If You’re Going To Love Someone, Love Yourself First

2/15/2017

Many people would do just about anything for someone they love but are not willing to do anything good for themselves. They keep putting love for themselves last because they don’t know how to do it any other way.

They think loving themselves is being selfish and that self-sacrifice is heroic and everyone will love them for that. But there is no better clean and genuine love than your own love for your Self.

Loving yourself is good

Loving yourself is not being selfish, loving yourself is good. It is very good in fact. Loving yourself is putting all of your awareness, attention and focus on your Self first. Once you've taking care of yourself, then you can focus on others.

For many generations people has been passing down the teaching, mostly by example, that loving yourself is selfish. I’m not sure how this idea began, but it seems that those that needed attention from others to feel validated wanted to have your awareness, attention and focus on themselves so they could feel good. This technique has also been used by organizations and governments to have power and control over you to get what they want.

Not giving your attention and focus to those people, organizations or governments has resulted in you experiencing fear and pain stronger than the need to love yourself. Needless to say that to some others in the past this act of self love has resulted in death.

This is how this belief of loving yourself is begin selfish has been passed down from generations to generations, but you can help stop it by not passing it down to your descendants anymore.

When you see and notice others asking more of your focus and attention than you can give, recognize what they’re doing. Don’t be mad at them though, they usually don’t know that they’re doing it. Be compassionate to them, because by being compassionate to them you are being compassionate to yourself. Make sure you also pay attention to when you are doing it to others and stop immediately.

Learn to know yourself

Loving yourself is first filling yourself up with good and clean energy and clean light so you can then share that clean energy and light with others. Remember, no one is going to have so much awareness, attention and focus on your Self than yourself.

Many people have been focusing their attention on others so much and for so long that they don’t remember who they really are anymore. They have not been taught to focus their attention on themselves to realize who they are, how they are, and respect and love all they are.

If you have been in this situation, you can begin knowing yourself today. All you have to do is to pay attention to how you are. Are you a quiet person by nature and have been forced, by yourself or others, to be a social person and hated it? Then you are a quiet person and you need to honor and respect that. Are you a social person and have been forced, by yourself or others, to be a quiet person and you hated it? Then you’re a social person and you need to honor and respect that. Do you see what I mean?

What I want to say here is that you need to pay attention and get to know yourself so well that you can respect and honor yourself. By doing this you will show others, through your own example, that it is safe and it is good to love yourself, and as a consequence you will begin to feel happier.

Learn to recognize your inner guidance

The easiest way to know yourself is to recognize how good and bad feels in your body. That feeling we all have which helps us recognize right from wrong is the feeling we use to recognize ourselves. That feeling is our inner guidance; our direct line connection to our Creator.

Not all people feel it with the same intensity because some have learned to not pay attention to it after giving their focus and attention to others for so long. But they do definitely have the feeling; we all do, they’ve just learned to numb it out. It is just a matter of recognizing that feeling again and they will go back to being themselves.

This feeling can be felt in any part of the body but most people feel it in their gut; between the navel and the lower part of the chest. That area is also called the solar plexus, which is all about personal power.

Pay attention to this area when you are trying to make decisions, any decision. Do you want to wear the black shoes or brown shoes? Do you want to drink coffee or tea? Do you want to walk or run? Practice with simple questions like those and notice how it feels in your gut.

Once you recognize how a good feeling, which also means a “yes”, and how a bad feeling, which also means a “no”, feel in your gut, you’re ready to expand the questions to more meaningful ones. This is the beginning of knowing your Self again.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most importantly, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” — Steve Jobs

As long as you keep following the good feeling, which means making decisions that feel good, you are on your way to honor and love yourself. Just make sure you always check with your Self first before you make any decision.

Just like when the flight attendant tells us, at the beginning of each flight, to put the oxygen mask and the floating vests on ourselves first before trying to help someone else, so I’m asking you to love yourself first so you can then help someone else love herself.

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Claudia LeBaron Islas

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