I can't focus on self love, it's selfish!
If I'm unconditionally loving I'll open myself up to being walked all over!
I can't love myself and be a spiritual being!
These are the three most common myths that stop us on our self love journey. Today I'm dispelling these myths and giving you some facts to rebuild your self love foundation on!
Myth 1: It’s selfish to love yourself To dispel this myth, just look at its opposite: what does it look like if we don’t love or value ourselves? We feel unworthy, undeserving and unlovable, and the person we become is one who is needy, with a void that we believe needs to be filled by others because we believe that it’s selfish to fill it ourselves. This is the person I used to be. I was needy – and a people pleaser – because I needed the validation of others in order to feel worthy. When we love ourselves, we don’t need the approval of others in order to be who we are. Instead, we are able to bring our fully realized, joyful self out into the world – someone whom others want to be around – instead of a self that is needy, with a hole that needs to be filled by others.
Myth 2: Being unconditionally loving towards another means allowing them to treat you as they please So many people write to me and ask, “How can I love my partner/another person unconditionally, when they disrespect me and walk all over me?” My answer to that would be: we MUST learn to love ourselves unconditionally first, as loving unconditionally always starts with the self. The truth is that when it comes to relationships, it is actually very difficult to unconditionally love others until and unless we unconditionally love ourselves. Why? Because we are the ones who decide how others can treat us. The more we love ourselves, the less we allow others to treat us like doormats. Loving others unconditionally does not mean allowing them to walk all over us. It means treating and respecting others in the way we want to be treated and respected, and it also means being able to leave a relationship in a loving and compassionate manner when it no longer supports who we are. When we love ourselves enough to have the courage to walk away from relationships that do not work for us, we allow the space for a different kind of relationship to enter into our lives.
Myth 3: Being spiritual means renouncing the material world, transcending the ego and becoming detached from emotional dramas
It is a common belief that “spirituality” is something that needs to be attained, and we need to work at it by transcending the ego and becoming detached from the material world. In a way, this attitude has become a type of dogma, a set belief taken as a given because it is so prevalent in our world. However, from my experience in the near death experience realm, I learned that nothing could be further from the truth. We transcend our ego and the material world when we die and leave our bodies, but as long as we are alive, breathing, and expressing through a physical body, the best thing we can do for ourselves and for those around us is to engage in life fully, to love ourselves unconditionally, and to express ourselves authentically. To me, being spiritual and being ourselves is one and the same thing! I believe that our purpose is to be who we came here to be, and to live life to the fullest. Most of us take “spirituality” too seriously and try to make it something separate from our life here. Life would be so much more fun if we lightened up and realized we are not flawed! We are beautiful, magnificent beings. We don’t have to work at being spiritual. We are already spiritual, whether we realize it or not. Self love is not egocentric or material. We are love, we just need to allow ourselves to embody it.
So, now that we've shooed away those old beliefs,
let's fall in love with ourselves!
Love, Anita