281. We don't "need" love when we discover that feeling loved is an inside job

We hear all the time that we have to love ourselves before we can love others. Or that we don’t need love from others when we truly love ourselves. The problem is, how do we truly love ourselves? Most people find that the way they try to get love from themselves is the same way they try to get love from others – by manipulation. When we try hard to give others what we think they want – to get their love through flattery and deceit – we’re manipulating. We’ve also made ourselves victims, waiting for someone else to make us feel happy and loved.

When we try to give ourselves what we think we want we’re also victims, hoping something we do will make us feel acceptable and worthy. You can take all the cruise trips you want, and soak in a perfumed tub with flowers and candles, but those methods of manipulation don’t do anything for self-love. Loving ourselves isn’t doing something, it’s being something. And what we’re being when we love ourselves is a spontaneously peaceful, happy person, content with life. Self-love and simple being in life are what’s always been there when we see through our self-loathing.

So, how do we love ourselves? We question our beliefs to see reality without our painful stories. At first that may pose a seeming problem because the things we don’t like about ourselves are the things we don’t want to look at. But that’s because we think when we recall what we loathe about ourselves we’ll just be reinforcing self-hatred. “Look at this terrible thing I did, and think about that cruel thing I said. Obviously I’m a terrible person.” We don’t want to think that.

But there’s a way to look at our past and see that it’s not something to regret and hate ourselves over. What blocks us from loving other people is judgment, and it’s the same with ourselves. We judge ourselves by believing our thoughts about how bad we’ve been. Then we’ve trapped ourselves into trying to find someone to love us so we can feel worthy. Of course it never works. Who’s going to love you when you, yourself, think you’re unlovable? That’s what you project. No, self-love is an inside job, not an outside job. And we’ll never see that unless we’re willing to question our beliefs and thoughts about ourselves.

What do we regret having done? Are we willing to look? Did we do the best we could at the time? Is it true we really wanted to hurt someone? Or is it more true that we were so hurt and confused that we lashed out as the only defense we knew then, the only survival technique we thought was available at the moment?

After we’ve questioned our long-held beliefs, and when we see that they’re not true, what’s left automatically is self-love. We don’t have to do anything to gain love. It’s what we are naturally, just as a light shines naturally when we clean the mud and dirt off the bulb.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer