Friday, May 31, 2013

More on Self-Love

By The Happy Chance

 
 
Last month, after writing my posting on self-love, I decided to embark on my own 30 days of self-love.  During these 30 days (and a bit more), I used my morning meditation/Gratitude routine to embed this sense of self-love into my life.  I would meditate on self-love and also listen to affirmation CDs. 

For most of my mediations, I listened to The Chopra Center 21-Day Meditation Challenge™ - Life Wisdom Trilogy, the Love CD.  This was a meditation program that I learned about after taking the Oprah and Deepak 21 Day Meditation Challenge-Perfect Health.  That was an amazing program, that I’m so grateful that I learned about.  For my affirmations, I used Louise Hay’s work.  If you haven’t been introduced to Louise Hay and her wonderful affirmation CDs, I highly encourage her CDs such as, “Self Esteem Affirmations” which has a lovely array of affirmations set to music that fills you with love and peace about yourself.  I used Louise Hay’s affirmations on a daily basis, usually in the mornings but sometimes during the day.   
 
Throughout the day I used affirmations such as, “I love myself,” “I am worthy,” “I am so grateful to be me,” or a simple “I love you,” and filled myself with as much Gratitude as I could while saying this.  When self-critical thoughts come up, I would say one of the affirmations and fill myself with Gratitude.  When undesirable situations came up, I would tell myself, “I love you,” and feel grateful for being me.  One of exercises from The Magic by Rhonda Byrne, Day 27, The Magic Mirror, requires you to say “thank you” whenever you get in front of a mirror.  I did this as well.  Instead of focusing in on some of my undesirable physical qualities, I took the time to say thank you for being me.  I loved it.

Other things that I did was treated myself to some of my simple pleasures.  It had been a couple of years since I last did this, but I made a homemade lavender-peppermint sugar scrub.  I love the scent of lavender, which as an essential oil, has a calming and relaxing effect.  I soaked myself in a warm bath (and I’m normally a shower type of girl) and used the body scrub.  I also had a professional massage, something that again, I hadn’t done in years.       

The self-love I practiced felt really good.  And I noticed over time that people started to respond to the self-love that I was giving.  People were smiling at me and giving me compliments.  Normally, I get nice compliments, in particular since I’ve integrated Gratitude into my life, but now that I was targeting Gratitude into love for myself, the love that I was seeing in my outside world seemed at a higher level.  A couple of people asked me why am I always so happy.  When you’re emitting love of self, others can feel that love and they respond.  And as you’re showing love for yourself, your point of attraction changes.  As a result you begin to attract people and circumstances that match this new love vibration.    
 
It is interesting that some of my most simple pleasures, I hadn’t done in years.  This 30-day self-love practice taught me that I should treat myself with loving kindness all the time.  It also taught me that my thoughts of Self need to reflect the same love and Gratitude that I show others.  I have ended my 30-day self-love practice, but I am so much more careful with my thoughts of self and learning to be more loving to myself.  I think in the near future, I may resume the practice and perhaps make it a 90 day or 120 day practice, just to really spearhead my results.  At the moment though, I’m thinking of a few other 30-day practices I may want to embark on next.  I got this idea for doing different 30 day practices from the article 30 Days to Success by Steve Pavlina.  If you haven’t visited StevePavlina.com, his site is a great resource for self-improvement articles. 

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