Do you love yourself? Can you honestly say that you love everything about yourself without exception? How about your body? When you look in the mirror do you see a beautiful reflection or a marred one? Go ahead, find a full length mirror and stand naked in front of it. Does the very thought of seeing your own naked body give rise to negative emotions? Or do you feel rather sensuous, even beautiful? What feelings are evoked when you gaze at your body from head to toe? Look into your eyes, what do you see? Joy? Happiness? Maybe sadness, or even fear? What about your hair? Is it shiny and lustrous?
Have a good look at your smile, or lack thereof. Does your mouth smile with ease, or is there an effort involved? Now slowly scan the rest of your body from the neck on down. Absorb everything you see, and notice the varied feelings as you truly experience all your various body parts. Be sure to view your body from as many angles as possible. Take as much time as you need. The important thing is that you notice your emotions as your eyes rest upon the different parts of your body. Truly feel the emotions as they arise within you. Maybe you will feel somewhat sad as you look deep into your own eyes, or you may even sense the real wonder that is you. When you are finished perhaps you might start a personal body journal. Just write down your your feelings for each different body part. Perhaps your hair made you feel beautiful and happy. Write it down. Maybe you felt anger or even disgust at another part of your body. Write that down as well. When you are finished with your body journal you will have a unique collage of your feelings about your own body.
By now I am sure you are wondering what is the point of this exercise? Well, what better place to begin exploring self-love than with our bodies? From a very young age we are conditioned to identify with our bodies, as if our outer shell is really who we are. We also tend to judge others by what their bodies look like. For instance, how often do we see someone who is obese and immediately make an unfavorable judgment about them? Or how many times have you seen someone you thought was beautiful, and made a favorable judgment about them based soley on their physical appearance? If we are so easily able to pass judgment on others due to their outward appearance, how much more so will we tend to judge our own bodies as well?
One of my favorite authors is a sweet lady named Louise Hay. She once wrote something to the effect that once a person truly begins to love themselves, everything in their life starts to work. From personal experience I can honestly say that she is right. For most of my life I hated my body, my life, and most of all myself.
You will notice that I differentiate between my body and myself, as I believe that we all possess a Soul if you will. I was born a middle child in a family of nine children, and we were pretty poor to boot. From a very early age I quickly learned how to hate myself. In fact, I became quite an expert on the subject by the time I reached high school. Looking back I can see how I was the perpetual geeky kid, glasses, lanky frame and all. I rarely looked anyone in the eye, and to say that I was painfully shy would be an understatement. At home I was teased mercilessly by my older brothers who hung with the ‘in’ crowd, and for whom I proved to be a great embarrassment. Friends were far and few in between, especially since we moved so many times. High school was the solidifying period for my self image. At my high school prom I finally got up the nerve to ask a girl for a dance, and to my surprise she accepted. About midway through the dance she said something that colored my view of myself for many years to come. She said, “You know, you don’t look half bad in the dark.” At that moment I would have been grateful if the floor just swallowed me. Needless to say, that was the last dance for me.
Fast forward twenty-five years, many failed relationships later, here I was a middle-aged man living life in the lonely lane. Very quiet lane by the way. Another weekend was looming on the horizon, and as usual my schedule was wide open. So I found myself headed to my favorite haunt, the local bookstore. Oh how I haunted that place! On this particular day I happened upon a book that literally changed my life for the better. Yes, you guessed it, it was a book by my now favorite author Louise Hay. It was titled, ‘You Can Heal your Life.’ The title intrigued me right away because if anyone’s life needed some major healing it was mine. So I quickly bought the book, making sure the clerk didn’t think it was for me by glibly stating that it was for my sister. On top of everything else I couldn’t risk being exposed as a man with a touchy-feely side now could I? Secretly, I couldn’t wait to get home and climb into my comfy bed with my new find. So I did just that. I read. I read some more. I cried. Did I say that? I cried some more.
Page after page brought year after year of self-loathing crashing down, spilling hot lava of emotions into my heart. I began to see for the first time, really see my part in creating my entire life up until this very moment. It was an incredibly scary yet liberating experience to say the least. The basic premise of her book is that we have incredible power to change our lives by changing our thoughts. The point of power is in the present moment she declares repeatedly. Sounds almost too simple, yet it is probably the hardest thing I have ever had to do. To change my ‘victim’ mentality to one of self-love was my goal, and though it didn’t happen overnight I did eventually succeed in doing just that. Once I discovered that I was ok just the way I am now, I began to accept myself one day at a time as they say. My body is absolutely perfect for me, as yours is for you. When you begin to feel beautiful on the inside, you magically begin to become beautiful on the outside. Today, I have transformed myself from the self-hating fellow I once was, to a happy, carefree, even giddy guy who is thoroughly in love with himself and life. Mind you, not conceit, just genuine self-love, which turned out to be the salve to heal my wounded Soul.
