LOVE YOURSELF

Don’t forget to love yourself. ~Soren Kierkegaard

We all, in our heads, know the importance of loving ourselves. After all, it is part of the golden rule. If we love our neighbors as ourselves surely we have to love ourselves first. But what does it mean to love yourself? Love of self can look very different for each of us and how we create time, space, and energy for love of self is up to us to determine.

One of the ways that we can love ourselves is if we pay attention to how we speak to ourselves in our heads. Often the thoughts that swirl in our heads after we make a mistake are incredibly negative and punishing. We might call ourselves names in our thoughts or disparage ourselves. All too often we hold ourselves to a standard that is incredibly high and when we don’t hit the bar we are critical and unforgiving. Instead, we can learn from our mistakes and then allow more on giving ourselves grace to err and then opportunities to learn and grow. How we talk and think about ourselves makes a huge difference and it is one of the many ways that we can create love of self.

The old Saturday Night Live sketch with the character Stewart Smalley always made me laugh. This parody of a self-care guru would look into a mirror and profess the same mantra with each episode, “You are good enough. You are smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.” While this comedy would make us laugh at his oddly sappy self-talk there is some beautiful truth to how we can talk to ourselves. Perhaps there are words that we use instead of the negative ones that often fill our head. Maybe we could try the phrase, “God loves me behind and before, no matter where I go, no matter what I do.”

Prayer

God of grace, in our efforts to love more completely, we often forget about the importance of loving ourselves. Help us to talk to ourselves in the same forgiving, grace-filled ways that you love us. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.