Know the self. Listening to the self.

Our Worlds

You often feel this intense feeling of deep affection towards someone or something. But how many times do you feel it towards yourself? Does it sound selfish to love yourself?

Have you ever told yourself, “I love you”? No, right? It’s too weird. I mean, of course, you care about yourself. But how much? And how does affect your life and the relationships around you?

There is a big difference between you and your “self”. Your self represents your ego, your opinions, emotions, pulsations, your spontaneity. Have you ever had a really bad argument, and you ended up saying something that maybe you didn’t want or truly meant to, but it just felt right?

Why do you regret it afterwards? Why do you feel guilty? Because the “you” part intervenes. The observer, the coach, the critic who monitors your thoughts, words, feelings, and behaviour and determines how much of your essential self is shown to others.

But what do you do when your “self” is so different from “you”? When “you” is too critical of your “self”? An imbalance is being formed, and we would end up putting up a mask every day, because it’s safer this way. Like this we know we will be accepted.

But this can be exhausting, and it would mean that we don’t care enough to respect ourselves to be who we truly are. It means that the acceptance and love that we receive from others is more important than the love and acceptance of our self.

We have this illusion that our happiness, mood, disposition depends on the environment that we live in. But they don’t. It is just easier for us to blame external factors, such as other people and their conduct or events, when our expectations are not fulfilled than to blame ourselves. It would be too much work, and it would likely even upset us to realise that maybe we don’t know who we truly are so well, and that we are in love with a perception, an ideal of ourselves.

Therefore, the first step towards self-love would definitely be to discover and accept that maybe you are not who you think you are. And that is okay. That is great. It means you are even more than that. It means that you are about to embark on a beautiful journey. As Vedral said in 1994, “Take yourself apart, see what you are made of, and then slowly and lovingly put yourself back together again.”

But how can you discover yourself?
I give you a seven-day challenge in which the goal is to be as fully aware of yourself as possible. What does it mean to be aware? Monitoring the “self” for thoughts. Be conscious. Ask yourself why you are having these thoughts. Stop and analyse them, don’t let them pass by. Write down the thoughts that you don’t have an explanation for, those that are bothering you and also those that bring you joy. At the end of each day, you will find something new about your “self”. It can be as simple as discovering that maybe you don’t like eating at the same place every day and you want to try something new.

How can you accept?
Change your behavior. Go to a new place to eat. How did it make you feel when you finally decided to move out of your comfort zone and eat at a new place? What did you have to sacrifice? What are the consequences? What did you have to gain? If it was a mistake, accept it and say thank you, because it means that you now know more about you. We need such small experiments in which we are the main variable.

And the secret is to have no expectations and just be grateful, for you, for your existence and the fact that you are unique. Accept your own design. There is no other person like you in the entire world.

So why not cherish yourself? Why wait for somebody else to do it? According to Friedman, “The measure of self-esteem is determined by self-knowledge, not the opinions of others“, and Rupi Kaur, who is a young female poet, wrote that: “How you love yourself is how you teach others to love you” and “if you are not enough for yourself, you will never be enough for someone else.”

I leave you with these final words. Take them in. Think about them. Try to be aware. See if they have any impact on your future behavior or thoughts.

And say I love me!

Credits

Image	Title	Author	License
	Altered_State_of_Consciousness	Davidboyashi	CC BY-SA 4.0