Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It: The positive self-help phenomenon

Think of yourself as a shoot that breaks through the earth and rises up, then plateaus. Then rises and eventually plateaus again. The pattern repeats. It’s through loving yourself that you rise. It’s through forgiving yourself that you overcome the plateaus. You grow and improve, inching closer to the light. To the greatest you.

“If you want to attract what’s good in your life, but you’re talking about what’s missing and you’re thinking about what’s missing, you will continue to expand what’s missing.”

Here we are, thinking that one needs to be in love with another to shine, to feel free and shout from the rooftops, but the most important person, the most important relationship we’ll ever have is waiting, is craving to be loved truly and deeply.

Whenever I notice fear in my mind, instead of pushing it aside or using it as fuel, I say to myself, It’s okay. A gentle yes to myself. To the moment, to what the mind is feeling. Often, that is enough to deflate the fear. From there, I shift to the truth of loving myself.

But if anything must shatter, it should be my ego. It keeps me from being real. It keeps me from accepting the help that life offers. I call and fill him in on it.

No matter where we are, no matter how good or bad things may seem, this moment is the perfect moment to take our stand. To say no more to what doesn’t serve us and an all-in yes to what does.

Things you once feared become attainable because you know that all it takes is a commitment to yourself, going all in, and through the process, you’ll figure out the path and go further than you thought possible. You naturally develop a healthy respect for the person you’ve become.

When you breathe in light and breathe out gratitude, it leaves no space for darkness. Do this enough and eventually, this loop starts to run on its own. That’s where you want to be: where love and gratitude are natural expressions of each breath. It’s beautiful to experience.

When I was at bottom, I didn’t care why my mind favored fear-based thoughts. If you’re on fire, you don’t want a lecture on the nature of combustion. You want water. So, rather than fighting the thoughts in my head, I focused on the only one that mattered. The one that saved me. I was, as a wise friend said, living life from the inside out.

If you’re ever having a hard moment or feel stressed, pausing to do this really helps. It will also show you that ultimately, we’re responsible for our misery as well as our healing. And healing is available to us in each and every moment.