Do You Love Yourself?
We don’t ask ourselves this question often enough, do we?
Do you love yourself? And if yes, why so? If not, why so?
I’ve worked in the retail environment for a very long time, and every day I would meet with a hundred different people from all walks of life. Although it might sound a bit strange, but I really loved to observe the way people behaved.
How they approach sales assistants, how they ask questions or how they talk to their friends or relatives as they shop around. If they seem happy, stressed and in a rush, sad, bored, excited.
Quite often, the question that ponders in my head, especially when I see all of these people is: “At what level are they truly loving who they are?”
Know thyself/Love thyself — The connecting question
I personally believe that loving and appreciating oneself is strictly related to how well we know ourselves.
Therefore I truly think that asking an introspective question such as “Am I loving myself, right now?” should be done from time to time, in relation to the choices we make, or the times of our lives we go through.
So many people just do things to then later realise that they don’t really enjoy doing what they chose to do or being in a situation that they chose to be in.
I’ve personally found that every time I had to make a huge shift in my life, I would always work around the reasons why that would make me happy, if I decided to proceed. And if all interlocked with my deep burning desire to feel happy, then I would go ahead do it.
It was more of a subconscious instinct now that I look back, which it has now become a pillar and the driving methodology of the way I ponder choices or changes in my life.
“Would I love myself better, if I chose to change job?”
“Would I love myself better, if I got out of this relationship?”
“Would I love myself better, if I stopped eating junk food?”
“Would I love myself better, if I managed to quit smoking?”
The science behind a simple question
Questions have the power to trigger a dormant part of our awareness. It’s like lighting up a match in a room where there is no light switch. That’s how questions work.
In psychology they refer to the inability to perceive one’s personality traits or fault as scotoma.
Most times we don’t know what we don’t know, right? We can’t see our blind spots, and the only way we get to shed some light in those dark corners of our awareness is by asking different — and more attentive — questions.
This happens through something knowing as RAS — Reticular Activating System — which is basically a bunch of nerves located in the brainstem that filters out wanted versus unwanted information the reaches our brain. Much like a sieve.
As a consequence, when we ask a new or “provoking” question, the scotoma — which doesn’t allow us to see the new — gets shut down and the RAS is fired up, shifting the attention and focus in a different direction.
This is why, sometimes, a “yes” to a question we’ve never asked ourselves before can set in motion a lot of tiny changes that lead to important realisations.
Your best friend can activate your RAS
I personally recall being in a toxic relationship for over 2 years and despite I was totally aware of it, there was something within me that had gone dark (scotoma). Light went off because I was so used to that roller coaster of good and bad emotions that I didn’t pay attention to my that corner of my inner world anymore.
Until…
I was having a coffee with my best friend and she asked: “but are you… truly happy?”
She lit up a match in my dark room and I became aware of one thing: I was unhappy.
Awareness always precedes action, and the next thing I did was fixing things and put myself back on the path of true love for myself, a path were my choices of life were aligned to my intentions, even if that involved ending a relationship with someone I really cared about.
Because really and truly that’s what love for oneself is, when we’re able to align our intentions with our choices and craft a life we’re designing willingly.
That’s why next time you don’t know what’s going on in your life or you unsure about doing something, just light up a match and ask:
“Am I truly loving myself?”
