The best quality of life comes from one simple but powerful ingredient: self-love. This one element has a knock-on effect on so many other things like happiness, contentment, positivity, and achievement, to begin with. When we love ourselves, we give permission for others to love us too, to appreciate our strengths and weaknesses, and to enhance that sense of worth and significance we all seek.
Self-love is crucial because it leads to a love of our bodies and talents. It also frees us to stop focusing upon what we lack, while we accept ourselves as the beautiful and wondrous beings we are. When we love ourselves we are likely to nurture our bodies, to be proud of who we are and to nurture others, too, for who they are.
How much do you value and appreciate yourself?
BEFORE YOU GO…..
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People tend to fall in love, become starry eyed at the prospect, ignore the warning signs of incompatibility at the beginning of the friendship, then slowly repent their choice when things begin to go pear-shaped later on. Emotional infidelity often becomes a substitute for what is missing in a partnership but, given the right opportunity and circumstances, it can be physically realised.
Emotional infidelity begins with neglect, which itself stems from a lack of appreciation and value. In short, it arises from a deep emotional need when our feelings are unfulfilled and when our emotional health is low, especially from a lack of ATTENTION.
In any relationship, everyone wants to be treated with love and respect, to be valued and desired. When that does not happen, a feeling of isolation and rejection takes its place. For some reason, perhaps because of the need for security, once people become settled with each other, they tend to take each other for granted. The little things they used to do for one another, the loving acts they delighted in during dating, the obvious value they placed on each other, tend to take a back seat while partners become weighed down with domestic and career responsibilities. It is not too long before one or both parties begin to feel lonely, left out or unappreciated. In such a case, affection and sex are usually the main things that gradually disappear. If not addressed, it eventually turns into neglect and acute loneliness – and the worst form of loneliness is one which is shared with a partner.
Warm Feelings and Attention
When someone feels neglected it leads to unfulfilled yearnings, particularly around what is absent from their lives. It isn’t long before the person begins to yearn for what is possible. It might start from admiring a celebrity in an appreciative way, then switches to more realistic targets like a neighbour, a work colleague, someone online, a friend or a complete stranger. For people closer to home, it might begin with just talking, bantering, making jokes or sharing life circumstance. It is not long before they will also be sharing the problems in their lives and offering emotional support to each other.
Sooner or later, there is likely to be either quiet or expressed desires around that person, wishing to be with them, to be loved by them and to be close to them. The main difference with emotional infidelity and physical infidelity is that most times the party doesn’t want to leave their spouse, to cause any hurt to them or to break up their family for the object of their affections. They just love the warm feelings, the attention, in particular, and the feeling of appreciation and value they get from that friend or stranger.
One might never physically meet the object of that desire, but the mere thought of dreaming about what is possible with them, affectionately and sexually, and imagining warm thoughts of value around them begin the emotional infidelity process. This can often lead to the real thing if what is lacking in that person’s life is not admitted, discussed or addressed at all.
There is a mistaken belief that emotional infidelity is ‘harmless’ and doesn’t really matter in the life of a couple; that it is mainly fantasy and only occurs in one’s head. It’s nothing like the real thing. However, that is not true. Emotional infidelity is usually the beginning of the physical reality, the precursor to it. It simply needs the feelings to get worse, the object of desire to be accessible, and the opportunity to bring it to life. The rest is often inevitable.
So many people seem to find it very difficult to cope with positive compliments. They appear to find it natural to criticise and judge, or they expect to be criticised, they have forgotten the art of making someone’s day through simple appreciation and validation.
I remember going into a bakery in the marketplace in High Wycombe, England, not long ago, at the same time as an elderly lady was leaving with her companion. She had great difficulty walking, but she deliberately stopped near the counter and said a very cheerful ‘Good-bye!’ to the staff member who was serving. The girl heard her but looked straight through the woman without smiling, and said nothing. Very disappointed, the woman hobbled out slowly, exclaiming, sadly, that the girl couldn’t be bothered to reply.
This was a pity as it would only have taken a few words to make her day. Giving a cheerful greeting and having it returned was perhaps her way of feeling significant and valued. Yet even that simple wish was denied her through a lack of empathy and neglect.
There are too many people who boast about not praising too much or showing appreciation. They tend to be unhappy, gloomy souls, lacking in self-esteem, who enjoy being mean to others to boost their feeling of power and control. But exactly what are they promoting? Selfishness? Being mean-spirited? Being uncaring and unsupportive? There can never be too much acknowledgement or praise for those we love. It’s a key part of our humanity as, without others, we would simply go mad from isolation.
Personally, I make a point of praising someone every day of my life, as one never knows the effect it will have , the way it might reinforce and affirm them, and the difference it is likely to make to them. However, I am always stuck with words like ‘nice’, ‘good’ ‘super’ to use in praising others, often sounding a little repetitive. Then this arrived in my email from someone in my network (thank you Hari!) and it is brilliant. Now I will never be stuck for choice words of praise any more.
I thought I’d pass the good words along and share them with you too…Why not make a list of your favourites for when you are stuck for words? I hope you feel as great getting them as I enjoyed giving them! :o)
Your challenge from now? To use at least two of them every single day to two different people, and encourage them to pass on the praise in a global happy chain! Our world might even be a much more loving and joyful place.
We seem to find it much easier to be cold, detached, unkind and even cruel to others than it is to be kind and loving to them. We even get embarrassed when people show us love, or pay us a compliment as though that is not something positive and enjoyable. Often we spend a long time in regret wishing we had said something loving to someone we cherished.
Yet love has the power to do so many things for us, especially to make us feel joyful, valued and life more meaningful. In fact, we can achieve far more in one day with just a little kindness and appreciation than we can in a long time with any other means.
Make someone’s day by sending some love their way!
When you are seeking a partner, it is easy to believe that the relationship is about you getting along with them, and vice versa. But it isn’t. A relationship starts with how you see yourself: whether worthy or unworthy, because others can only take their cue from you in how they treat you, too.
Loving ourselves builds our self-worth. We are more likely to appreciate the wonderful beings we are and value our presence more when we feel good about us. Self-worth comes through constant gratitude for who we are, being thankful that we even have a life when many others do not, and slowly appreciating our many blessings, despite any perceived faults. By appreciating ourselves daily and routinely, we will realise and accept that the other person is as human as we are, not above or below us, and they can only say NO. But, equally, they could also say ‘yes’!
However, before I go into that aspect, your belief is likely to be your PERCEPTION of your situation, and not the actual reality. In our life, we always have at least one person who cares about us: whether parent, relative, friend or stranger. There is usually someone there for us. However, we tend to judge everyone as uncaring when we have been hurt, especially by someone we love, then it doesn’t matter who cares about us, because it is likely to make little difference to our feelings.
That is why the answer to your question lies inside you. There is one undeniable fact of life: We tend to get treated exactly how we treat others. If people generally do not seem to care about you, it could be because they perceive you in any of the following ways:
To be a taker rather than a giver.
To know people only when you want something from them.
To be mean with praise, appreciation and gratitude.
To be reluctant to help where necessary.
To be insincere or hypocritical in your actions
To be unreliable in your promises and care for others.
Regarded as perhaps uncaring and selfish.
Do any of those apply to you, and your interaction with others? That is not the way to win friends and influence people, least of all to get them to care about you.
Some people will take advantage of us and our kindness, but there is a direct correlation between how we treat another person and how they view us. However, the way we perceive others has its roots in how we view ourselves. It means that if you do not love and appreciate who you are, you are unlikely to be able to love and appreciate others, too, because you cannot give away what you haven’t got!
The simplest step to remedy your situation is to start caring about yourself, instead of just trying to please others, to fawn over them, or to be mean and insincere to them. Sometimes this is not an easy thing to do after years of acting in a certain way. But it all starts with how you treat yourself, and appreciate the unique person you are, before others can begin to really value you too.
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What elements give a relationships its true meaning and value?
These three elements are crucial to successful and long-lasting partnerships simply because, if they are absent, there really is no relationship at all.
Lessons in Life Blog 