Believe you are worthy of love
a step forward in loving who you are
How quick are you to love others?
How slow are you in loving yourself?
It seems so illogical but it is so true. We can easily love others, show them expressions of love, care for them, make them feel needed and wanted in some way. Yet, we so often struggle to allow ourselves the space to love ourselves, as though we were not worthy of love. Do you do this? Don’t worry if you do as you are not alone and you have at least one fellow struggler in me.
To love yourself can be so hard at times. We see in ourselves the smallest of flaws as such massive things. We notice things about ourselves that others don’t even see, or if they do they don’t see them as the issue we see them to be. Many traditions, many faiths hold that we were created in the image of the Creator. We were formed in and through love. We were not created for nothing, but for some definite service (as St. John Henry Newman said), and the bases of that service is to love.
I have often pondered on the flawed nature of loving others, without being prepared to love yourself or feeling worthy of the ability to love yourself. It may stem from a generation where it was frowned upon to love yourself. You may have heard the expression, “so and so is in love with themselves”. As with all things, loving yourself too much at the detriment of being able to love others can’t be good. But, not loving yourself or seeing yourself worthy of love is equally as destructive.
So we need a balance and that is something we may all need to work on to achieve. Saying to yourself the following may be of use:
I am worthy of love, just as much as I express love to others.
There is no easy way to achieve this. Small steps though will help.