Love yourself

Each of us has a unique belief system, a way of seeing the world that is slightly different to everyone else's. It's almost like our ego has a fingerprint. What turns us on, what turns us off. What we feel is important.

Our political preferences, tastes in food and music, and so on, all arise out of this belief system. Our particular thoughts and feelings resonate with different aspects of the world around us. If your thoughts are dark, you like heavy metal. If your thoughts are happy, you like cheesy music. We like certain foods, for example, coffee, because of the way it make us feel.

The types of people that come into our lives are affected by our beliefs. We meet people who have made the same sorts of choices we make. Where to live, which supermarket to shop at, All these choices reflect our values and our way of being from day to day, minute to minute.

When you enter a seminar or lecture theatre, where do you sit? On the front row where you can ask questions or the back where you can fall asleep without being noticed? Our personality is reflected in the places we turn up and so we end up being surrounded by people who are the same way.

Do you like yourself?

There are two answers to this. The first, and most important, is to learn to like yourself. The second is to turn yourself into the person that you want to be.

If you want to like yourself, one way to do it is to realise that you are the perfect You that anyone could be. No-one else can do the things you do quite like you. No-one sees the world quite the same way. No-one has precisely your talents, ambitions, or lack thereof. No-one screws things up the same way, no-one makes the same mistakes. At being you, for all your faults and weaknesses, you would get an excellent grade. It's ok to be the way you are - it must be, because the way you are IS the way you are.

Many people think that their drive to improve themselves stems from the things they don't like about themselves. Feelings of inadequacy, dissatisfaction, or just dislike and hatred for yourself actually won't change, no matter how much you improve yourself. It is the feeling that needs to be dealt with, not whichever reason you rationalise at the time for feeling it.

It's actually easier to change and improve yourself once you accept yourself. The same negative feelings of self-non-acceptance lock us in to being those things that we want to change. Change the feeling first, and the specific details will sort themselves out.

Accept and love yourself you are precious. 

“He that falls in love with himself will have no rivals”

-Benjamin Franklin