When you love someone, you invest your money, energy, and time to develop a healthy relationship. You never give up on someone you love unconditionally.
When You Don’t Love Unconditionally
It’s easy to give superficial care, with no real emotional attachment or investment. “Do you think a person eating three meals a day and getting seven hours of sleep is getting enough care to develop into a healthy and well-adjusted adult?”
The mistake many people make is believing, feeling, or thinking that food and sleep are sufficient care. Care without love is often felt by the recipient as emotional detachment and neglect. There is no intimacy or connection in the relationship. There is also no compassion, acceptance, respect, or empathy.
When unconditional love is missing from care, it is also easier to quit on the relationship when the going gets tough. Consider how many times you have started a diet and a month later you found it difficult to care about the results and gave up on yourself, your health.
It’s Hard To Really Care When You Don’t Love
To the average person it may seem as if I genuinely cared about myself; however, on closer examination I did not. I did not love me, because I thought that “as I was, was not good enough to be loved”. Thus, while I provided for myself in many ways, I was constantly thinking about changing me. I could not accept me as I was because I was “flawed”. This inner turmoil destroyed my peace and created havoc in my life.
- Where did these toxic thoughts and limiting beliefs come from?
- Do you ever have similar thoughts?
It became harder and harder to stay committed to my healthy habits, because deep inside I did not love me. I was not pleased with the person God had created. Little did I realize how disrespectful and displeasing that was to God. I was choosing consciously, for all the wrong reasons, not to love one of God’s children.
Why We Struggle To Love Ourselves
We struggle to love ourselves because we believe, feel, or think that “this self” is not acceptable; “this self” should be better; “this self” is not enough. There is a mindset of paucity, of lack. Often this is a result of growing up in an abusive environment or one that was not very nurturing [spiritually, psychologically, physically, or financially]. So, we begin a journey to change “this self”.
Despite everything we do, we are “stuck with this self” and in anger and frustration, we start to resent “this self” and punish “this self” for ruining our plans to be a “better self”, a “perfect self”. The irony often is once we begin to love and accept “this self” we start the process of transformation. We transform into the better version of ourselves we’ve always wanted.
Love First In Order To Create Change
Love nurtures and encourages; love is patient, kind, and merciful; and love shows empathy. More important, love empowers and strengthens you to take the necessary steps to become totally healthy. Love gives you everything you need to live your life more abundantly. Love never demands, it humbly asks that you love unconditionally, not only yourself, but each other.
If you are not loving unconditionally, you are existing in a state of fear and limiting your full potential. A state that will leave you constantly searching for joy, peace, and contentment. Shift your focus, embrace love, and improve the quality of your care and life.
Please join me on March 29th, 2021 at 7:00p EST live on ZOOM to hear how self-love changed my self-care and transformed my health and life.