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FOUR

Learning to Love Yourself

The art of love… is largely the art of persistence.

—Albert Ellis

Loving yourself is the greatest work you will do in this life. In a sense it is your only work. But as we have already seen, the roots of your incapacity to love yourself are deep. Indeed, you wouldn't have picked up this book unless you felt you needed some help in learning to love yourself. Scientists tell us that habits make deep inroads in the circuitry of our brains, that it takes twenty-one days to start changing a habit and ninety days to engrain that change. It's difficult to reverse these complex brain patterns, and when it comes to redefining how we feel about ourselves, it can be especially difficult because many of these patterns have been encoded since infancy.

Because of the many ways we have learned how not to love ourselves, we have a good bit of work to do. We must learn to love ourselves in many places and many ways—in our relationships, in choosing our life's work, in doing our work, with our parents and children, among our friends and strangers, inside our own hearts, in the midst of all our see-sawy emotions, with respect to our bodies, and in how we choose to think about ourselves.

What It Means to Love Yourself

Imagine that everyone in the world is a hungry soul whose life has been imperfect. Like you, they had imperfect parents. Like you, tragedies and difficulties befell them. If you could hear each person's story, you would probably be moved to tears and want to reach out and embrace that person. You would want to tell them that in spite of everything they've gone through, they have great value.

You might also want to thank them for having the courage to move from where they came from to where they are now, expressing your admiration of their goodness and beauty and uniqueness. You would want to tell them that, indeed, certainly, in the eyes of God and also in your eyes, there's no question—they deserve to be loved.

Imagine that all these beautiful souls are standing before you, waiting for your blessing. When you look in your heart and ask yourself whether or not you can unabashedly give it, your heart spills over with generosity and laughter and love. You can't imagine anything easier or more natural than loving each person for exactly who he or she is.

Loving yourself means simply that you can imagine yourself at the head of the line of all these souls who are asking for your blessing, waiting for your approval. It means embracing yourself with the quiet heartfelt conviction of knowing that you're all right—that you're perfect—just as you are. Loving yourself is feeling, deeply, in your own heart, the quiet, steadying gift of your own intelligent love. Loving yourself means that, just as you're willing to rush to the aid of anyone else, you will rush to your own aid; you will come to your own rescue.

What to Expect at the End of the Journey

If loving yourself is the simple wholehearted acceptance of yourself, how will you know when you've arrived? Will you never again doubt yourself? Will everything be suddenly clear? Will you be a fat-headed egotist able to brag about yourself on a minute's notice and get whatever you want? Or is loving yourself something different? Day by day, week by week, year by year, what does it look like and feel like and act like?

Loving yourself is a quiet thing. You don't need blaring trumpets or a billboard to announce it to the world. Instead, when you've learned how to love yourself, you will feel the quiet inward turning of your consciousness toward you, to your value, to the unrepeatable beauty that you are. When you've learned to love yourself you will just quietly honor your body and mind, your heart, your emotions, and your precious eternal spirit. You will know that everything you are and all the steps on your journey have been purposeful, delivering you to the place where you can receive yourself with kindness and respect, forgiving all the missteps, honoring the lessons, growing in love for yourself and others. When you come to this peace you will have moved from the place of being a desperate, needy bag of tricks whose depression and self-loathing are like a black vortex that soaks up the energy from everyone around you, to being a person of wholeness, a person of joy and light who has something to contribute.

When you love yourself, you will also become more generous. You'll notice that it's not only you who gets loved, who receives the benefit. The whole world does. That's because each time you take a stand for your own value, the vessel of yourself becomes more filled with an abundance to share. Each time you move with grace another step down the path toward self-compassion, and arrive at a greater peace with yourself, you also hold the door open for others.

Through your uncompromised willingness to hold yourself in high regard, you will inspire others to do the same. Each time you affirm your own possibilities, you affirm the possibility that another human being will discover his or hers. Each time you decide not to beat yourself up, you create room for another person to celebrate herself. Each time you value—and then deliver—the gifts that are yours alone to share, you inspire others to give their gifts.

At its furthest reaches, your self-love becomes a gift of enlivening humanity, of creating the space where every person can finally come to the realization of his or her own divine being. In some profound sense, your love of yourself is a lifting up of the spirits of the downtrodden, a claiming of the high essence that resides in each of us whether or not we claim it. Each time you shine your light you become a reminder of the light that resides in each of us, each time you conquer your self-hate and self-doubt you radiate the spiritual essence that is the birthright of us all.

Just as negative attitudes have the power to circulate like a black cloud, so also will your sense of your own goodness be contagious. The more you can carefully and consciously honor who you are, the more others, basking in your example, will be able to honor who they are. Each person who claims his or her own value is holding the banner for all the rest of us. If you're not afraid to acknowledge your own value, then I won't have to be afraid to either. If you can strongly speak up for yourself, then I, too, can risk speaking out clearly on my own behalf. If you take the actions that honor and protect your body, your spirit, and your emotions, then I can also dare to take such actions. If you have the courage to clear out negative people, influences, and attitudes in your life, to rid yourself of unnecessary possessions and inappropriate attachments, then I can too. You are my North Star, my companion on the path. I can be inspired, can set my course by you. So it is that your own self-love generates to others. If you take the step; the world will follow you.