Loving Myself Unconditionally

Paraphrased from a passage from "The Language of Letting Go", written by Melody Beattie.

   Love myself into health and a good life of my own.
   Love myself into relationships that work for me and the other person. Love myself into peace, happiness, joy, success, and contentment.
   Love myself into all that I always wanted.  I can stop treating myself the way others treated me, if they behaved in a less than healthy, desirable way. If I have learned to see myself critically, conditionally, and in a diminishing and punishing way, it's time to stop. Other people may have treated me that way, but it's even worse to treat myself that way now.
   Loving myself may seem foreign, even foolish at times. People may accuse me of being selfish. I don't have to believe them.
   I am able to love myself and am  truly able love others and let others love me.  I am able to love myself and hold myself in high esteem, and am able to give the most, contribute the most, love the most.
   How do I love myself?  By forcing it at first. By faking it if necessary.  By "acting as if." By working as hard at loving and liking myself as I had at not liking myself.
   Explore what it means to love myself.
   Do things for myself that reflect compassionate, nurturing, self love.
   Embrace and love all of myself - past, present, and future. Forgive myself quickly and as often necessary. Encourage myself. Tell myself good things about myself.
   If I think and believe negative ideas, I get them out in the open quickly and honestly, so I can replace those beliefs with better ones.
   Patting myself on the back when necessary. Discipline myself when necessary. Ask for help, for time; ask for what I need.
   Sometimes, give myself treats. Do not treat myself like a pack mule, always pushing and driving harder. Learn to be good to myself. Choose behaviors with preferable consequences - treating myself well is one.
   Learn to stop my pain, even when that means making difficult decisions. Do not unnecessarily deprive myself. Sometimes, give myself what I want, just because I want it.
   Stop explaining and justifying myself. When I make mistakes, let them go. I learn, I grow, and I learn some more. And through it all I love myself.
   I work at it, then work at it some more. One day I'll wake up, look in the mirror, find that loving myself has become habitual. I'm now living with a person who gives and receives love, because I love myself. Self-love will take hold and become a guiding force in my life.
  

Letting the Cycles Flow

Paraphrased from a passage from "The Language of Letting Go", written by Melody Beattie.

   Life is cyclical, not static. My relationships benefit when I allow them to follow their own natural cycles.
   Like the tide ebbs and flows, so do the cycles in relationships. I have periods of closeness and periods of distance. I have times of coming together and times of separating to work on individual issues.
   I have times of love and joy,and times of anger.
   Sometimes the dimensions of relationships change  as I go through changes. Sometimes, life brings me new friends or a new loved one to teach me the next lesson.
   I do not have to control the course of my relationships,whether these be friendships or love relationships. I do not have to satisfy my need to control by imposing a static form on relationships.
   Let it flow. Be open to the cycles. Love will not disappear. The bond between friends will not sever. Things do not remain the same forever,especially when I am growing and changing at such a rapid pace.
   Trust the flow. Take care of myself,but be willing to let people go. Hanging on to them too tightly will make them disappear.
   The old adage about love still holds true:"If it's meant to be,it will be. And if I love someone, let them go. If they come back to me, the love is mine."

I accept the cyclical nature of life and relationships. I will strive to go with the flow. I will strive for harmony with my own needs and the needs of the other person.

Times of Reprogramming

Paraphrased from a passage from "The Language of Letting Go", written by Melody Beattie.

   Do not ask for love unless I'm ready to be healed enough to give and receive love.
   Do not ask for joy unless I'm ready to feel and release my pain, so I  can feel joy.
   Do not ask for success unless I'm ready to conquer the behaviors that would sabotage success.
   Wouldn't it be nice if I could imagine myself having or becoming_and then immediately receiving_what I wanted? I can have and be the good things I want. All good things are mine for the asking. But first, groundwork_preparation work_must be done.
   A gardener would not plant seeds unless the ground was adequately prepared to nurture and nourish those seeds. The planting would be wasted effort. It would be wasted effort for me to get what I wanted before I was ready.
   First, I need become aware of my need or desire. This may not be easy! I have become accustomed to shutting off the inner voice of my wants,needs and desires. Sometimes,life has to work hard to get my attention.
   Next I let go of old "programming"_the behaviors and beliefs that interfere with nurturing and nourishing the good. I have strong sabotage programs,learned from childhood, that need to be released. I may need to "act as if" for a while until the belief, that I deserve the good becomes real.
   I combine this process with much letting go,while I am being changed at the core.
   There is a naturalness to this process, but it can be intense. Things take time.
   Good things are mine for the asking, if I am willing to participate in the work of groundbreaking. Work and wait.

   I have the courage to identify the good I want in my life and to ask for it.  I have the faith and the stamina I need to go through the work that must be accomplished first.

Sadness

Paraphrased from a passage from "The Language of Letting Go", written by Melody Beattie.

   Ultimately,to grieve my losses means to surrender to my feelings.
   I have lost so much, have said so many goodbyes,have been through so many changes. I want to hold back the tides of change,not because the change isn't good,but because I have had so much change,so much loss.
   Sometimes,when I am in the midst of pain and grief,I become shortsighted, like the members of a tribe described in a story.
   "If you put them in prison," one person said, describing this tribe, "they die."
   "Why?"asked another.
   "Because they can't grasp the idea that they'll be let out one day. They think it's permanent, so they die."
   I have had so much grief to go through. Sometimes I thought that I believed that grief or pain was a permanent condition.
   The pain will and is stopping. Once felt and released,my feelings bring me to a better place than where I started. Feeling my feelings,instead of denying or minimizing them,is how I heal from my past and move forward into a better future.
   Feeling my feelings is how I let go.
   It may hurt for a moment,but peace and acceptance are on the other side. So is a new beginning.

Self Love

Paraphrased from a passage from the book "The Language of Letting Go" by Melody Beattie.

There are times when I wake up in the morning and have a hard time getting the day started. Then I realize that it's because I wasn't liking myself very much. There have been many times I've said "I just don't like myself. When will I start liking myself?"
   The answer is: starting now, I can learn to be gentle, loving, and nurturing with myself. Of all of life's behaviors I'm striving to attain, loving myself may be the most difficult, and the most important. If I am habitually harsh and critical toward myself, learning to be gentle with myself may require dedicated effort.
   But what a valuable venture.
   By not liking myself, I may be perpetuating the discounting, neglect, or abuse I received in life from some of the important people in my life. I didn't like what happened then, but find myself copying those who mistreated me by treating myself poorly.
   I can stop the pattern. I can begin giving myself the loving, respectful treatment I deserve.
   Instead of criticizing myself, I can tell myself I performed well enough.
   I can wake up in the morning and tell myself, "I deserve a good day."
   I can make a commitment to take good care of myself throughout the day.
   I can recognize that I'm deserving of love.
   I can do loving things for myself.
   I can love other people and let them love me.
  When I truly love myself, I do not become destructively self centered. I do not abuse others. I do not stop growing and changing. When I learn to love myself well, I learn to love others well to. I continually grow into a healthier person, learning that my love is appropriately placed.

Today, I will love myself. If I get caught in old patterns of not liking myself, I will find a way to get out.

Search for Life

Thought i'd share a section of an old personal favorite of mine...Lily Tomlin's "Search for Intelligent Life in the Universe"
The scene is Trudy the bag lady talking about her alien friends.
 
""We think so different. They find it hard to grasp some things that come easy to us, because they simply don't have our frame of reference. I show 'em this can of Campbell's tomato soup. I say, "This is soup." Then I show 'em a picture of Andy Warhol's painting of a can of Campbell's tomato soup. I say, "This is art." "This is soup." "And this is art." Then I shuffle the two behind my back. Now what is this?
No, this is soup and this is art!
(near the play's ending)
Hey, what's this? "Dear Trudy, thanks for making our stay here so jam-packed and fun-filled. Sorry to abort our mission -- it is not over, just temporarily scrapped. We have ordered to go to a higher bio-vibrational plane. Just wanted you to know, the neurochemical imprints of our cardiocortical experiences here on earth will remain with us always, but what we take with us into space that we cherish the most is 'goose bump' experience."
Did I tell you what happened at the play? We were at the back of the theater, standing there in the dark, all of a sudden I feel one of 'em tug my sleeve, whispers, "Trudy, look." I said, "Yeah, goose bumps. You definitely got goose bumps. You really like the play that much?" They said it wasn't gave 'em goose bumps, it was the audience.
I forgot to tell 'em to watch the play; they'd been watching the audience! Yeah, to see a group of strangers sitting together in the dark, laughing and crying about the same things...that just knocked 'em out. They said, "Trudy, the play was soup...the audience...art."
So they're taking goose bumps home with 'em. Goose bumps! Quite a souvenir. I like to think of them out there in the dark, watching us. Sometimes we'll do something and they'll laugh. Sometimes we'll do something and they'll cry. And maybe one day we'll do something so magnifcent, everyone in the universe will get goose bumps.""