiest way to fall in love is to be in love with life, and the secret to attracting others is to feel and believe that we are attractive and worthy of love.
So how do you get your mojo back? Easy, by taking the time to fall in love with yourself with my easy suggestions below and take time to answer any questions below. This means really looking at yourself from the outside in, the same way other people do when they first meet you. What kind of aura do you give off? What signals are you sending to potential partners when you're around them? Has your long-term partner stopped looking at you, period?
Below are four key elements to falling in love with yourself:
1. Self-knowledge
Knowing yourself is vital if you're going to have control over your own destiny. Do you really know yourself? Who are you? What do you like? What is your purpose in life? What excites you? What do you want?
If you've ever experienced a nagging feeling of incompleteness, that sense of knowing that something is missing from your life, even if you're not sure what it is, that's a sure fire symptom of not really knowing yourself. You need to identify your life path, have goals - whether they're personal or business - have reasons for the choices you make. And ensure that those decisions are ones that are going to benefit you and your happiness.
Simply knowing who you are, what you want and how to get it. Are you happy in your job? Do you have ambitions? What kind of relationship do you want? Are you living your life to its fullest potential?
So sit down this week, take out a piece of paper and answer each question honestly so that you can get to really know yourself better. This will help you with loving yourself more and knowing who you really are and what you want in life.
2. Self-esteem
Having high self-esteem is crucial in building successful relationships not just with other people, but also with yourself. If your self-esteem is low, and you have little confidence in yourself, then you can't expect other people to, either. A lack of self-regard can lead to depression, it makes people tolerate abusive situations because they don't believe they're deserving of anything better, and they fall short of their potential.
Having the confidence to make the right decisions and go after what you want. Your emotional state dictates almost everything you do. It's no use appearing confident on the outside if, inside, you're a nervous wreck.
Gaining the confidence to ignore the opinions of others and just go after the things that make you happy, is a great way to fall in love with yourself. What's more, others will see that confidence and feel compelled to be around you.
3. Self-care
Self-care is about personal health maintenance. It is any activity that an individual, family or community takes part in, to improve or restore their health, and prevent disease. In modern society, with so many drugs and pharmaceuticals available over the counter, and standards of medicine being at their highest, it's easy for us to neglect our own self-care, thinking we can just take a pill or have a procedure, to cure anything anomaly that occurs with our health.
In actual fact, it makes far more sense to prevent illnesses before they happen. Staying physically and mentally fit, is something we should all actively practice. Eating well, taking care of personal hygiene, avoiding obvious health hazards like smoking and excessive drinking.
Self-care is also about listening to your body, and taking notice of the way it speaks to us. Too many people simply ignore the signs our bodies give us when something isn't right. We rely on doctors maybe a little too much when, if we were more self-aware, more trained to spot abnormalities, we'd be able to identify - and treat - illnesses before they happen.
For example, I use to be a coffee drinker until 8 years ago when I quit. I started drinking coffee in college and right away I started having problems. But the thing is, I wasn't self-aware yet of my body. If I had put two and two together I would have saved myself a lot of money, health problems and frustration.
For 10 years I visited doctors to help me with my IBS, heart palpitations and panic attacks. But instead of looking at my lifestyle they always wanted to give me prescriptions. Luckily, I was smart enough never to take them or I might have other problems today.
So one day, I visited a doctor in London, as doctors in other countries can be a lot more holistic than US doctors. I told him all the same problems I had told other doctors and instead of doing expensive tests, etc. he asked me one simple question, "Do you drink coffee?"
Thinking what does me drinking coffee have anything to do with my symptoms, but I said "Yes." His next response was, "Quit drinking coffee and your problems will go away." I walked out of his office a little confused as no US doctor had ever asked me such a simple question. I strolled back to my flat thinking "could it really be that simple?" And guess what? The answer was YES! It was that simple! From then on I learned how to be more self-aware of my body.
4. Self-trust
If we know ourselves intimately, then self-trust should start to come naturally. It's about becoming dedicated to making our lives the best they can be, about fulfilling our potentials, about being strong enough to take risks, even if those risks (by definition) open us up to vulnerability.
Being strong is all about accepting weaknesses, but not letting them shake us from our given path, or being afraid to try new things. As long as the decisions we make are well- informed, then self-trust can play a major part in all aspects of our lives, from relationships and careers, to pleasure-seeking and pure lust.
Self-trust is about fully accepting yourself, flaws and all. It's not about eradicating vulnerabilities or weaknesses, it's about empowering yourself to cope with them, and knowing how to use them to your advantage. We've all experienced that feeling when we know something is wrong, but we can't quite put our finger on it. It might be something health-related, or something someone says that doesn't ring true. You might have an instinct for when someone's lying to you, or something at work that isn't working for you.
Whatever it is, learning to listen and trust in your own judgment, your own instinctive compass, will help you decide when to move on from something, or when to take action to avoid a probably outcome. That gut feeling is more than a superstition or a fear, it's a very real, tangible, human characteristic that too many of us ignore simply because we don't know how to deal with it.
It's the same as when you should listen to your body when you feel you're coming down with something, when you're getting sick. Our bodies are constantly talking to your us, we just need to listen to them and trust in ourselves. If you feel something's wrong, then something usually is. Trusting yourself to do something about it, is the next most important step.
To practice, the next time you feel yourself questioning something, go with your gut instinct and see what the result is. It's usually the right decision. Animals do it all the time, but we seem to be the only species that doubts ourselves. In order to fall in love with yourself, you need to trust in yourself. It's the same way in which you fall in love with other people. To do that, you need to trust them with your own emotions. This is when love happens. So it makes perfect sense that, in order to fall in love with yourself, you need to trust yourself.
If you're able to get a handle on these four key elements, you're easily going to fall in love with yourself and be more aware of the things that turn you on and, more importantly, the things which turn you off. It's a myth that guys like women who depend on them. In fact,the opposite is true. Falling in love with yourself can show potential dates what it would be like to date you. It will also remind existing partners of the reasons they fell for you in the first place. By removing your own fears and insecurities, you're opening a big wide door ready for the right guy to walk through.
