How do you love yourself?

'Love yourself first' says the old adage. The meaning of that statement was outside my reach for many years. 

How do you love yourself when the world tells you that you are unworthy?

There is a certain mindset, a certain attitude, a negativity, that I felt from others. I was taught I would never be good enough. If one person tells you that, perhaps it haunts you or even limits you. What happens when it feels like everyone is saying you don't have value?

Perhaps, like me, your light is dimmed. Your voice grows silent. Your playfulness and creativity are muffled. You learn to walk the dictated path. You learn to listen to hints of what is expected and strive to please others so they will be pleased with you.

You spend years denying your unhappy state, your creative aspirations on the back burner or hidden away. Sometimes those who do care for you will nudge you to do more, believe in yourself. But their voices (and your own) are muted by the cacophony of statements and feelings integrated from the less enthusiastic.

Why is it that we will leap to discourage others? Why is it that the 'good news' is an afterthought? Why are human beings so negative? Why do we 'enjoy' watching others be thrown to the lions?

The weight of all that darkness can take me down to the abyss. 

As sad as that sounds, I believe that weight can be lifted, that the light can shine, that your own voice can grow and be heard above the crowd.

It starts from the inside out. Examining your own thoughts and habits. Asking what works. Asking why you think that way or believe this. Asking what you want to change, then doing the work to change it.

It's understanding that you are not, today, all you can ever be. It's believing that you can grow. 

It's realizing that creativity is a process. A journey. We start where we are (as much as we might like to be somewhere else). We make mistakes, we write badly or sing badly or paint badly, we persist in 'doing' the art. Each thing we do is grist for the mill, an experience. As those things happen, come into existence, slowly and deliberately we start to see the potential and celebrate the small successes.

Perhaps you start to realize that you are who you are for a reason, and that your life experience is now there to draw on for inspiration. Perhaps your own voice is the one you listen to first.

Perhaps you have the compassion to forgive yourself for anything and everything you did and didn't do to get to this point.

You can't change the past. Tomorrow is yet to come. What will you do today?

~hugs