Love Yourself

WHY do I keep doing this?  Going around this mountain again and again.  One step forward and 250 steps back, seems to be my M.O. and I am sick of it.  Looking in the mirror makes me cringe, because once again I find myself with 25 pounds to lose.  How many times can a person find something they really worked hard to get ride of?  Looking around my house I see chaos and disorder.  I just keep thinking about the hours I put into organizing it a few months and here I am right back where I started.  It's the same with every single area of my life.  I started once and it felt amazing to see results, but somewhere along the way I stopped.  Why do I keep doing this?  

Why do I self-sabotage?  Why do I derail every time I start seeing success?  Why is it more comfortable to live in defeat?  This is not the person I want to be...  I mean really.  There is a woman in my head who looks, acts, thinks and feels vastly different from the one looking in the mirror.  The other woman is bold and confident.  She loves life and she loves people.  She has great ideas and works hard to make them happen.  She is a force to be reckoned with.  I love that woman, when I see her.  I want to be her.  She makes me proud.

But there's another women...  She's a quitter.  She quits her diet right when she is feeling amazing.  She quits trying to keep her house clean and tidy.  She quits doing everything that makes her feel like a winner.   Then she starts doing all the things that reinforce what she really believes deep down...  She doesn't deserve anything, she doesn't deserve happiness.  This woman sees herself as nothing, not good enough.  She retreats into her shell and hides from the world.    

Last year I had a pivotal moment that forced me to really look at the trajectory of my life and decide whether I really wanted to continue to the destination I was heading.  I had to take a good hard look at myself and say, "is this the person you want to be?" and the answer is no.  However, I find the process to be the woman I want to be has been a series of setbacks and start-overs.  After a lot of self-reflection I realize that my greatest flaws stem from my Identity, who I believe myself to be.  I've read a couple of really great books this last year that all have one theme in common...  the most important thing about me, is what I believe about me.   What I have discovered about myself is my "identity" sucks.  

Honestly, I hate myself.  That's what I discovered.  I truly believe that I am less than.  I don't like me and then I do things that reinforce the worst of me and then I like me even less.  

What is truly shocking is that I do like me.  When I stop and think about the things that make me, me...  I think they are pretty cool.  That's why identity is sooooooooo important.  We will act on who we believe ourselves to be.  

For example, I LOVE this blog.  I love to type my thoughts out and I like to send them out into the world and hope just maybe someone out there will relate.  I LOVE this blog, but I always quit writing.  I quit doing the thing I love, because I start to think...  I'm not a writer.  My grammar is not perfect and my commas are not in the right place or the wrong places.   Maybe people are judging what I did or said wrong instead of just getting the point of the message.   And sometimes I quit because I didn't get the feedback I wanted.  Something I love then turns to a curse for me because I have attached on to this identity that I am NOT a writer, therefore I have no business writing. 

In the book I'm reading right now, "The Magic of Thinking Big" the author speaks on this idea of Identity.  He talks about talking yourself into being the person you want to be.  He gives an example of a young man giving himself a daily pep-talk reinforcing only the things that are positive.  He says, "Upgrading your thinking upgrades your actions, and this produces success."   

Managed thinking brings results....  Identity creates habits that reinforce the person you want to be.  It all starts with your thinking.  In his book, "Atomic Habits", James Clear says when we focus on WHO we wish to become we will truly begin to see results on the outside.

This all brings me the epiphany I had a few days ago...  Jesus said, "Love others AS you love yourself."  Now we know that to have the mind of Christ we need to humble ourselves and put others first.  We know that Christianity is based on the sacrifice of Jesus "laying his life down for his friends" and we know "there is no greater love than this" so to love others AS you love yourself seems to be a contradiction.  

I know that Jesus said this because it is human nature to think of yourself first.  It is also human nature to take care of self first.  It's the worst of human nature to think only of self and we see the evidence of this in the broken world.  BUT, WHAT IF all the brokenness in the world is because people DON'T love themselves and therefore are not capable of loving others.

What if the very basis of loving others rests in our ability to love OURSELVES.  What if we are jealous, envious, cruel, judge-mental and unkind to others, because deep down we hate ourselves.  

A few months ago sitting in church this idea hit me like a sledge-hammer.  We were studying Proverbs, the book of wisdom, and the topic was on envy.  

This is the horrible definition of envy...  a feeling of discontent or covetousness with regard to another's advantages, success, possessions, etc.  

Our Pastor was talking about how when we are envious or jealous of others, we tend to become very critical of the other person, pointing out their faults, flaws and failures.  We do this because we have set our sights on something they possess that we want.  DISGUSTING.  In the instant he said that the Holy Spirit brought all the people to my mind that I had experienced this very thing.  I was shocked and ashamed of myself. I was even more so when he explained that coveting others is telling God that He is not enough and what He has done for me is not enough.  I was so convicted about this.  I didn't want this to be true,  but how could I change it?

Well, the answer is to love God and to love myself.  I CAN NOT truly love others when I am starting from a place of lack.  I have no love to give when I have no love.  Love begins with God.  Love begins with receiving my identity from Christ, believing that I am loved, chosen, accepted and adopted (Eph 1).  I also have to truly believe and "identify" that God has a specific plan for my life and that I have been given specific gifts and talents to bring glory to God.  The life that I have been gifted is the perfect life for me and the "lane" that I am in is right where I need to be.  When I believe good things about myself and act on them, then I can be content and grateful.  It is only in that state that I can truly love others.  

I have so many more thoughts that I would love to share, but this is getting lengthy...  So, for today, loving others begins with TRULY loving myself.  Success (whatever that may be) is ONLY possible when we love ourselves.  

If you find yourself sabotaging all the good things that make your happy...  ask yourself if it's possible that you just might not love you like you should.  Take a good hard look at you.  Write down the things that make you uniquely YOU.  Speak life to yourself.  Encourage yourself.  You were put on this planet for a reason and God adores you, so who are you to say any thing different!!!