The ONE Lesson I Wish I had Learned Sooner in Life

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Would you have a close, life long relationship with someone who constantly wants to change you, who does not respect, love or truly care about you?

How would you feel about  spending your life with with someone who didn’t trust in your abilities and was always there to criticise you?

If you were in a relationship like that it would really bring you down. It would affect the quality of your life, your confidence and your emotional health. You would be pretty miserable. Most of us would run from a relationship like that.

Yet one of the closest relationship you will ever have with anyone is the relationship you have with yourself and there is no running and hiding from that relationship. If you don’t love and care about yourself you don’t truly feel comfortable in your own skin.

We all need to be loved, valued and accepted. If we don’t have that we can go to some extreme lengths to try to achieve it. Sometimes we behave in ways we are really ashamed of and sometimes we are extremely hard on ourselves.

The one lesson I wish I had learned sooner in life was to love myself and then I could have discovered the huge benefits that come from it.

When you love yourself:-

You are more forgiving of yourself and of others. I don’t carry around grudges, anger and bitterness that eat away at me. I don’t have regrets about the past. I don’t beat myself up with the hindsight stick. In fact I can look back and although I would not repeat some of my behaviour from the past I see that I did the best in the circumstances with the limited life skills I had.

You become less critical of yourself and more understanding of others. My inner critic has calmed down and I laugh more. I often laugh at myself or perhaps with myself. When something does not work I am more likely to say – what else can I try rather than how stupid I have been.

You stop looking for love and approval – you attract love. I don’t need to do things to gain approval, now I do them because I want to. I say no to the things that I really don’t want to do or feel I should do. I ask myself “why should I” and unless there is a good enough reason I don’t do it.

You value yourself more and discover better relationships with others. I accept others more and can have open and truthful conversations. I realise that we all have something in common. We all share the same concerns and worries – it’s called being human. As soon as you see you have something in common with others relationships just flow.

You struggle less and achieve more. I have found that I procrastinate less and can make decisions more easily and effectively. Instead of fighting with myself and having “second thoughts” I know what I want and more importantly I believe I deserve to have it.

You stop mind reading and looking for clues in the behaviour of others. I have stopped worrying what other people think of me. I have to live with myself and so my own integrity comes first. I also realise that other people are too busy thinking about themselves and their own lives to think about me – unless they are gossips and I have little time for them.

You become less manipulative in an attempt to get things. – You ask. I was frightened to ask because I was frightened of being rejected. Now I ask and even if the person says “no”, it does not feel like a hurtful rejection. I am more able to negotiate and find some common ground.

You tolerate and put up with less – you have boundaries in place and tell people if they over step them. The people around me are aware of what my boundaries are. I even have an absolute no list of things that I just don’t do. If a situation arises I am comfortable about explaining to a person that I am not happy with a situation instead of moaning behind someone’s back like a victim.

You fear and worry less because when you have love in your heart fear does not exist. I learned this from a very wise coach called Elisabeth Gortschacher. She asked me why I was not building and developing my business as quickly as I said  I wanted. I told her  I was going into unknown territory and that I was afraid. As soon as I truly began to love myself the things I chose to do were no longer as frightening.

Your confidence grows. When I learned to love and accept myself I was much more confident about all aspects in my life. If you have ever taken a naughty child shopping you are always alert for the first sign that the child is going to misbehave. It is not the most relaxing experience so often you avoid shopping with the child unless you really need to. I realised that I could handle situations with ease because I, Marion am ok and I can handle myself in any situation.

This post was inspired by Abubakar Jamil and and is part of his life lessons series. Many bloggers all over the internet are taking part. You are welcome to join in or just enjoy the various posts.

Tagged as: attract love, elisabeth gortschacher, human interest, lesson, lessons, life, life lessons, love, relationship