Recently, a friend of mine told me that she is trying to be gentle with herself; not to be as overly critical of herself as she tends to be. When it comes to love, our focus usually falls on others. There is nothing wrong with that, the world needs all the love that it can get and if you have love to give, give it. However, we can also give love and care to ourselves in a healthy way.

We know that as humans we are imperfect and prone to make mistakes. When we do make mistakes, we need to give ourselves the same grace and love that we give to others. In fact, giving grace to ourselves may make it easier to give it to others. If we are not compassionate to ourselves, it may be difficult to be kind to others. On the other hand, if we can be loving and kind to others when they fall short but full of criticism of ourselves, it means we need a different approach.

Self love is not narcissistic. It makes for a healthy way of being. We practice giving love and care to ourselves so that we can be resilient; we can rise and move on from our failures and not be paralysed by extreme self criticism. It means that we can set boundaries that are not easily and constantly breached so that our peace is protected. We can set goals and intentions and pursue our dreams to become our most actualized selves when we practice self love. We are prepared to meet life’s challenges because we are rejuvenated and restored by the daily practice of nurturing ourselves.

The love we want to give to others will come easily because our own practice with ourselves teaches us how to give it to someone else.

Everything takes time and practice if we are not used to doing it. Let’s be patient with ourselves in the pursuit of this state of being.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for my next post.

Sheryl