Identifying Writing Opportunities in Self-Love and Self-Care
Day 12/31: Blog Your Own Book Challenge
This is my twelfth post for the Blog Your Own Book Challenge. In the previous post, I identified opportunities in writing about Journaling and Therapeutic Writing.
In this article, I talk about the importance of Self-Love and writing about it, to balance the scales of a deceitful and harmful belief that encourages “Self-Neglect”.
I also identified three types of articles that I’d like to write on this topic.
There was a famous Buddhist teacher called Ajahn Chah from the Thai Forest Tradition. I recently read an article where a student pointed out that his advice often contradicted something he had said earlier.
Ajahn Chah replied:
At times it may seem to some of you that I contradict myself when I teach, but the way I teach is very simple. It is as if I see someone coming down a road he isn’t familiar with but which I have traveled on many times before. I look up and see him about to fall into a hole on the right-hand side of the road, so I call out to him to go left. Likewise, if I see someone else about to fall into a hole on the left, I call out to him to go right. The instructions are different, but I teach them to travel in the same direction on the same road. I teach them to let go of both extremes and come back to the center where they will arrive at the true Dhamma.
Let’s keep Ajahn Chah’s words in mind to examine advise that’s commonly given by parents and society to a young child.
“Put others before you.”
“Don’t think so much of your small self.”
“You are too small and insignificant compared to this large universe.”
This may be good advice for someone who is driven by greed or narcissism but it’s not universally good advice. Especially not for empaths and sensitive people who give of themselves excessively without receiving and literally run themselves dry and empty of all personal resources.
Empaths Are Falling Into The Ditch From The Other Side.
Empaths are falling into the ditch from the other side. Empaths need to learn to love themselves more. To not give to people who only wish to take from them. To care for themselves and focus on their own well-being. To fill their own tank before giving to others.
I first learned about the concept of self-love in a book by Kamal Ravikant called Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It. For well over four decades of my life, this concept was completely alien to me. I did not realize that I needed to care for myself despite running on empty for much of my life and dealing with Crohns Disease for close to two decades.
If that was bad enough what was worse is the resistance I felt towards loving myself even after seeing the benefits of this practice. I was plagued by thoughts like:
Will I become too selfish if I love myself?
What if I become conceited and narcissistic?
What if I gather bad karma?
These thoughts seem ridiculous now but I dealt with them for years before realizing that loving myself is the one thing I need the most to heal.
Such is the power of subconscious programming that we’ve all gone through in the formative years of our life.
There is a huge population that’s suffering from the burden of such misplaced guidance. They are running themselves sick without even knowing what’s harming them. That’s why this topic is so dear to me.
I want to share my own experiences as well as bring forth the experiences of how self-care is helping people. We need more authentic voices to balance the scales.
Purely from what I have personally experienced, I want to write about this topic from three perspectives (these are also the opportunities I see, for myself, to write about this topic):
- Share my own experiences.
- Share other people’s experiences through interviews.
- Share books and movies that show this simple and beautiful concept of self-love in an effective way.
Shakespeare said it perfectly in one of his books:
“Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin, As self-neglecting.” ~ Henry V by William Shakespeare
I hope you enjoyed reading this article. If this topic resonates with you then try writing about it. It will help you in healing yourself and others as well.
