Posts Tagged ‘valentine’s day’
Happy Self-Love Day!
Valentine’s Day brings up so much baggage. It was created by Hallmark to sell greeting cards. And it leaves single people feeling alone and insufficient, and often causes couples to try to measure up to a mythical standard.
So how about we recontextualize this day… as a time when we learn to have more compassion and acceptance of ourselves? Even… self-love?
It breaks my heart when I hear people say that they can have some more compassion toward themselves, but that loving themselves is almost out of the question.
This is also really important professionally: in my opinion, half of what makes a confident, effective speaker is self-love. And it’s most of what makes a genuinely happy person, too.
A few tips:
Know that there’s no such thing as being perfect.
People will love you more when you give yourself permission to be ALL of you.
When you embrace yourself as an ever-evolving, imperfect human, you give others permission to be themselves, too.
So give yourself a break. Today, my wish is that we each spend time to appreciate ourselves, our foibles, our humanity, and our gifts. May we all be gentle and sweet with ourselves.
Everyone wants true love. True love – ah yes, the stuff of legends and Hollywood, deeply embedded in our psyches. The mythological measuring stick against which we compare our experiences. But how could mere mortals’ actions do anything but pale in comparison to True Love?
A spiritual teacher of mine, many years ago, listened patiently to my trials and travails of the heart. Finally, he calmly expressed: “If you fall in love, you’ll eventually fall out of love. Why not seek to exist in a state of love?”
In other words: we can cultivate a state of love by ourselves. To walk in love. To talk in love. To open our hearts to the world. Then, we’re always in love.
Action: Whether or not you’re in a relationship, focus on opening your heart – to the present moment, to others, and to your life. (Also, try the Heart Breathing Exercise – to be posted later today.)
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