Day 8 - Appreciating, Acknowledging and Loving Yourself
by Les Price | The 21 Day Soul Cleanse http://www.lesprice.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Day-8-Appreciating-Acknowledging-and-Loving-Yourself.mp3
“To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.” Thich Naht Hanh
Of all the relationships in our lives, the most important is the connection, love and respect that we have for ourselves. Yet, very few people ever reach a place where they can look at themselves in the mirror and truly say ‘I love you’.
Self-worth and self-esteem are the foundations of creating a life that truly thrives.
Afterall, if we don’t see the love and value in ourselves, how can we really expect anyone else too?
I believe that one of the core reasons for this ‘self-loving deficit’ in society is due to many of us not having received the levels of love and acknowledgement that we really desired and needed as children. While our parents, teachers and loved ones may have tried their best to reinforce a positive self-image in us, sometimes ‘the way’ that they demonstrated or expressed that love was not always the way we would have liked.
Best-selling author of The Five Love Languages, Gary Chapman, identifies that we all have different needs and ways of feeling loved:
Quality Time: Some people feel loved when they spend quality time with another
Receiving Gifts: Some people feel loved when another gives them gifts
Acts of Service: Some people feel loved when someone does something special for them
Words of Affirmation: Some people feel loved when another expresses it in words
Physical Touch: Some people feel loved when held or touched by another person
The challenge however, is that we cannot always rely on others to demonstrate love to us in the way we desire. While we may communicate and express our desires and needs to them, at the end of the day we are the ones that are responsible for our own happiness. Therefore, we also need to know how to acknowledge, love and appreciate ourselves in our own way.
Remember, the greatest relationship you will ever have is the relationship you have with yourself.
And if you were in a relationship with yourself, would you want to spend time around someone who felt unloved, unworthy and who did not appreciate and love themselves?
The Practice
Our job today then is simple. It is to find the space to begin to nourish our own heart, mind and soul, by acknowledging our accomplishments, loving our strengths and weaknesses and appreciating ourselves for all that we already are – right now.
So today, our practice is to write a letter of appreciation and gratitude to yourself, for who you are, how far you have come, and what you really love and value about yourself.
You may even want to get a photo of a happy moment from your childhood and hold it in front of you as you write, sending those thoughts and affirmations to that younger child that was you.
Then simply ask that child within, which one of the Five Love Languages did it most want and desire as a child? Pick the one that you most wanted, but sometimes felt you did not receive. Then as the ‘adult you’ commit to doing something today that will reinforce that love for yourself. For example:
Quality Time: Take yourself out on a coffee date; Spend time at a local spa; Have a picnic with yourself in the park; Organise a play date with a close friend.
Physical Touch: Organise a massage; Receive a beauty treatment or facial; Get your nails done; Or sign-up for a dance class.
Words of Affirmation: Tell yourself how much you care about you; Write affirmation cards and place them in your bathroom; Record a loving message to yourself and play it regularly on your phone as an affirmation.
Acts of Service: Do something kind for another person; Wash or clean your car as s sign of respect to yourself. Clean your room and change your sheets to honour your sleeping space.
Receiving Gifts: Buy yourself something of value that you have putting off or not felt worthy of having; Give yourself the gift of a weekend away for you; Buy yourself a beautiful bunch of flowers.
The Affirmation
As I love, value and appreciate myself, the universe rewards me with unconditional grace, joy and abundance.
The Question
How can I love and honour myself even more today?
The Thought
The greatest relationship I will ever have is the relationship with myself. Therefore, I love myself unconditionally knowing that who I am is what I attract.
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