Self Love vs. Anxiety!

Do you LOVE yourself?

Last podcast we talked about feeling gratitude for our humanness.  Being grateful that we are not perfect, but messy and beautiful all at once. Today’s podcast ups the ante! We suggest taking a BIG step forward from just plain gratitude into Self Love. Today we talk about loving ourselves!

Do you confuse self-love with selfishness?

For some of you this is a big duh and not an issue at all. But I know there are plenty of you out there that may find this suggestion too challenging or even offensive.  Some of us have been programed wrongly and get selfishness and self-love confused. We may have grown up with a narcissist or two and any talk of self-love brings that person to mind. 

Self-love is a healthy stance

But self-love is a healthy balanced stance to have in life. Even Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  The golden rule is ‘do unto others as you would have them do for you’. So a healthy kind of love is balanced by having love for self and love for others. The Buddhists have specific meditations for increasing our self and other love, a loving kindness meditation and it is very powerful.

Treat yourself like you treat your best friend

Some of us have been brainwashed to only love and care for others so we may have a bit of a harder row to hoe when it comes to self-love. But life is so much better and there is much less anxiety and stress when we treat ourselves like we would treat our best friend,  with kindness and respect.

Where do you fall in the spectrum? Do you love self and others, or just self, or just others? Check out today’s podcast for more info.
Here is a great link for a loving kindness meditation. http://www.contemplativemind.org/practices/tree/loving-kindness