I love this article! It’s exactly whAt I needed to hear! 😊

Thanks Tracy.

Rudy – I feel the exact same way.

I’m sorry to see such a strident position but I believe I understand it. You are missing a very important aspect of the “self love” equation, and thus are striking out in frustration against your missing aspect.

>> Not one of the books actually had a step-by-step prescription for how to love yourself.

I guess you missed mine. It’s called SELF-PARENTING: The Complete Guide to Your Inner Conversations. Its well regarded, established, etc. You can read the comments on Amazon.

http://tinyurl.com/2bdeaps .

The reason you are not loving your “self” is because you have two selves: The Inner Parent and the Inner Child. These two selves have a relationship inside your mind that takes place within your Inner Conversations. Once you learn to separate the two voices and sit down to do what you call “reflective listening” as the Inner Parent with your Inner Child, all your complaints in this blog post will melt away like magic.

As an upcoming student of your Love at First Fight class I can assure you that if you used exactly the same methods and understandings of LAFF with your Inner Child, within your Inner Conversations (as the Inner Parent) you would be bonding together in exactly the same manner as your outer couples who practice LAFF. Same concept exactly.

I hope this strikes a cord for you so your Inner Child can get that love meister working on the inside like it does with your clients.

With deepest respect,

John Pollard

“We learned who we are by absorbing the feedback we got from the people in our environment.” – not true. This certainly has an affect, but unless all you care about is what others think and tell you, this is not what makes us who we are. Perhaps one might set expectations or goals (without any ‘outside’ influence) that could not realistically be achieved, and then felt like a failure when they didn’t (see Epicurus’ philosophy on the pursuit of happiness).

This whole article revolves around our self esteem being our perceived worth by others. That is a view that would be held by someone who is insecure, needlessly. But there is a way to make perfect sense of who we are.

Two things…

1) Loving yourself… always stuck me as a dangerous road to arrogance, if not treated with a healthy dose of humility.

2) Insecurity… if we had none at all we would be totally ‘secure’, completely confident and therefore on a dangerous road to arrogance. Just as you said, we need some insecurity to keep us healthy!

What?! Face palm…of course! They are just different words for the same thing on a sliding scale. Just as joy and fear could be the extremes on their own sliding scale (the Master Scale if you like, that contains all other scales within it)…

Wait…that’s getting complicated, let’s break it down simply. Think instead of a graphic equalizer, with auto balance. All the ‘mini scales’ are the ‘sliders’ within that ‘Master Scale’ of fear and joy. An adjustment here or there affects the overall make-up of our resonating character. The auto balance is the causality of action and reaction, cause and effect. This then, accounts for the variety of characters we see – all individual expressions, yet all of us (essentially) the same. Bear with me, I’m making this up as I go along to arrive at my point. (I’m the king of analogies having read “Consciously Creating Circumstances” 😉

Before I read that, before I met you at BC, I read another fascinating book that covered to practical difficulties of learning to love yourself. It’s fascinating in its simplicity, but obviously assumes a stand point where your self love is out of whack (i.e. the graphic equalizer ‘output’ leaves much to be desired). The idea then (not a new one) is to identify the problem areas and begin to change those things we don’t like. Those things are split in to two areas: the things we can change and the things we can not. The things we don’t like that can not be changed…we learn to accept. Through acceptance we can develop ‘love’. Like I said nothing new there, but the fascinating read I had was how to practically do this. The practical lesson works from the outside to within.

Very few of us would enjoy scrutinizing ourselves by standing in front of a full length mirror…naked. Perhaps that can be slowly worked towards, but arrive there we must! Identify the things you like. Identify the things you don’t. Identify the dislikes that you can change, and make those changes. Identify the things you can not change, and learn to accept them as part of who you are. By accepting, liking and loving your outward appearance, the journey can begin to move within. Having learnt to face a difficult process and tackle it face on, the exact same techniques can be applied to our inner personality and character.

There are, for sure, aspects of our personality that we can not (or perhaps should not) change – think of that graphic equalizer, in order to keep it ‘balanced’ some things are just the way they are because of ‘settings’ made elsewhere. There’s a saying “Show me a hero and I’ll show you a tragedy”. In the same way, I say, “Show me a strength and I’ll show you a weakness. Show me a weakness and I’ll show you a strength.”

At the end of the day, balance is the key. That may suggest that an overall happiness may be found in mediocrity, but that is not what I propose. I propose that being exceptional may have unexpected costs. We simply have to learn to accept those costs for what they are or make the choice that the costs are causing a negative impact on the Master Scale, and make adjustments where necessary.

This is a profound thing! It brings to the forefront that some of us are capable of being exceptional, but that it is ok to not be for the sake of our overall well being, balance and resonance. There are many ways to measure success, not all of them obvious at first glance.

We are love? Of course we are. Some of us are just not balanced to know it.

Wishing you well my good friend, and looking forward to hearing back from you 🙂

Cheers

Gil