Loving yourself is, in my personal and professional opinion, the most important key to happiness in life and relationships. I know what it’s like to have people in your life tell you through their words and actions that you have no worth and are not lovable. But I also know what it’s like to break out of that programming and no longer allow them to control your thinking and life …
Let me say this upfront—There is nothing wrong with wanting to be loved. I believe we were created to love and be loved. The problem occurs when we give that power of love to another person outside of ourselves—when the love from another person is more important than how we feel about and love ourselves. If given to the wrong people, they can and will use it to control, dominate, and hurt us. I’ve seen it time and time again and experienced it personally.
The answer to this problem is to love yourself first. That way, no one can take love away from you when the main source of it comes from within yourself. A few months after publishing The Princess Guide to Healing a Broken Heart where I devoted a chapter to this topic, I read Christian Mickelsen’s book Abundance Unleashed where he seems to share my opinion.
“The more attachments you have to being loved, the more neediness, the more you’re going to be searching for that love out in the world, and it’s always going to be elusive,” he wrote.
When you’ve had your heart broken—especially if it’s happened more than once or the situation was very traumatic—it’s easy to blame yourself and let the other person off the hook. While I don’t want you to plot revenge nor look for ways to get even, I do want you to give credit where credit is due and place responsibility where responsibility is due. If you are the person responsible for the demise of the relationship, then you need to own it, repent, and change your behavior.
If you’re anything like me, you wouldn’t go anywhere in the vicinity of a snake, even if it’s behind a glass wall. So, why do we end up letting them (in human form) into our precious lives and sacred beds? Because they come disguised as handsome men or beautiful women promising us everything of which we’ve ever dreamed. By the time we realize they’re actually snakes, it’s too late—we’re already head-over-heels in love and/or engaged.
When someone leaves you—a severe form of rejection, in my personal and professional opinion—you’re put in a tough spot. It feels more like being stuck than anything else because the love you have for that person—if it’s genuine love—doesn’t go away just because he or she did. If you’re a person of faith you believe in the impossible, no matter how “crazy” it may seem or feel. (NOTE: It’s been drilled into me from graduate school studying psychotherapy that “crazy” isn’t a clinical term, but it can be a genuine feeling nonetheless.) But you’re still left all alone—waiting for love to come back to you either from the person who left or someone new. I’m just going to say what you’re not supposed to say—What about YOU? What do you do during the in-between time?
I would dare to suggest that you take all that love, concern, and obsession you’ve freely given to the other person and give it all back to yourself. “We often forget that the ultimate source of love is within us,” Mickelsen wrote. “The more love you feel for yourself, the more other people will naturally love you and gravitate toward you.”
Now, let me be very clear—I am in no way talking about nor condoning the self-love that researchers have found leads to inflated egos and Narcissism. What I am suggesting is learning to love and nurture yourself in a way that uplifts your emotional state and increases your confidence which, in turn, will increase your confidence in all areas of your life and project a positive frequency to the outside world.
It’s incredible how we can often desperately want love and acceptance from the very people who have hurt us the most. Albert Einstein said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” I will go further to say that the person who hurt you cannot heal you—only you (through the help and power of God) can heal you!
If someone hurt you, they need Jesus and obviously don’t know Him and aren’t following Him—“Where the Spirit of the Lord is present, there is freedom” (2 Corinthians 3:17). Freedom cannot exist when confusion, torment, hurt, and pain are dominant. We must forgive them and focus on getting healing and wholeness for ourselves while letting God do whatever He wants to do in the life of the other person. We don’t get to decide if they will straighten up and treat us right, but we can let go of our obsession of them and focus on loving and appreciating ourselves.
As defined by the clinical term of Dependency—aka Co-dependency or Self Love Deficit Disorder—some people are afraid to be alone because that means they have to be responsible for their own financial, physical, and spiritual wellbeing. Counting on another person to provide for these things or even your own happiness is very dangerous. What another person gives to you, they can take away. If you give something to yourself, however, it’s yours as along as you exist.
A key to loving yourself is actually liking yourself. You can only like a person if you spend time getting to know them. We can often be bombarded by our own thoughts and become used to our ways of talking and reacting, that we don’t even know that we are funny, charming, the life of the party, beautiful, etc. It helps when other people point these things out to get our attention, but even that isn’t necessary. Treating ourselves like we’re getting to know a new person is all it really takes.
“Be alone. Eat alone. Take yourself on dates. You will learn about yourself. You will grow. You will figure out what inspires you. You will curate your own dreams, your own beliefs, your own stunning clarity. And when you do meet the person who makes your cells dance, you will be sure of it because you will be sure of yourself,” instructed an Instagram meme attributed to Bianca Sparacino.
Stella had to go to Jamaica to get her groove back in the book How Stella Got Her Groove Back. Not all of us can afford such an extravagant trip, but you don’t need an island vacation nor a younger man to get your confidence back. In fact, those things are actually detrimental to the long-term survival of your confidence because they are outside things—real, lasting confidence is totally an inside job. Like the song says, “The world didn’t give it to me, and the world can’t take it away.” If you do the hard, internal work yourself, then no one can take the credit or take the confidence away.
People may come and go out of your life, but your core will not be destroyed because you will know without a shadow of a doubt that you are precious, worthy, and lovable. You will know that if you have been loved once, it can happen again and be even better than before!
You must also remember that you are deeply loved and cherished by the lover of your soul, Jesus. “It is a fact that many believers feel overwhelmed by the situations they face in life. In fact, they often feel so confused and weighed down that they wonder if God is still near to them. This is precisely why Paul adds (in Romans 8:38-39) that even life cannot separate a believer from the love of Jesus Christ,” wrote Rick Renner in Sparkling Gems from the Greek. Let’s take a look at how much you’re worth.
Do you want to get started on this (self) love train? This is just the introduction, but you can get the full e-book downloaded instantly to read on Kindle or any PDF reader.
Catch these first-run Write About It Wednesday blogs every Wednesday. If you want to know how to have successful relationships and peace of mind, you can get a free PDF sample chapter of “The Princess Guide to Healing a Broken Heart” by filling out the form in the sidebar on this page.
