#238 Do you love yourself? or searching self-acceptance

Do you love yourself? or searching self-acceptance

Another strange Zen sentence. Don’t take it literally! It has nothing to do with narcissism or hedonistic behavior.

Zen is teaching that, in order to be nice, empathic, compassionate and generous with others, which is a mean goal, we have first, to do the same for ourselves self that is to think nicely and be tolerant about ourselves without, of course, loosing proper insight for improvement.  We call it self-acceptance.

It sounds counter intuitive but the ego, being self-centered, loves self-blame and its consequences such as guilt, resentment, anger, over judging and so one, all creating negative self image.

If you assess yourself too negatively, there is tendency to do the same with others or being, mad jealous, too judgmental and envious because being perceived to be better than yourself.. These 2 situations make life miserable and it will affect everyone.

How to be kind to yourself? 

We should no longer afford to think bad things about ourselves all the time.

Permanent self-criticism is detrimental on a long term and you will get the habit of believing all negative feelings that you have about yourself. We must balance the good and bad and accept self as we are. It does not mean to reject any sorts of improvements whatever physical, intellectual and emotional they are.

We strongly believe about what we think, especially about self because we generate such thoughts.

First, show tolerance and acceptance about yourself. If you learn to do so, communication with the external world will enhance for the benefit of everyone including yourself.

Then apply forgiveness to yourself. Give yourself a break for all the hard times you’ve given to yourself. Apologize and redeem yourself for what you did in the past (nothing you can do about ) and for

you perceive as current flaws and weakness.

Again, don’t misquote me: Having a positive feeling about self does not mean to ignore our flaws,

and become an egocentric narcissist. There is always room for improvement in each of us.

Unfortunately, since young age education and with continuous brainwashing commercials, we learn over and over that we are lacking this and that.

Carry on with forgiveness. Give yourself a break for all the hard times you’ve given to yourself. Apologize to yourself, then accept your apology and forgive yourself with compassion.

That gives you a fresh start.

It is really beautiful to see how kind you are with yourself and accept what you are before looking for improvements when needed.

It will boost inner serenity and the tool to do the same thing with others.

Self- tolerance and self-acceptance must come first since, without them, tolerance, acceptance, compassion, empathy and even love towards others is difficult, if not impossible.

There is no other way.

We are what we are like life is what it is.

Don’t feel bad and impatient if it takes you time to achieve this self-healing process especially since we

have educated mostly on fixing our imperfections and always never to appreciate our good attributes.