When someone asks you if you love yourself enough to invest in yourself, are you someone who answers “No” to that question?
You are not alone!
When you are struggling with your mental health, trying to juggle all the challenges of life and feel like you have no time or energy for anything but survival, it’s not surprising that you, and millions of others, do not feel any love for yourself.
Just like any relationship, having a healthy, loving relationship with yourself takes time, energy, and focus.
When someone talks about the need for self-care and investing time and energy into caring for yourself, that doesn’t feel like an option for many people. So why would you invest time and energy into someone you don’t love?
The answer is simple. You wouldn’t.
This creates a vicious cycle where you consciously understand that you need to love and care for yourself but don’t, so you have no motivation to love and care for yourself. So around and around it goes as the days, months, and years pass without fulfilling your most basic need…to be loved.
That’s a heavy thought.
But once you understand how love develops, you will see that loving yourself doesn’t start with investing time and energy into building a beautiful relationship with yourself. The paradox of love and loathing isn’t the problem. It’s our lack of understanding that leads to a lifetime of suffering.
How Beliefs Develop
Decades before science could explain the biology of emotions and beliefs, some brilliant people researched, studied, and understood that human beings held power to control their minds and bodies.
Many of them focused this power to control outcomes on performance, building and maintaining habits, success in business, and making money.
But you can use these same strategies to develop self-love.
In his book, Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill wrote an entire chapter on faith, which is your beliefs. What does faith have to do with making money…or loving yourself?
Hill gives a fascinating explanation of the creation of faith and belief.
He said, “FAITH is a state of mind which may be induced, or created, by affirmation or repeated instructions to the subconscious mind…” and, “one comes, finally, to BELIEVE whatever one repeats to one’s self, whether the statement be true, or false.”
He explains that “any idea, plan, or purpose may be placed in the mind through repetition of thought.”
So, if you repeatedly tell yourself that you love yourself, in time, it will be written in your subconscious mind and become a sustaining belief.
That’s a nice sentiment. But how does that work? Is it some woo-woo process that fringe people try to sell like the magic of snake oil?
No.
Luckily, science has started to catch up with what many people have known through research without an explanation for the underlying biology to back up their findings.
Chemically Rewiring Your Brain
Scientific advances have given us a much clearer understanding of how the brain works. Don’t get me wrong; we still have A LOT to learn! But the information we now have has helped us understand the reasons for so much of our human experience, which enables us to use it as a tool.
Here are the cliff notes:
Every time you experience an emotion, it triggers your brain to release chemicals.
Chemical releases trigger neurons to fire, making connections and sending impulses and signals throughout the body.
Without getting too deep into the science, you can manually trigger the chemical releases you want that will build the neural connections you desire.
Let me explain.
We know exercise releases endorphins in your body, which makes you feel good.
Did you know that by visualizing yourself after exercising and reliving the emotions you feel after you exercise, you can ‘trick’ your brain into releasing endorphins?
The human brain doesn’t differentiate between emotions from something that has happened and something you are imagining or remembering. This is because the chemical responses are the same, which triggers the same neural responses.
So attaching emotions to your thoughts is a POWERFUL strategy for building the life you want.
You can legitimately rewire your brain through the power of thought.
Imagining yourself showing love to yourself through kindness and acts of love, while imagining what that would feel like to LOVE YOURSELF, will physically change your brain and re-write the chemical coding in your brain to be a person who loves and cares for yourself.
So, where do you start? Self-care and loving yourself when deep in the trenches of loathing and self-hatred can feel impossible. What if you can’t imagine loving yourself?
Belief doesn’t begin with action. It starts with desire.
Wanting to Love Yourself Matters
Even if you don’t love yourself now, the desire to love and invest in yourself is enough to inspire action.
Put simply; no one works for something they don’t want.
If you are reading this article, I will assume that something about loving yourself has resonated with you. Somewhere in your mind, there is a desire to know more, and you seek actionable strategies to improve in this area.
That is action based on desire because even the willingness to read about loving yourself expresses desire. You have invested time and energy into learning how to love yourself (and I’m thrilled you are here investing this time in yourself).
You can take that desire and act more formally by writing it down and committing yourself to it. Give it a timeline and state what you are willing to do to succeed. Then, repeat your desire out loud twice a day, every day.
This statement can be something like this:
“I am committed to building a relationship with myself and loving myself by 12/31/2022 by spending time imagining love for myself, reading and learning, and taking opportunities to show love and kindness to myself. I can see and feel what it will be like to love myself, and I will follow this plan to achieve my goal.”
Sound corny? Maybe.
But it works. Science has shown us it works. Great thinkers from before our time have studied and researched and shown us that it works.
Taking action based on your desire to improve your life by developing thoughts and beliefs aligned with your desire works.
It’s Time to Love Yourself
So, now I will ask you, are you willing to act on your desire for self-love by saying words and imagining emotions to have a deep and genuine love for yourself?
Investing time and energy into developing a love for yourself is life-changing and can alter the course of your entire life.
Take this vital step and turn your desire into action. You deserve it!
🧶 Happy Stitching!
xo —Lavena
P.S. Grab your copy of The Ultimate Guide to Crochet For Your Mental Health and tap into the benefits of creativity so that you can become one of the thousands of women who unlocked the secret to experiencing joy and living an inspired life.
