Love is important and it takes up lot of our energy. We want to love and be loved in return. I think of love as a battery. When we have love, we feel powerful, energetic, optimistic, creative and motivated. It drives us forward and it is addictive. Yes, addictive. Once you feel love, you are not the same person anymore.

I realized all this about love when Eden, my eldest, was born over 25 years ago. With her, new feelings were born inside of me and there was nothing that could take those feelings away.

Before Eden was born, my first nephew, Adam was the first kid I ever loved. And I loved him so much (and still do) that I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to love my own child as much as I loved him.

When Eden was born, I was glad to discover that there is no limit to love. I loved Eden so much and my love for Adam did not change one single bit. But at that point, I realized that we bring kids into the world to learn to love ourselves. Our own kids teach us so much about ourselves and we should appreciate that.

Let me take a “selfie”

Self love is very similar to loving our kids. It is just directing the love towards ourselves. Unfortunately, we learn early on in life that loving ourselves is selfish, arrogant and negative. I am here to tell you it is not. There is nothing righteous about thinking badly of yourself. That is confusing modesty with low self esteem.

When we don’t appreciate and develop self love, we give others the power to dictate our worth and give us their definition of love. When we reject self love, we lose the ability to charge our own battery and we have to wait for others to help us charge it. We hand responsibility over us to others thinking that by giving it to them, we express love where in fact we expresses dependency and helplessness.

If you want love in your life, start with self love.

Affirmations to promote self love

I love myself.
I am unique and special.
I am strong and confident.
I accept and appreciate every part of myself and don’t try to be something that I am not so others will be happy with themselves.
I treat myself with kindness, love and respect.
I am perfect with all my flaws.
I give myself permission to be healthy, happy, successful and loving.
The more love I give, the more love I have.
I am grateful for my skills, talents and abilities.
I am proud of all my successes.
I can be anything I want.
I am my biggest fan.
I share my talents and abilities happily with others.
I can change whenever I want.
If I fail, it does not make me a failure.
I am valuable and aim to be the best that I can.
I feel good about myself.
I practice my freedom to choose to be anything I want to be.
I accept compliment from others with love and gratitude.
All my problems can be solved with determination, forgiveness, creativity and love.
I may not be able to control everything that happens to me in life but I can always control how I react to it.
My past is not my present and not a prediction of my future. It is an experience that is long gone and I have the freedom to choose whether to make it part of my life or not.