20 Empowering Spiritual Reasons to Start Loving Yourself
Self-love gets confused at times with narcissism. Loving yourself doesn’t mean you’re self-centered or only thinking about yourself. It doesn’t mean railroading other people in order to get what you want. It’s about taking care of yourself in the best way possible. It means owning your own power and acting from a place of kindness towards yourself. This way, you are ready to love others, having revitalized your own spirit.
This is what happens when we love ourselves:
- Renewing our spirits: we let go of negative forces in our lives, like blame, shame, and anger. We place the space with positive influences, such as ownership, creation, and power.
- Empowering ourselves: instead of miring ourselves in self-doubt, we feel, hear, and believe in our power. The opinions of others don’t count for anything; what matters is how we feel about ourselves.
- Giving ourselves peace: our spirits are still and calm. We accept ourselves — including our strengths and weaknesses — unconditionally.
- Owning our lives: responsibility for our own actions is a key part of any spiritually mature person’s life. We recognize that we are the source of all happiness. We are the source of the power to change our futures, careers, relationships, passion, compassion, empathy and authenticity. We have the power to change our own lives.
- Connecting with the world around us: we let go of loneliness and embrace a deeper connection and sense of oneness with the world, people included.
- Living to our potential: we allow ourselves to show up in the world and live our purpose. We aren’t afraid to pursue what fulfills us.
- Overflow of our love to others: the more we look at ourselves with love, the more we practice love and acceptance toward those around us. We let go of thoughts that negate our reality (ideas of what people should be or how they ought to react), and we become lovers of what is, accepting it and people.
- Embracing our humanity: we understand that we aren’t perfect and we allow ourselves to be human. We accept the mistakes and failures we have, and we invite vulnerability into our lives.
- Being enough for ourselves: proving ourselves in the eyes of others is not worth our time. We understand that we don’t need to impress anyone. We know that we are enough.
- Living courageously: we are no longer ruled by fear, because we know that love is the strongest power of all. When we choose love over fear, we become stress-free beings and improve the overall quality of our lives.
- Living freely: we let go of competition and comparing ourselves to others. Therefore, we’ll always be enough.
- Living creatively: when we love ourselves, we give birth to creativity, inspiration and openness. We inspire our hearts again to follow what our spirits celebrate.
- Accepting our lives: we understand reality instead of blaming and fighting it, because we know that love is in every corner. We hold on to our lives with a loose, loving grip.
- Bringing harmony to others: We attract accord, peace, spaciousness, and significance in our relationships. The self knows how to love better, and spreads it to other people.
- Accepting failure: we find courage to accept failure because we know that it is one step closer to growth, and our significance isn’t dependent on what we produce.
- Letting ourselves grow: we let go of keeping ourselves small in this world and allow growth instead, just like the tree that grows to provide shade and food for an infinite number of people. The more we grow, the more we spread love and joy.
- Handling stress: when we love ourselves, we become aware of our stressful thoughts and how we react when think them. We question their truthfulness and we choose to turn them around and invite stillness instead into our lives.
- Securing ourselves: We feel safe because we know that we will always be right here for ourselves.
- Dazzling naturally: we shine without working for it or fighting to get it.
- Living abundantly: we move from scarcity to abundance in every area of life without the need to fight or push to get it.
About the Author
Can Mindfulness and a Psychology Class Make You Happier?
By studying the effects of mindfulness on psychiatric patients, and the pursuit of happiness, can we teach ourselves how to be happier?
The term mindfulness has entered popular culture in recent years, but this ancient Buddhist practice actually began gaining acceptance in western medicine in the 1970s.
The three main tenets of mindfulness are:
- Intention to cultivate awareness
- Attention to what is occurring in the present moment
- An attitude that is non-judgmental
In a recent article for psychiatric times, researchers looked at how mindfulness-based treatments work for psychiatric patients, and how these therapies can enhance and even replace pharmaceutical interventions. They found a wealth of evidence that mindfulness-based therapies have overwhelmingly positive effects on patients.
With mindfulness-based cognitive therapy reducing the rate of relapse rates for patients with major depression similar to that of pharmaceuticals, they also showed reduced anxiety, depression, and increased cognition.
The researchers point out, however, that, “Despite this evidence, pharmacotherapy remains the main treatment option for many patients with mental disorders, although about 75 percent of patients with mental disorders prefer psychotherapy. Researchers recommend implementing mindfulness-based therapies in place of, or in concert with, pharmacotherapy especially as the population grows older and cognitive issues become more common.
