How you treat others is a direct reflection of how you feel about yourself.
Amber Deckers, Ella Mental and the Good Sense Guide

Regardless of your spiritual background and beliefs, chances are you have encountered the idea of loving your neighbor as yourself. It isn’t an idea unique to Christianity, although the exact phrase is most often quoted from the Bible. If you google “love your neighbor”, you will find article after article with Bible quotations, exhortations to heed the commandment, and lists of ways to demonstrably show love for your neighbor. What amazes me is how those last two little words are completely ignored - “as yourself”.

Somewhere along the line, the idea was shortened from “Love your neighbor as yourself” to simply “Love your neighbor”. It seems logical, right? We are being called to love the people with whom we share this tiny little rock called Earth. The problem with dropping those two words is that no matter how hard we try to magically create love for our neighbor, it just isn’t going to spring up from the rocky soil of our own self-hatred. If most of us are honest, loving our neighbor the same way we “love” ourselves would involve lots of cursing, berating and put downs. Every mistake our neighbor made would be cataloged, framed, and placed into a database for later retrieval. Our poor neighbor would never get a moment of rest from our “love”.

Our Concept of Self

We all have a mental picture of who we are that was developed from our earliest days. Our understanding of who we are started with our parents and extended family. If we had a healthy family, chances are we have a healthy concept of our own value. If we didn’t have a particularly healthy family, we probably carry a warped self image and have difficulty loving and accepting ourselves.

As we grew into our early teens, our peers became the next major influence on our self image. We tried to fit in to certain groups, and made decisions about who we wanted to be. If we were successful in cultivating close relationships at this point, it most likely made a positive impact on the way we see and treat ourselves. If we ended up feeling ostracized and had difficulty making friends, then we felt more isolated and worthless.

When we reach adulthood, we have a pretty good sense of who we are. It doesn’t matter if the image is accurate, it is simply the image we have developed over our lives. Many people are not carrying a healthy self image, and are incapable of loving themselves.

5 Steps to Healthy Self Love

1. Stop playing those critical tapes over and over. You can begin to improve the way you feel about yourself immensely if you will just stop being your own worst enemy. Start replacing those negative thoughts of self-loathing with something more positive. Start simple with a little mantra you use to combat those thoughts when they arise - “I am a good person worthy of the love and respect of myself and others”. It sounds simple and trite, and will feel a little strange at first, but you will become more comfortable with this type of thinking if you keep at it.
2. End relationships that continually put you on the losing end. Do you have a friend who regularly breaks breaks commitments, or is simply a no-show? Does your significant other put you down and ignore your needs? Is there a parent that you have been trying to please for all these years to no avail? Sometimes the healthiest thing you can do is break away from dysfunctional relationships and put yourself in a place of priority. This isn’t selfishness, but working to achieve a healthy self-respect. If you won’t respect yourself, nobody else will either.
3. Surround yourself with positive people. There is a big world out there, and plenty of people willing to befriend you and treat you with the caring and respect you deserve. Refuse to accept anything less than the best from yourself and others. When you begin to build a support network of people who are sincerely interested in you, you will find it much easier to build a more positive image of yourself.
4. Take care of yourself. Relationships are a good first step, but don’t forget about all of the other aspects of loving yourself. If you truly value yourself, make time to do the things you enjoy. Take some time for solitude and reading. Prioritize your physical health with exercise and healthy foods. Continue the education you have been putting off because you didn’t view yourself as worthy or able to succeed.
5. Now serve others. Once you have a healthy self image, you are ready to give to others. You will be giving from a place of strength, with an understanding of your dignity and the dignity of the people you are serving. You will have the love inside of you to pass on to others, and you will be an example to them of the ultimate source of love.

Before we are able to love the rest of the world, we must first cultivate love for ourselves. Not a selfish, navel gazing introverted love, nor a narcissistic obsession with how wonderful we are, but sincere acceptance of ourselves, warts and all. We have to learn to cut ourselves a little slack, and tell that damned voice in our heads to shut up. Once we have this love for ourselves, we will be able to love our neighbor, our enemy, and that guy who cut us off on the way to work this morning.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 8th, 2007 at 6:21 am and is filed under Self Image. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed, bookmark the Permalink in your Browser, leave a response, or trackback from your own site.