loving yourself Archives - I Take off the MASK!

SHOULD I FEEL GUILTY LOVING MYSELF?

It’s only the second day of my challenge to love myself more and I’m already feeling a bit guilty.

I’ve made quite a few purchases, expenses spent to pamper myself. In the evening, I’ve also continued applying a moisturizing lotion to my face. I wasn’t used to doing that before.

Now back to the “guilty” part. I wonder if we also feel guilty when we are being pampered or showered with gifts with our loved ones. Should we feel guilty?

How about if we are the ones giving gifts to our loved ones? Do we feel guilty spending and buying things for them?

For me, this feeling of guilt explains a lot. If we feel guilty being loved, then in a way, we’re saying its not right to be treated that way, to be special and to be showered with all the affection we seem to be craving for and yet guilty of giving the same to ourselves. In a way, we’re saying WE DON’T DESERVE IT.

As to loving other people, maybe we should check our reasons for all the favors we do them. Is it because we’re just happy doing so? Or is it because we feel its our obligation? A necessary sacrifice to be made?

Come to think of it however, don’t you feel guilty of making yourself suffer? You may not admit it, but it will slowly show one way or the other.

It will show in your frustrated expectations, when you don’t get back anything in return. It will show in your anger. It will show in you blaming other people for your own unhappiness and for your inability to love yourself.

Do you feel guilty loving yourself?

LOVING YOURSELF

I’ve noticed that the quality of my relationships improved in proportion to the improvement of my relationship to myself. Indeed, it has drastically increased throughout these years. Even the quality of my suitors improved! 🙂

I guess that’s one of our main problems, or should I say, the source of many of our problems and frustrations. The inability to love ourselves enough. And more often than not, whenever we fail to do so, we play the blame game with everyone. We blame our boyfriends, we blame our best friends, we blame our parents, we blame the country, we even blame our dog! And that blame game would certainly lead us nowhere. It certainly wouldn’t lead us to better relationships with other people.

I have just browsed over the book, “If Love is a Game, These Are the Rules.” It spoke of the same thing. That if we expect to be loved, if we expect to be special, we should learn to love ourselves first and treat ourselves as special. People respond only to how we treat ourselves. If we believe we are not important, guess how they would treat us?

The book also mentioned that treating ourselves special is a habit that has to be formed, and habits are usually formed by repetition, usually in a matter of 21 days.

Today I begin that day. I’ve been more conscious on the way I treat myself, even in small things. For instance, I usually don’t mind the heat of the sun damaging my skin and drying my hair. Now I’ve used an umbrella and protected myself, the way I wish my boyfriend would have done so if he were here. I also treated myself to good lunch, bought make-up that I liked and even chose the best seat in a cafe. Hmm… was not as easy as I thought. But practice makes perfect they say. And how could we expect others to do these things for us when we couldn’t care doing it for ourselves?

I guess I just have to carry on for the next 20 days. If you think you could also benefit from this, why don’t you begin today as well? 🙂