Empathic Amanda's Art of Self Love: You Deserve Your Own Love

Self Love...now there's a concept for ya, huh?

If you're into self improvement you have probably heard or read those two words together a lot. A few lucky folks are tried and true pros at it! Most of us attain Self-Love when we are alone or feeling safe, but can allow outer chaos or other people to fog our brain and forget why we were lovable to begin with. Many of us like the sound of it, but don't exactly know what it looks or feels like. There are some who get bitter at the mere thought of it and prefer to remain the victim of feeling no love at all.

If you are anything like me, you dip in and out of all of the above when it comes to Self-Love.

I've found that the secret key to maintaining Self-Love in life is to focus on the FACT that you DESERVE your own love...no matter what...and especially when you are feeling a lack of it.

Deservedness is key, because if you believe that you DON'T deserve it than you will not have it within you or by your side at the times when you need it most. The more you get use to it (and know how to maintain it) the less you find yourself in situations that trigger Self-Love's opposite: Self-Loathing. Nobody deserves that...natural remorse or brief periods of shame...sure, we all mess up and need to learn from our mistakes at times, but never Self-Loathing.

Self-Love is a birth right, just like the fact that you were given a body to live in, eyes that produce tears, and a mind to make choices with. It is naturally there for the taking, regardless of what life situation or family you were born in or find yourself in currently. The beautiful thing about Self-Love is that it is infinite...so no matter where you stand with it right now, you can always nurture and grow into a state of being that supports, motivates, and comforts you at all times in this life.

It's also natural to give love and seek love from others. We are biologically and psychologically designed to do this for survival.

This may not sound super romantic or spiritual. Don't get me wrong...I am a huge fan of romantic and spiritual love, but there is good truth around the nature of love in biology and psychology that we can all learn from.

We are designed to give love and seek love as babies so we will be loved back and have our basic survival needs taken care of by the adults in our lives. It creates a bond that carries us through life's harsher realities. Unfortunately, this instinctual programing can set us up for confusion later in life...especially if the adults in our life did not teach us the important emotional survival skill of Self-Love.

This gets overlooked a lot, mainly because societies and cultures (and therefore families) are designed in various ways that focus more on physical survival...food, clothes, shelter...which governments and businesses then capitalize on, for better or for worse, to create an economy that sustains a community or a nation. Because of this, emotional needs have been downgraded for generation after generation because a.) emotions can be time consuming and uncomfortable to deal with and b.) that process can get in the way of taking care of our physical survival needs...the field needs to be plowed, mom has to work, the boss will fire you if you miss work due to depression, etc...so we learn to devalue our feelings and sometimes block them out completely just to keep moving.

This leads us into an adulthood where we are both consciously and unconsciously always trying to give or receive love from others because it is what we have always done to survive. We have an instinct for love/sex and we know that often times there is safety in numbers. When it is working it feels really great! Nothing wrong with it...BUT because so few people were taught how to love themselves properly and are pushed to focus on their physical survival above all else, a lot of the love we give and receive and the choices we make ultimately lead us to feelings of loss and longing for something more than what we are able to give or are getting from others.

Now throw into the mix that many of our great-grandparents, grandparents, parents, and even ourselves have been the victims of war, illness, abandonment, divorce, death, incarceration and all sorts of abuses...and still expected to survive, given little if any real time to grieve and heal themselves before entering back into a “normal” life. Who has time for learning and teaching Self-Love in all that emotional chaos...best to try and just find happiness however we can, right?

This can often times creates a sense of urgency to fill void of emptiness and confusion that we have never learned how to manage in a balanced self-loving way. This is why addictions are so strong in humans...most are a quick and effective fix on feeling both bonded to others and love towards ourselves (drugs, alcohol, ambition, love, sex, cigarettes, fitness, materialism, etc.) at least for a time.

These fixes come at a cost because most highs are fleeting, they have consequences that we do not yet understand (or are able to ignore) and will not permanently fill anything. Addictions distract us from whatever pain we are trying to manage...which is usually the pain we experience when we do not feel Self-Love in the face of life's challenges. When we are challenged we often feel weak and unacceptable to others which creates the toxic belief that we don't deserve any love, much less our own love.

Most of our beliefs have been taught to us by the people, experiences, and the world around us. If you were never actively taught how to genuinely love yourself and are experiencing the pain and suffering of this lost lesson, don't despair. It can be self-taught and the learning process is actually very fun once you stop resisting that its time to own up to what has been missing in your life and give it to yourself.

When trying to learn Self-Love please remember...write it down, sing it out loud, or pay someone to remind you of it if you have to...that YOU DESERVE YOUR OWN LOVE!

Start there.

Self-Love will look different for everyone in its inner and outer expression. At its core though, it is like a kind, gentle, often times silly and nurturing energy that we tend to feel towards babies...or kittens...or puppies...you get the idea. Think innocence and purity. Good spirituality is a great path to Self-Love. Having a higher power that loves and accepts us and encourages us to grow is a righteous mirror to our own possibilities of loving ourselves daily in that same light.

You can give yourself love by doing things that you love to do and having experiences that don't come with hard consequences...hobbies that make you happy. You also must consciously choose to speak kindly towards yourself both inside your mind and aloud to others. If you don't know how to start or what to say follow me and insert your full name where I have put mine: “I, Amanda Elaine Monyhan, Deserve My Own Love” and soon you will begin to feel, see, and understand why this is so. It is your birth right after all and it has been waiting for you to know your name with love in your heart from the moment you were born.

Original Art for the Self Love card in the Empatic Mystic Online Tarot http://EmpathicMystic.com

Please remember to follow along either via Google/Blogger or Facebook...more Art of Self Love to come. Thank you for reading and be kind to yourself :-)

Amanda

Please visit http://EmpathicAmanda.com for more information on my services.