You must love yourself before you love another. By accepting yourself and fully being what you are, your simple presence can make others happy. –unknown

I re-read that second sentence several times before I really understood what it meant. This morning, for a brief period, I really felt I was fully being what I am. A joyous, giving being, full of love and hope and happiness. I felt that joyous energy bubbling up from inside me, making my heart swell. It caught in my throat because I had to fight the urge to open my mouth and just let all my love and joy pour out. In what form I know not – laughter, song, a yell! I was sitting in my favourite café, taking time out on my way to work to enjoy a cappuccino. I had bought a cup cake for my friend to cheer her up (this café does amazing cup cakes), the sun was shining, the coffee was doing its stuff and the life felt good.

Today I am focusing on giving and receiving but more importantly on loving myself. As the quote above says, we must love ourselves first before we can love another. My creative e-course is helping me to dig deep, to reach inside, and discover (or should that be re-discover) who I really am.

I'm no expert but I know one thing. If you are filled with doubt and negativity, don’t consider yourself worthwhile or deserving of good things, if you are self-critical, angry or bitter, then it will not be possible to give lovingly to others.

It is incredibly difficult and scary to look inside yourself and see what is really there. All that dark horrible icky stuff we don’t admit to. Those traits and characteristics that we dislike so much in other people? We’ve got them too. Once you start looking, I mean really looking, shining a light in to all those dark corners, the dark stuff starts running for cover. Thing is, there’s no where to run. It’s been exposed to the light and dark stuff doesn’t like being in the light. I’ve shone the light on a lot of nasty stuff lately and it wasn’t nice to see. I wanted to put the cover back over them and pretend they weren’t there. But I had seem them and I knew I had to admit that yes I’d had those thoughts, I’d felt those feelings, I had been that awful person. But I also knew that inside me was lots of lovely stuff too - compassion, love, gratitude, passion, creativity, respect, generosity, joy, positivity, belief. An abundance of beautiful virtues, thoughts and feelings. Then I realised that if I could think and feel all that negative stuff with no real effort on my part, then surely it was just as easy to stop, reach inside and choose one of my happy traits instead.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm learning, day by day, step by step, to stop and examine all my negative thoughts and just find a better, nicer thought instead. Hey, I'm not perfect and I'm not saying it's easy. I still have times when life can threaten to overwhelm me and all seems pretty bleak. But I'm learning to accept that too, and to know that at least I now recognise these moments for what they are and that I can choose to change how I feel. In a heartbeat. How powerful is that?

Incidentally, my day just got better and better and the more positive and happy I felt about myself and my life, the more I found that nice stuff kept happening. As for journaling, I think I am becoming seriously addicted! 

Comments

[FreeSpiritKnits]

yeah! being addicted to journaling sounds like a great, wonderful, healthy thing. i LOVE that. i so enjoy your authentic writings jennifer. thank you for sharing.