The Self-love Series Part#3 – Building Self-Love
If you want to build up self-love, the first thing that you have to do is purification. The reality is that most people have picked up a lot of wild and irrational beliefs, values and attitudes that are not real. They cause a lot of damage. There are also a lot of physical toxins in the body from an unclean environment.
Purification
You need to purify across all levels in order to love yourself fully. Purification might sound like a drastic step, but it is certainly worth it so you can see yourself with more clarity. Purification generally involves:
- Fasting or dietary restriction.
- Information restriction.
- A natural environment.
- Meditation.
- Prayer.
- Yoga and/or exercise.
- Reading of uplifting material.
- Silence.
You can do a combination of the above for as long as you want. 3 days in the minimum and 3 weeks will have incredible benefits. But any amount is worth doing. These techniques are ancient and despite all of the new age positivity strategies, they work the best. Nothing will have the same impact as doing the above in tandem with one another. They work individually, but the effects are magnified when combined. It is only when you get away from society (i.e “real” life) and do these practices that you can clearly see just how dysfunctional society really is and how dysfunctional your own beliefs and thoughts are about yourself and about society.
Day to Day Exercises
Not everybody has time for an intense purification exercise. And they can only really be done once every 3 months or so. Due to this, people need less intense modalities so they can build selflove steadily and consistently over time. The first step is in relation to freeing up your time and energy. Most people have heavy stress from either energy vampires or from work and relationships. The best scenario, if at all possible, is to simply exit a toxic relationship or environment.
Many people are afraid of leaving a job they hate and pretend that they have to stay there to pay the fills. But nothing is worth having your energy drained and living like a zombie with no purpose or intention. What happens is that you are pretending to be someone you are not, which is the polar opposite of authenticity. There are many self-love exercises you can do, but here are 5 of the most effective:
- The waking and sleeping hours are a prime time to master your thoughts and emotions. In the place between sleeping and waking, turn your thoughts as positive as possible. These states are more powerful and set the tone for the rest of the day or night.
- Keeping a gratitude journal is perfect for appreciating what you are and all that you have accomplished. The fact of the matter is that human appreciation is arbitrary and irrational. We can work towards a goal for 5 years and appreciate its completion for a week. We need to reframe our gratitude and appreciation so we can be joyful for everything, not just the big goals.
- Put yourself first with vacations, massages, extreme sports, concerts, whatever it is that you want to do. You deserve supreme enjoyment, and it is what you are here for. Sadly, most people think that life is supposed to be a painful chore and create stress for themselves. Do not do this to yourself.
- Stop interfering with others at all costs. There is a kind of virus going around where people are trying to make the world a better place and love pointing out the flaws in the world. This is in spite of the fact that times have never been better, by a gigantic margin. If you do not focus on your own self-development, you will never develop. And you will find others interfering in your life in a similar fashion.
- Meditating on love or focusing on the heart chakra is a chief recommendation among ancient spiritual scriptures. The heart chakra is a doorway to the higher self/oversoul if you put your energy there for extended time periods.
Feel Good at All Times
One of the most important and overlooked parts of being able to find the self is being unashamed about feeling good. This entails doing activities that feel good to you as much as possible. There is a tendency to believe that you must suffer much to ‘achieve’ happiness. It is more the case that unhappiness has to be ‘unlearned’ from past conditioning. There is nothing wrong with feeling good, and nobody is not worthy of self-love, respect, and appreciation. There is actually no reason you have to work for 4 years in university to start out at the corporate ladder and work your way up. This is actually quite silly, given that you can get certified from a distance and set up an online business for a fraction of both the cost and time. Yet people still flock to universities paying tens of thousands of dollars to wait 4 years until they can make an income if they get a job. In any case, you don’t have to accept any limitation that society places upon you.
If you want to master self-love, then you have to love yourself and treat yourself with respect. This entails saying no to toxic relationships, setting boundaries, thinking positive thoughts, journaling, getting exercise, taking massages, going for luxurious hot showers, taking regular vacations etc. Your only responsibility is to yourself and to make sure you are as happy as you can be.