“Love, It Starts with You…”

 All successful relationships begin with a love affair with yourself.  

If you don't love yourself, honey, ain't nobody else gonna love you!   

 Naysayers would argue that it's selfish to love yourself first.  I disagree.  

The truth is nothing will stop a woman who loves herself well!  She is a force of love and light to be reckoned with.

I'm curious how my readers feel about the idea that loving yourself is a prerequisite to successful relationships.  It took me years to embrace this because of my own limited beliefs.  I really had to see the principle play  out in my relationships to believe it.  I discovered a direct correlation between how well I love myself and the health of my relationships with others.  

I've coached women who believed loving themselves first would make them a selfish mother.   In reality, I rarely see evidence of a selfish mother but I do see women who don't love themselves well and grow bitter over the sacrifices demanded by motherhood.  

I worked at a camp during college whose motto was "God first, others second, yourself third."  

I'm officially going online to say, "honey, that just doesn't work" and I don't even think it's a correct interpretation of ancient scripture.    Christians are commanded to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.  It's impossible to love others if you don't love yourself.  

I also see  women seeking relationships from a spirit of wanting love in place of exuding a spirit of love. The two are very different.   A spirit of love communicates present confidence, abundance and I am a whole person.   This kind of love draws others like a magnet.  

Wanting love communicates "I need something I don't have within me and I need to find it from someone else and maybe you're the one."   That kind of love repels.  

Embracing a full scale love relationship with yourself, will automatically produce the aroma of a spirit of love.  

How do you know if you are in a love relationship with yourself?   I have a few ideas. 

You are not loving yourself if you:

• Apologize for yourself often in your relationship with others.
• Criticize yourself regularly.  
• Are unable to smile at yourself in the mirror and speak words of encouragement and love.
• Feel guilty regularly and castigate yourself for the smallest of errors.  
• Are unable to break free from unhealthy habits or relationships. 

You love yourself well if these attitudes prevail:

• I accept myself just as I am at any given moment.  
• I accept my shadow.  Your shadow is where the darkness is allowed to enter and bring discouragement and possibly judgement and condemnation because of behavior, beliefs or stories you tell yourself about life.   
• If I make a mistake, I pick myself up with patience and understanding. 
• I am content regardless of the status of my relationships with others.   
• I am generous in meeting my personal needs.
• I am able to speak my truth in a loving manner.  
• My relationship with myself is characterized by patience, kindness, gentleness and forgiveness.

If you're not feeling loved, you may be wondering, "where pre tell do I get this love?"  

My experience is that love is a seed that is planted and grows.  I believe each one of us has a seed of love already implanted in our hearts.  Sometimes, harsh conditions prohibit the seed's growth and it remains buried.  The seed will begin growing with tender care, warm sunshine and water.  

I also discovered the deep well of God's love which sparked a genuine love for myself that grew over a long period of time. When I  felt self judgement or lack of love I would compare that with the love I felt from the spirit and I slowly began loving myself in a way that mirrored how I felt in my relationship with the spirit.  

It's never too late to have a passionate love affair with yourself.

It starts with action.  Make a list of five ways you can love yourself well and just do it.