I often hear the question, “How does a person love him/herself”?

We are not really taught how to do this. (I don’t recall anyone explaining to me how to love myself.  I had to learn at a most difficult time in my life— divorce.)

We cannot just sit down and say the words, “I love myself. I love me. I love myself.”  No.  It is much harder when it comes to self, because our soul will not allow us to lie to ourselves.  So we must put work in to it.  This is fine, because in building self love, it takes a variety of self building blocks to come to the place of loving one self.  There is a chain of work to develop this.

Loving begins by knowing about self and taking on the journey of self work (our strengths, what we are good at, our values, likes, dislikes, and the good in us, our habits and areas of weaknesses)

Knowing develops understanding of self (why we are, what made us this way, reasons for our responses, behaviors, and belief systems, why we think the way we do and where it all got started)

Understanding builds appreciation (thankful for living, how we have arrived to where we are, grateful for our victories, achievements and accomplishments, this is organically coupled with self satisfaction)

Appreciation builds like (we like the process we have undertaken, we are working on self, feeling good about what we are doing, we like where we are emotionally, mentally, like our positive results, because of what we are doing, where we are going, we are really starting to like ourselves)

Like builds love (the relationship of “self like” morphs into self affection, we love how we are growing, the more we explore ourselves the more good we uncover, we love how we treat others, how we feel inside, how this process makes us feel, and we are loving where we are heading)

Love builds respect (we are proud of what we have done so far; we respect the self building process, and the new found self love relationship, we are self connecting, and more in touch with our feelings, self begins to intensify, causing us to become sensitized to anything that may disturb our self value system: we are respecting our feelings, forgiving of the mistakes we have made, while increasing our growing intuition— even our aura reflects these inner thoughts)

Respect builds fortitude (we are building mental and emotional resistance levels due to our self work: we are now able to resist old and weak behaviors and unproductive thoughts we were exposed to before, making necessary changes around us, and continually overcoming those weaknesses)

Fortitude builds strength (the more we resist the old ways of thought and remain on course to self building, our resistance of not being swayed builds strength, and it takes strength to do critical self work)

Strength builds courage (this comes by insistence of taking a stand for self, and strength to incorporate and uphold the self beliefs we have incorporated: we know we are right because of our results, and we are not afraid to take ownership for our actions).

Courage builds persistence (we are moving forward on the right path, because each step of accomplishment builds stamina for more: it feels great and self is moving along with momentum).

Persistence builds determination (with strength, resistance and courage backing us there is nothing we can’t do: nothing can stop us now and we do not want to stop the growing relationship with self, and we want this to last— so we press forward)

Determination keeps us determined with purpose to reach each objective, one goal at a time. You are building character, you are “inner-self” accomplished. You are self accredited.

At the core of all of this is character.  Character becomes stronger, and when we incorporate new information, we will continually build our value system.  Other inner traits like self confidence and self esteem becomes stronger with the package of self work.  Character continually fine tunes itself by the analytic self study of our morals, ethics and belief systems.

The study of one’s behavior through every experience builds wisdom. Wisdom takes time for critical observation and deeper levels of understanding. Not only of oneself, but of others.  Wisdom multiplies through knowledge, and knowledge builds intelligence. Intelligence is a wholistic development of a person.  We will find the more we know, the more we will discover there is so much more to learn.

We will encounter many challenging situations, but in loving oneself, we will navigate successfully, regardless, because the inner confidence and strength we have worked so hard for will keep bringing us the best of what we deem life to bring to us.

There is a saying “To know the universe is to know thyself”.