Journey XIV Week 5
Oh How I Love... Me
Rose vine and old barn. Easter Shore, Maryland. While driving on a farm road in Maryland I was taken aback when passing this old and rundown barn. I felt as if the rose vine and barn were a team, loving on one another. The barn complements the rose by giving her a place to grow and the rose complements the barn by giving him color and new life. It is another reminder that we cannot “do” life alone. We’re designed for community and need one another as a source of strength, courage, and love.
“Don’t forget to love yourself.” — Soren Kierkegaard
Action: Love yourself by accepting compliments, having confident thoughts, and speaking kind and positive words about yourself.
In the spirit of St. Valentine’s Day I feel it appropriate to write about “LOVE”. When thinking of love the first thought that comes to mind is the notion of falling in love. Who can forget the overwhelming and intense emotions felt during this time—they are truly euphoric!
As we all know, the divine feelings felt when falling in love do not last forever. But when the love is real and meant to be it leads to something even greater: unconditional love. To give someone comfort and joy despite their quirks, flaws, and imperfections is the greatest expression of love. Receiving unconditional love motivates us to love unconditionally.
Now I feel certain you would agree that nothing is perfect; great marriages, families, children and relationships all have their various challenges. Nevertheless, we accept these imperfections and continue to love unconditionally. But accepting the imperfections of others is easy compared to accepting our own. Because our maternal instinct is to give, love, and nurture others, I believe it is extremely difficult for us to love ourselves. Consider that this week as we celebrate the act of giving and receiving love.
I write about this topic at least once a year, so forgive me if you’ve read this before. It bears repeating. In loving, building up, caring for and nurturing everyone around us, we often fall short of doing the same for ourselves.
Even though we don’t expect perfection from anyone else, we often expect it of ourselves. As a result we can become intensely critical of ourselves. Our harsh thoughts about ourselves become spoken words and as Publilius Syrus wrote, “Speech is the mirror of the soul; as a man speaks, so he is.” We’re the first to publicly criticize our looks, our parenting, our relationships, our skills—we even reject compliments. Somewhere along the way we formed the opinion that accepting a compliment, thinking positive thoughts about ourselves, or being proud of our accomplishments is perceived as arrogance. But confidence and arrogance are not the same and confidence is something we always need. One way to gain confidence and accept love is by allowing others to compliment you.
Giving and receiving compliments can be just as rewarding as giving and receiving love. When you receive a compliment, don’t judge it and assume it’s not the truth. Judging and making assumptions about anything is a bad habit anyway. There is nothing wrong with receiving a compliment! Giving and receiving a compliment is a wonderful gesture and a beautiful act of kindness. So even if you don’t think you’ve performed well, look good, have awesome kids, or whatever, practice loving yourself and allowing others to love you by:
1. Accepting compliments with a “thank you” and a smile. Keep it positive!
2. Believing the compliment without judgement. Don’t overthink it!
3. Complimenting others. For every compliment you receive, give two more. Pay it forward!
4. ONLY speaking kind and necessary words of yourself and others. Take out the trash talk!
Last week we focused on dropping old emotional weight and baggage that was holding us back and keeping us from moving forward and living our greatest life. This week we continue to drop more weight, but in the form of our old cocoon. We’re ready to spin a new cocoon. In order to do so we must rid ourselves of our old cocoon that may have negative thoughts, words and destructive behaviors or relationships attached to it. We want to spin our new cocoon with loving and abundant relationships, confident thoughts, kind and positive words, and dreams and goals that will certainly allow us to take flight and live our greatest life.
If ever you need reminding of how to accept a compliment, give yourself the “kid test”. Ask yourself “What would a kid do?” or “What would I tell my kid to do?“ Kids never reject a compliment as demonstrated in this week’s video. Take notes! You’re going to lovingly be tested this week…
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