How to Practice Self-Love and Be Happier.

The process of self-awareness includes loving ourselves enough to live our dreams and create our own reality. We are “pure love” when we are born. Early conditioning and life experiences cause us to believe we are unlovable; there is something wrong with us. The more we work on integrating past experiences and improving our self-esteem, the stronger our self-concept becomes. The more we love ourselves, the more enthusiastic we become about life. We develop the courage to be authentic and true to our ideals. And yet, self-love is one of our biggest challenges. Loving ourselves has negative connotations because people often confuse it with selfishness, self-absorption and egocentric behavior. It is often easier to love another person than our self. We don’t realize that, when we take care of ourselves and treat ourselves in a loving manner, we have more love to give. The biblical expression “my cup runneth over,” means I have more than enough for my needs. We love our self in some of the following ways: 1) Accept and own all parts of ourselves. Being true to ourselves, and living our lives authentically, includes recognizing our strengths and weaknesses; our good qualities and faults; our suffering and joy; our fears and courageous acts; etc. These dualities coexist in all of us. Recognizing and accepting them helps us integrate them into the totality of who we are. 2) Believe we have the ability to change any aspect of ourselves. self-awareness means taking an inventory of our personalities, behaviors, attitudes and principles we live our lives by. We have the ability to change any aspect that does not conform to our self image. We empower ourselves by making the commitment to do so, having patience for our process, and looking at ourselves with the eyes of understanding and love. continue