How Does Lack of Self-Love Looks Like?

Self-love is so critical to your overall well-being because this is one of the basics for building the foundation of your well-being. Love leads to trust. Love leads to respect. Love leads to healthy boundaries. When it comes to having a healthy relationship with yourself, self-love has to be there.

But many times, that lack of self-love tends to wear a mask and we think we love ourselves but in reality we don’t. It is when we lack self-love that we find ourselves in situations where we not only question ourselves but we question whether or not we deserve certain things, we self-sabotage, and the list goes on.

So with this said, how does lack of self-love looks like? Lack of self-love looks like you coming up with excuses for why someone disrespects you. It masks itself in you blaming yourself all the time for everything that goes wrong. It looks like you abandoning certain aspects of you and so you seek elsewhere for what you think you need. Lack of self-love also reveals itself in the choices that you make. Lack of self-love wears many masks that it is not possible to discuss them all in one post but I will focus on the ones I just mentioned here.

I’m going to elaborate a little bit on each of these things. The first one which is you coming up with excuses for why someone disrespects you. First off, there are no excuses or reasons for someone to disrespect you, I don’t care what the other person claims their reasons are. Someone disrespecting you is a reflection of who they are and how they feel about themselves. You allowing the disrespect is a reflection of the way you feel about yourself. You allowing the disrespect means you don’t feel deserving of respect which means you don’t love yourself. Remember that love is respect.

The second mask that lack of self-love wears is you blaming yourself for everything that goes wrong. There is a big difference between taking responsibility for what happens in your life and blaming yourself for everything that goes wrong. One leads to greater well-being because it leads to growth and the other is just plain negative and only chips from your self-esteem. There is a negative energy to blaming because it is accusatory. It implies that you did something so wrong and only you did wrong. There is no learning from the experience with blame. Blame leads to shame. There is no love in shame.

The third mask is you abandoning certain aspects of yourself and searching elsewhere for what you think you need. First, the things that you actually need you won’t find it elsewhere. That is because it first resides within you. You abandoning certain aspects of yourself means you not tending to your own needs, you not paying attention to your emotions. It’s also you not filling yourself up with the love, care and attention you need. You first need you before anyone else needs you. No one else needs you more than you.

The fourth thing I mention is that lack of self-love reveals itself in the choices you make. You want to know if you truly love yourself? Just look at the choices you make on a daily basis. What are the choices you make when it comes to food? What are the choices you make when it comes to friends? What are the choices you make when it comes to companionship? What are the choices you make when it comes to your feelings? All these, if you take a close look, will reveal to you whether or not you truly love yourself.









The Positive and Negative of Everything

I’ve been pondering and asking myself why for many great things there has to be a negative to it. I’m working out this morning and although I love to workout and I’m helping my health with that, my hair has to be a nice mess afterwards. It makes me feel as if I have to choose between my body or my hair. Same thing with other decisions that I have to make, there are positives and negatives to everything. It makes me wonder why this is and this is what today’s post will be about.

I think one of the best comparisons to describe how life functions is a battery- it has a positive and a negative side. The battery, in order to function the way it is supposed to, needs both sides. If both sides are positive or negative, it just can’t work right. For as much as we would like for life to just have the positive, it can’t function if there is no negative.

So what’s the purpose of having both in our life? They both help balance each other out. This goes with everything in life. You can’t understand what true happiness is unless you know what sadness is. You can’t fully comprehend what true abundance is until you experience lack. You don’t fully appreciate your body until you get sick. You don’t fully appreciate the role someone plays in your life until you miss them. Certain places have to have their own downside because otherwise if it were to suite everyone, there would be a problem whether that problem is a place being overpopulated or very stressful, etc. This is what having the good and the bad can do, it can balance things out.

Balance is what contributes to your well-being and this is key. You need both sides in order to balance out your life. It is through balance that things can work in harmony. Nature intended it to be that way.

Having the negative along with the positive can bring out the creative side in us. This is because the negative can make you look for solutions as to how to a handle a situation. For example, I have to be creative with my hair in order to make it look nice after I workout. Certain things force the creative side of you and that is great.

So, if nature intended it this way, how can one handle the positives and the negatives when making certain decisions? When it comes to making decisions, you have to see what weighs more for you. It’s a matter of knowing who you are and knowing what matters most to you.

When it comes to cases where the negatives of something highly impacts your well-being, if it’s a decision that you made to have that positive in your life but it comes at a high price, then you have to mold yourself to the negative. What I mean with this is to find a way to work around the negative. For instance, if it’s a job that affects your health due to odd hours of work, then create your life and make a schedule that can still fit your job. The point is that you want to work with what you have and make the most of it.

Life indeed is like a battery with its positive and negative sides and both are needed in order for things to work in harmony. Both sides are needed in order to have balance in life. I encourage you to start looking at everything from this perspective.


How To Get Energy When You Feel Emotionally Exhausted

There are times in your life when you feel physically exhausted but not because you have worked too hard or because you haven’t slept well, but because perhaps you are going through some either inner conflict or you are going through a rough time in your life that is robbing your energy emotionally. I think this kind of exhaustion is one of the worst kinds because if you are not careful, you can slip down and maybe even fall into depression. When feeling this way, how can you find the energy to keep going?

First thing I believe is to acknowledge what you are feeling. I believe that denying what you are feeling is not helpful nor conducive to truly moving forward. By denying what you are feeling it’s like trying to make believe that the wound that you have isn’t even there yet it is bleeding and needs your attention.

Try to understand where this feeling is coming from. Ask yourself what can you learn from what you are feeling. I believe there is always something to learn from everything whether it is good or bad. Every experience is a chance to become a better person and understanding where your hurt is coming from can provide important insight to you that can open up the opportunity for healing. The way to heal something is by understanding what is causing the pain/hurt.

Take things day by day, minute by minute. Just try to take one step at a time, put one foot in front of the other.

As hard as it may be to find the positive in even the most negative moments of life, it is a must to find the positive in everything. What focusing on the negative does is that it magnifies the bad things which then affects your emotions which will then affect your energy levels. Think about this, anything you dread to do, anything you don’t feel excited about doing will deplete your energy. By focusing on the positive, you are shifting your mindset which will then shift your energy- energy that you need to keep going even when the going gets tough.

It would be wonderful if there was an easy answer, a magic pill that would give us all the emotional energy we need when the going gets tough. The truth is that there is no such thing but there is one person who has the capacity to give you that emotional energy you need and that is YOU. With your acceptance of your feelings, with your own compassion towards yourself, with you doing your best to heal your wounds and see the positive in everything, you have the power to get the emotional energy that you need. I’ve said and written over and over again, well-being is something to work on everyday. It is something that you cultivate, nurture and create. It is YOU who have this power.
