The romance of relationships has captured the imagination of poets, filmmakers and artists since the beginning of time. It’s all about the instantaneous connection. That special spark. The once-in-a life-time elusiveness of it all. Do they talk about self love?
As a young guy in my 20’s, my friends and I believed that being attractive and acquiring a certain level of corporate wealth was a precursor to meeting my soulmate. After all, money, power and all things material makes us all more desirable, right?
In theory, yes. In reality, highly unlikely. This is because unless we’ve healed our past pain, superficial attempts to appear functional and lovable aren’t going to be sustainable.
Our true essence and core issues will soon become exposed and the only person we’ll continue to fool is ourselves.
Why We Need To Embrace Self Love
If you want to be an attractor field for a loving and committed partner who will be your emotional and intellectual equal, the key is not to focus on what you can change outside yourself.
Instead, you need to take time to look at how you feel about yourself. How you talk to yourself. The thoughts, words and actions you convey about yourself to yourself.
Are you critical, negative and undermining? Or are you kind, accepting and empathetic?
Do you encourage and tell yourself that you deserve all of the wonderful things that come your way, or do you anxiously grip the sides of your chair and convince yourself that it was all just beginner’s luck, and it’ll all come crashing down very soon?
This is important because how you see yourself is how others see you. How you treat yourself is how others treat you. The lens of self -perception permeates all of our existence (including what we receive and what we create), and this is why we can’t fool anyone for very long except ourselves.
“So how do I build my container of self love?” you may ask.
Let me tell you a story, my story. It might give you a clearer idea as to how giving love to yourself will elevate your vibration and your aura, so that another individual won’t be able to stop themselves from loving and caring deeply for you.
Building Your Container Of Self Love
Picture this: It’s the 70’s and I’m a teenager living a pretty lonely and solitary existence in in Connecticut, USA. I’m skinny, painfully shy and suffer from embarrassing teenage acne.
My self-esteem has buried itself deep into the earth’s core and life feels hard. I stay out of the social scene and spend a lot of my time trying to figure out my place in this world.
To make matters worse, I attend an all-boys private school. Girls are like magical unicorns in the forest and any contact I have with them is truly like death by a thousand cuts.
In amongst all the awkwardness, I find some social status solace in my sporting talents. At graduation, I receive the Outstanding Athlete of the Year award for my achievements in basketball and baseball.
But even that isn’t enough to convince myself that I am gifted and worthy.
I walk up onto the stage to receive my trophy; blinded by the lights, I stand at the microphone and take a deep breath and then I freeze: “Thank you”, I whisper. Silence. I walk off the stage with my head bowed and my fists in my pockets.
Why couldn’t I overflow with pride, embrace my greatness and take in the love and congratulations that many of my friends and teachers were sending out to me?
Thinking back now, I realise that it came down to what my reality was and how it affected my perception of myself.
As my mother oscillated from being chronically depressed to enraged, and my father sat passively in a largely withdrawn and submissive state, their fear from having lived through the Depression permeated my reality and I came to believe that I didn’t deserve to have a good life.
That I didn’t deserve success. That I didn’t deserve to be loved or recognised.
And then God showed up in the form of Ed
Everything changed when God presented me with my next door neighbor, Ed. I was 18 years old. Ed was a top engineering executive with a massive telecommunications company.
He was successful, but unfortunately he swore like a sailor and lacked some pretty crucial people skills. One day, the situation became so serious that his boss sent him off to a mandatory course on building self esteem, self love and self image.
Ed came around one afternoon, and after telling me how bad and stupid the course was, he happily offloaded the manual and tapes onto me to look at and listen to
I took this course by myself and didn’t tell a soul. I read it over and over again. I listened to the tapes until I memorised the content. I mastered it until it was second nature.
It became tattooed into my brain, and soon, very slowly, I began to feel better. I realised that a person can change and become someone they are proud of.
I also learned that most people have the process of self-change hopelessly backwards: That it’s never about changing our circumstances and status. Rather, the change that needs to occur first, has to take place on the inside at the deeply unconscious level where the mind and soul of the person meet.
It was a beautiful turning point in my life. You know, I always say God is the sun and we are the sunlight, and this little story about Ed shows just that. Even angry unconscious Ed had some beautiful sunlight inside of him which he felt the need to share with me, and I am forever grateful for his gift.
The Shift To Self-Love
By the time I mastered the course things began to change. As I started to love and accept myself, the universe started responding to how I felt. I went from being numb and angry to positive, happy and motivated.
Soon, the help and support I always wanted started showing up everywhere. Tom, my brother’s best friend and one of America’s first personal trainers, found a way to clear my pervasive acne.
He changed my diet and I went from being gangly to strong and confident. My sense of self completely transformed and for the first time, I loved myself and knew from a very deep place, that I deserved to be happy.
“But what about your love life?” you may ask. Well, when I turned 20, I met a beautiful lady. And then, I fell in love for the first time in my life.
Falling In Love
So, I hope you get my drift. As they say, “Birds of a feather flock together” so if you want to attract a loving and authentic relationship that has that effortless spark, you really need to work on yourself first.
Address the unresolved issues that have caused you to put that armor around your heart. Let go of the unconscious thought patterns and conditioning that have made you feel like you’re unworthy.
See a psychotherapist who works to dissolve the blocks within your body’s energy system, invest solid time towards personal development, and permanently change the way you see your beautiful self.
And then when you’ve done all of that, see how far you’ve come as you acknowledge your brilliance and your heart bursts with unconditional love for the person and magical soul that you are. Without you even trying, you will step out, open your heart and attract love. You deserve it and you will receive it. I know you will.
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Robert Kirby – Mind/Body Transformation & Integration Expert
