I am starting to love myself

 

We get so busy in this outer world that we forget about the world inside us, a world that includes our true-self, our wishes, our passions and our happiness. We try so hard throughout our life digging mines to get some gold that we don’t have any energy left to accumulate the treasure within us. We invest our whole life making people happy around us that we don’t have any time left to make ourselves happy.  

We keep on doing things that we hate just to make some money and due to fear of the society. We not only kill our happiness doing that but also limit our potentials. When we don’t like what we do, we don’t want to be creative; we don’t give our best and just try to finish the work fast which results in the lack of quality of that work. Doing this over and over again, we lose our confidence so bad that we cannot believe in us anymore, and we become fearful for most of the time. It takes years and years to gain that confidence back, to regain the belief that’s lost and convert fear into faith.

I have experienced all this in my life. I was not living my life being the one that I was in real, I wasn’t confident about myself and was fearful most of the time. I was successful from outside but from inside I was dying day by day. As I realized I am not here to live life dying day by day, I stopped everything that I had been doing. I left my job, stopped studying further and decided to take a break from everything to find the real meaning of my life in this world. I started the journey to my heart, I tried to find my true self. From now on I am starting to love the real me. I have shared some important things that I started doing which let me love the real me and made me smile a little more

    

1) Doing Nothing

Doing nothing in my opinion, is one of the best way of self-love, self-care and self-healing. We get so tired by hustle and struggles in our daily life. We have to handle many people, situations and tasks which sometimes can be quite tough and challenging. We go through mental and physical pain due to all this. So taking a break, forgetting about all the rushes, struggles and pains, doing nothing at all and relaxing our body as well as our mind is obviously the best way of showing love to ourselves.  

Having a cup of tea, sitting on a sofa, playing with cushions and seeing beauty around us can be the coziest feeling ever. Lying on a bed, relaxing our body, closing our eyes, remembering some happy moments and smiling like a baby can be so luxurious. Taking a sunbath, listening to our favorite music, feeling the kisses of sunlight all over our body, letting the pain leave our body and mind can be the best feeling ever.

When we relax our body, do nothing and let some random thoughts come and go in our head, we can end up thinking about things that we really love to do, and we finally do that. Doing the things we love is appreciating ourselves for who we are from inside. 

When I first decided to take care of myself, finding out my true self and starting to love myself, I actually did nothing. I took a break from what I used to do before, made everything stop for some time and experienced everything I mentioned above. I felt so good after such a long time as I felt myself. I felt my breathing, I felt the things touching me, I felt the sunlight kissing my whole body, I felt the relaxation even with the gentle touch of my fingers around my head and neck.

I allowed random thoughts come and go through my head, thought about the things I love to do, visualized my dream life, visualized me enjoying the nature, visualized living a simple yet beautiful life, read some motivational books, viewed the videos of people living my dream life, listened to the story of successful people to know how they started their journey, how they believed in them and how they never gave up. In this way doing nothing and spending time with myself gave so much positive energy to me, it gave faith over fear and a lesson that I matter, and I can do anything.

2)  Doing things that we love

It is true that most of us don’t do the things we love because inside us is a fear which says, “No! Doing this is not beneficial, people are making money and here are you doing such a useless work? Think about a better idea” and it stops us. We keep thinking and thinking for that better idea but we end up finding nothing as doing what we love is the best idea. It is the ultimate source of happiness and an important step toward success.

I also was a victim of the same fear which kept me away from my passion and didn’t let me do the things that I love. My fear always asked for a better idea. I used to keep thinking more and more and more and more. At last, I used to get tired of thinking and ended up using cell-phone instead. Finally, I have gathered courage to love me and do the things I love, not caring about what other say about me.

I always loved to play with colors and brush. So the first thing I did was painting. I painted nature-flowers and some landscapes. I know I am not that good at painting, but I am learning and loving it. My paintings may not be the best, but they are very precious for me, they relax my body and make my heart happy.

I also love to write my heart out through poems and stories.  I don’t think about theme or the title before writing, especially while writing poems. I just keep on writing things that are in my mind at that time. Back then when I used to finish a poem and recite it, most of them used to turn out into a sad and having negative feelings. But nowadays my poems carry some positive vibes, maybe it is because I am becoming hopeful, more positive and happy in my life.

3. Being in relationship with ourselves

Loving ourselves is like being in relationship with ourselves. When we are in relationship with someone, we try to make them happy in many ways, and we too become happy with them. We show our love, affection and care for them. We gift them their favorite things just to see a smile in their face. In the same way, we can make ourselves happy by doing things that we love, eating our favorite food, going for a long ride, feeling the fresh air, being in some beautiful places and many more.

Sometimes we should take a long hot shower, make our nails, nourish our hair with hair masks, follow a skin care routine, get some massage, listen to soothing and melodious songs, have a cup of coffee or tea and take a nap if necessary. An idea of buying some flowers and cakes or some creamy stuffs, sticking a note on them writing how much beautiful we are, how much we love us and care for us is really awesome.   

When we love someone, we never think or say bad things about them, we always praise them and encourage them to do better. In the same way, if we really want to love us, we should stop thinking negative about us and stop abusing us. We should praise our beauty, our capacity, our dream, the way we think and the way we do things. We should accept us and believe in us unconditionally. Because we will be what we think time and time over.

4. Positive Thinking

We are what we think we are. If we think positive about us, it is most likely to occur positive things to us but if we think negative then there is a high chance that bad things will happen. Napoleon Hill in his book, Think and Grow Rich writes “Thoughts which are mixed with any of the feelings of emotions, constitute a magnetic force which attracts, from the vibrations of the ether, other similar or related thoughts”. Yes, when we bring one thought in our mind connecting some feelings, that one thought attracts another thought and that another thought attracts other thoughts.

If we bring positive thoughts, they attract and spread positivity in our life. Positive thoughts provide positive energy and with that energy, we do things positively, get success, embrace ourselves and live the life of real happiness. Positive thoughts provide faith and when we have faith on us, we trust our gut and instincts, follow our passion and unleash our full potential.

Similarly, if we bring negative thoughts in our mind, they attract and spread negativity in our life. Negative thoughts are the root of negative energy and with that energy, we enchant negativity about ourselves and our life. We don’t want to get up from bed, procrastinate everything and waste our precious time. Negative thoughts are also the root of fear. Fear of failing and fear of society limit our potential and don’t let us follow our passion.

 So, thinking positive is very important in life. Thinking positive about us is an important step of the ladder which leads us to self-love and self-growth. It is said that we can achieve anything we want, if we believe in ourselves. That belief can be developed by thinking positive about ourselves.  

I remember, before starting The journey to my heart, I didn’t want to think and feel as negative thoughts had made their habitat in my mind. Whenever I was free, negative thoughts like; I am wrong, I am emotionally broken, I am weak at communicating with people, I have no gut to follow my dream etc. etc. used to attack my mind. So, I preferred using mobile phone, watching videos, playing games over thinking and feeling. From this experience, I can say that negative thoughts kill our happiness, our creativity, our confidence and self-value. If we want to love us and want self-growth, we must kill negative thoughts and replace them with positive thoughts.

Nowadays, I allow more and more positive thoughts to come in my mind, I challenged myself to stay positive most of the time and kill all the negative thoughts I had in my mind. I think I am winning this challenge day by day as I am positive more than ever and smiling more than ever.

To stay positive, I try to wake up with a smile in my face after a very good sleep, I read the list of positive thinking affirmations for self-love that I collected from Google which suited best for me. I read these affirmations with faith and believe as thoughts mixed with feelings of emotions constitute a magnetic force. Then I listen to “Shree Siddhivinayak Mantra And Aarti”. It gives me a positive vibes to start a great day followed by other happy and inspiring songs in which I dance and exercise. Listening to these songs I get positive energy for the rest of my day. After that I read some pages of self-improvement books which is a great kick for me to achieve goals of the day.

5. Exercise

When we start loving us, we start loving our body, we start loving our life. We start doing things that make our body fit and fine. So in my opinion, exercising is the symbol of self-love. Exercising connects our body with our soul through exercise we can feel our whole body. It doesn’t matter whether we are fat or slim, petite or tall. We are beautiful as we are, god has differently made us, and we are all unique. We may be ugly for others but that doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is us, and we love us as we are. So, there is no pressure to be slim or tall. We love our life and want to be healthy, that’s why we should exercise. This mentality really makes exercising fun. It may be difficult at first, but it is fun at the same time. It is not necessary to do heavy workout, we can do simple exercises just to wake our body parts up. We can skip, we can jump, we can walk, we can dance, and we can simply stretch. Even if we are busy and don’t have much time for exercise, we can do these simple things just for few minutes. After sometime when we get used to these simple exercises, we can increase its level if it’s necessary.

I have been doing exercises for some months, and it has become my daily morning routine. At first, I felt pain in my arm and thigh. But after some time, I started having fun doing exercises. I first stretch my whole body with some deep breathing. Then I move my hands front and back, front and side, roll them to make circles several times.  After that I do up and down with wide legs followed by jumping jacks exercise. While doing these exercises, I look at mirror, I smile, I see beauty of my body and I dance and be happy.