Why Is It So Hard to Love Ourselves? by Cindy Melksham

Why Is It So Hard to Love Ourselves?

by Cindy Melksham

Loving ourselves does not come easily for many of us and yet self-love is the foundation of resilience. The only person you will be with for the entirety of your life from birth to death is – YOU. There will be many others sharing the journey of life with you but only you will be there through all of your experiences. It makes sense then that if you can get good at loving yourself you will set yourself up to be able to support yourself in healthy ways through life’s ups and downs. Furthermore, a by-product of loving and appreciating yourself is that you will naturally attract others who will treat you with the love and respect you deserve.

Let’s consider why it is so hard to love ourselves and why it does not come naturally for many of us. When we come into the world, we are love. Pure love. You only need to look into a baby’s eyes to see that. Then an event occurs and we experience emotions other than love for the first time. It might be that a parent takes a toy from us or raises their voice at us. We feel love has been withdrawn and we experience negative emotions such as sadness or fear as a consequence. We then start to take on a belief that we are flawed in some way or unlovable. It is worth noting too that our individual level of emotional sensitivity dictates the extent to which experiences, both positive and negative, impact us.

We take on our parents conditioning and therefore, our outlook on life including beliefs about ourselves will often be similar to our parents beliefs. This is not about blaming our parents for the way we feel about ourselves, as they were always doing the best they could with the awareness, knowledge and understanding they had at the time. Rather, this is about shining a light on factors which contribute to the way we view ourselves which in turn, effects how we experience the world.

When we feel that we are unworthy of attaining a partner, job, good health or something else that we would like in our life, it is very unlikely we will attain it easily because our default is to act in ways that correspond to how we feel about ourselves. Therefore, we will stay in jobs we hate, won’t ask that person out on a date etc because we don’t believe we will be successful. We quit before we have dared to even begin.

Furthermore, people’s behaviour toward us will often mirror how we view ourselves. Therefore, if we have low self-esteem it is not uncommon to be caught in a cycle of attracting people into our space that verify our limited view of ourselves and thus we find ourselves perpetuating an unwanted cycle of self-loathing.

The good news is you can break out of this cycle with awareness. Being willing to see yourself as worthy regardless of what past experiences have taught you is the first step. Understanding that you have learned you’re unworthy through other people who struggled to see their own worth, is liberating.

You a free to reclaim your worth.

The ball is in your court. You can transform your life with the healing power of your own love when you are willing to commit to yourself and take the steps. By deliberately taking action to love yourself by doing what you need to do to heal your life, including asking for help when you need it and softening judgement of yourself, you’re on your way.

If you would like to delve deep into learning how to love yourself more and learn how to release painful emotions and experiences which are preventing you from seeing your worth, I invite you to attend my Love Yourself – Heal Your Life Workshop at Qi Crystals on Sunday August 19th. I will share my own personal journey of transformation at the workshop to inspire you on your journey.

Much love,
Cindy Melksham
Energy Healer & Empowerment Coach
www.affirmyourpower.com.au