“Love yourself first and everything falls into line.” This quote is attributed to the famous comedienne Lucille Ball. You may have been taught that to love yourself first is selfish or bad. Contrary to what you may have been taught, we believe that loving yourself first is vital to being able to love another as fully and completely as you can. Especially if you are in the middle of or still dealing with a divorce, loving yourself may even be the key to healing and feeling good again.
The questions and specifics of “what went wrong” or “who did what to whom” may crowd your mind and cause you a lot of pain right now. Loving yourself may feel foreign and difficult to do. If you have children who you want to support and comfort during this transition time, you may not even feel like you have the time or right to focus on loving yourself.
If so, STOP right there! We want to affirm to you right here and now that you DO have the right to love yourself. Loving yourself may sound self-centered, but until you love and nourish your own self, you truly cannot give in a meaningful way to another. Of course, we want you to continue to love and be supportive of your children. But we also encourage you to cultivate loving feelings and appreciation for yourself and who you are. This can fit easily into your day and doesn’t cost a thing!
RETURN HOME Whether it’s a new feeling or a relearning, loving yourself starts with the decision to allow yourself to love and appreciate you as you are right now. You might think of it as a returning home to your core self. No matter how many times you said or did things you now regret, at your core, you know there is a beautiful worthy being there. Returning home means that you look within yourself and let the wonderfulness that is you come through.
You might think about times in your life that you’ve felt good about who you are. What was it about those times that made you feel appreciative of you? Maybe you used to paint or draw and that made you feel good. Perhaps you could pick up the paint brush again and allow the creativity to flow. We are not suggesting you try to go back to who you were years ago. That’s just not possible. Instead, we want you to re-discover what makes you feel good about you. Maybe creativity is part of that or maybe it’s something else. As you return home, you might discover parts of yourself that you really like that you’ve never noticed before! So keep exploring.
MAKE SOME RENOVATIONS As you look closer at who you are you might realize things about yourself that don’t make you feel good. That’s ok. It’s all part of the process. When you meet up with a tendency that just doesn’t fit with who you really are and want to be, pause for a moment. We don’t suggest you jump to change anything about yourself. See if you can find loving feelings for yourself even with this tendency. You might look at yourself in a mirror and tell yourself aloud, “I love you just as you are.”
Corny as it may sound, hearing your own voice may help you to really feel it. Now, coming from a place of love, if there are “renovations” you’d like to make, choose to make them. It could be that you have a tendency to be jealous. As you affirm to yourself that you love you even with the jealousy habit, make the intention to make a change. You will likely find that as you add more and more love to yourself and begin to feel it deeply, habits like jealousy will fall away more easily.
A divorce can bring about a lot of transition and upheaval in your life. We encourage you to be gentle and easy with yourself right now as you heal. Learning or re-learning to love yourself can be a wonderful part of that healing process.
. Susie and Otto Collins are the creators of passionateheart.com or http://www.collinspartners.com. They are relationship coaches and life partners. Their formal training has been with Drs. Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks of the Hendricks Institute and Comprehensive Coaching U and with Dr. Belinda Gore. They can be reached at webmaster@collinspartners.com.