Just think
of the persons you love and ask yourself if you are one of them. Seriously. Are
you important for yourself? Do you devote enough time to yourself? Do you
respect yourself? Can you accept your decisions, your past and present, your
whole self altogether? Are you aware of your good points as well as your
faults? If you are like most people, probably not. It is rather likely that you
punish yourself for being who you are, looking the way you do, living the life
you have. You are fighting a desperate battle within yourself, although you
know that this inner conflict does you no good. Probably you are struggling
hard to reach your goals, taking your life seriously, punishing yourself for
your mistakes and failures, treating yourself with such severity you treat no
other human being. You do not realize that you can say 'no' sometimes. You can
say no to goals that are not very important for you. You can say no to people
who do not treat you like you are important to them. You can say no to fears
that keep you back. And you can say no to the hardness with which you push
yourself.
Sometimes
these inner conflicts find their way to the surface. You cannot hide them
forever, because they will not stay in you, they need to find their way out,
the only question is the when and how. That's how unexpected illnesses happen.
You are cruel to yourself in vain. You punish yourself for no good reason. You let
situations and people that hurt you stay in your life. You do not notice what
is good. You are waiting for something, knowing not what, and later regret that
you were just waiting, waiting.... Perhaps you believe that you love yourself,
but look at how you treat yourself.
The truth
is that most people only wish that they could love themselves. They say that
they do, they try hard to make others as well as themselves believe that they
do. But inside there is a sense of guilt, disappointment, resentment along with
self accusations. You try to bury those parts of your past that still hurt you.
You are constantly fleeing from your own head, your own thoughts.
There are
not many people who can accept the bad experiences they suffered in the past,
the doings of others who hurt them and their own imperfections that cause a
proneness to self-hate and self-reproach. Most of us seem to blame ourselves,
thinking that we are despicable little wretches. And why? Only because something
did not turned out the way we hoped.
Perhaps you
never learned to accept your body and personality the way they are. You always
want to be like someone else. Then it is important for you to realize that
self-acceptance and self-improvement are not in conflict with each other, they strengthen
each other. We live in a culture where people lost the connection with
themselves. We live in a culture where everyone knows what his job is, what
should he be like (according to others), who is good and who is bad, what is to
be liked and what is to be hated, what is okay to do and what is not. We live
in a culture where most people fly from the home of their own souls. For your
soul is crying to you, asking questions like 'Who am I? Why can't I enjoy my
life? Why do I feel guilty when I find that I am different from others? Why is
it not okay to be myself and go my own way with a smile on my face?' Most
people don't want to answer these questions. They try to escape these questions
by giving themselves up to work, addictions, aggression, illness or, sometimes,
death. They seek instant solutions that do not work, lying to themselves,
repeating to themselves that they are okay, okay. They go on hating themselves
for their looks, abilities, actions, whatever. They never try to really accept and love
themselves. They trap themselves by self-deceit. Why? Because it is too hard to
keep your faith. Too hard not to hate yourself. Too hard to resume the trust in
yourself, believing in your dreams, accepting that with all our imperfections we
are, ultimately, perfect. They find it is too hard to change.
But the day
must come when you discover that you don't have to suffer. You don't have to
resign yourself to a life situation that you hate. You can look inside and
decide that you will change. You have the power to accept yourself as you are.
You can discover that self-improvement is possible for you if you don't like
yourself the way you are. You can be the way you want, but you don't need to
hate yourself until then. Who says that happiness is forbidden until you reach
your goal? Why shouldn't you be happy while making your progress?
