Our wellbeing seems to be such a clinical thing. Take these vitamins, eat these foods, take these medications, exercise like this – we hear it all the time. But are love and wellbeing linked in some way? I’m sure the answer is definitely yes. Love plays a big part in our wellbeing, but it might not be love as you’re thinking about it now.
Self-Love – part of love and wellbeing
If we didn’t have love for ourselves, we wouldn’t even try to take care of bodies. Anything we do for the good of our bodies must be an act of self-love just as anything we do to sabotage our wellbeing must be a sign of self-loathing. Love and wellbeing must be linked.
The love I’m talking about here is the respect and acknowledgement of the importance of something. It’s possible to say that everything that “is” deserves love, just because it “is”. Some people would disagree with this because they see some things that exist as bad and hence not to be loved. It’s easier to say that everything that has “life” deserves love just because it has “life”. This is easier to accept but still some people will refute this because they see some living things as bad. Even easier we can say that all “human beings” deserve love just because they are alive as human beings, but this gets even harder as everyone has classes of people they think are bad. Sometimes it’s amazing how hard a time we have being loving.
Now, let’s turn to ourselves. Do we respect and acknowledge the importance of ourselves? Generally not. Most of us think we are at least partly bad, sinners, evil people. We definitely loathe at least part of ourselves. On the other hand, there are parts of ourselves that we respect and acknowledge, so we have a raging argument in our minds about whether we should loathe or love ourselves. This is where nearly all our problems come from.
No wonder we find it hard to stay on any particular diet. The self-loving and self-loathing parts of our mind want us to do different things. The self-loathing part says “why bother staying on that diet, you don’t deserve it, you’re trash and everything is going to go badly for you anyway!”, while the self-loving part says “yes, this diet is good, you’re a good person and being healthy will help you do all the good things you want to do and set a good example for others”. This will be a bit different in everyone’s own mind but I’ll guarantee there’s an argument going on like this in all of our minds.
In order to start out along the road of wellbeing improvement, the self-loving part of a person’s mind has to become stronger than the self-loathing part. This is the link between love and wellbeing.
The tricks of self-loathing
The mind is very powerful and it can be tricky. For most of us, the self-loathing part of the mind is quite powerful and it can trick us into thinking that everything is happening “to us” and we have no control over it, and it can even make us feel that we actually like loathing ourselves. Do you ever feel comfort in thinking “woe is me”, consoling yourself that you’ve had a bad day because of things that have “happened” to you? Do you ever find comfort in seeing that others can achieve a certain thing but accepting that you can’t because you “aren’t good enough”, “aren’t lucky enough”, “don’t have the right genes”, “weren’t born in the right family”, etc? This is the self-loathing part of the mind tricking you into feeling good about loathing yourself.
Don’t fall for this trick. There’s no future in it. This is the type of trick that allows us to sabotage our own wellbeing and not notice that we are doing it to ourselves. We think it’s fate but it’s actually us hurting ourselves. We have to remember the link between love and wellbeing.
The power of self-love
The good news is that every mind also has a self-loving part. The love we contain inside is the most powerful thing that exists. Love can do anything. We have this amazing power as part of our being (given to us, for free, when we were given life, also for free) but our mind has also been infiltrated by hatred and loathing which makes the loving part retreat. Love can only exist in peace and where it is wanted. Once hatred and loathing arrives, love backs off because it has no will to fight these artificial concepts.
The original, loving mind is always there however. It can never be destroyed. Once you allow enough space for the love to thrive, it will take over.
The original, loving mind is always there however. It can never be destroyed.
Imagine going through some dark days when hatred and loathing dominated your mind. This doesn’t have to be obvious to everyone else as the hatred and loathing can just be for yourself. Your might appear like a “nice person” on the outside but still loathe yourself inwardly. This is quite common unfortunately. During a time like this it’s very common to sabotage your wellbeing – eating bad foods, eating too much, drinking too much alcohol, smoking, taking drugs, not exercising or sleeping enough, etc. In some way, you could say this is wallowing in self-pity.
I know this happened to me to a certain extent for couple of decades. It’s finding that piece of self-love that’s hiding away in your mind that is the way to get out of this situation. Find that love and give it some room to grow and push the hatred and loathing out.
What is it that can start off this process of cultivating the love we have inside? In my case it was a combination of serious concern about my health and the mind reset caused by a sudden divorce. Suddenly, I found there was a spark of real love there. Real self-love. I realised that I was important, just as important as everyone else. Not more and not less important, but just as important. Since that time, the love in my mind has been growing. The hatred and loathing are still there but less powerful. Sometimes they can fight hard but, most of the time, love dominates them.
Lots of things can fan the flame of the love in your minds. I hope that even reading this article might be enough for some of you.
Love and Wellbeing
Now that your sense of self-love is beginning to grow (take good care of it, this is very important) you can sense that you are an important being. In fact, you’re an infinitely important being (and I’m not using the word “infinite” lightly!). You deserve respect and acknowledgement and you deserve your own care. Suddenly you will see the value in making the choices to improve your wellbeing.
And don’t think we don’t know what to do to improve our wellbeing. The answers are clear and they’ve always been out there, just that the self-loathing part of the mind has (up until now) obscured these and made sure we couldn’t see them truly. Here are some examples of the clear answers that we have available;
- Chronic Disease Isn’t Normal
- We Deserve Organic Food
- Well-Being Secrets
- Autoimmune Diseases – Medicine Gets Them Wrong
- Wheelchair To Walking By Changing Diet
- Just give me a sign, any kinda sign
Where to Next
Now here’s the real kicker. Find your self-love and get it growing again. Start looking after the infinitely important person that you are. Get healthier, start thinking more clearly. Find more peace in all situations. Then start loving others. All others. And start loving everything that exists. No matter what the others are like or how other things appear, love them with everything you have. Of course, this includes yourself. Respect and acknowledge everyone and everything.
It doesn’t matter how people might appear. It doesn’t matter how much hatred and loathing they might present to you, everyone has a flicker of real love in their minds and this is enough to deserve respect and acknowledgement. Love everyone and everything completely, with all your might, no questions asked.
This is the real linkage of love and wellbeing. If we really love this much, our wellbeing will be unquestionable.
Related Links
- This inspiring story does a nice job of linking love and wellbeing – The One Sentence That Finally Inspired Me To Lose 70 Pounds
- and the sentence was – “I deserve to live well and be well.”
- another nice quote – “To get to your ideal self, you have to love the eternal You—the You that you don’t ever see in the mirror but you feel deep inside.”
- Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It
- In Helen Nichols’ article, How to detox your body: 35 natural strategies, which is mostly about detoxing, it’s interesting how many times the options she mentions overlap into the area of self-love. Things you wouldn’t do if you weren’t respecting and accepting yourself, things like Use Essential Oils, Get Regular Massages, Meditate, Keep a Gratitude Journal and more.
Hi peter lovely post. I like the way you explain that loving oneself is in the simple jestures of our day-to-day lives no matter what mind says to us . Dropping the polarities in our minds will overcome the polarities in our world. People who love themselves don’t and cannot hurt others. It starts with the self and we don’t know how to do that and why we struggle to love ourselves. We look for love outside and in all the wrong places from others who haven’t figured out how to love themselves and we turn that aggression inward first and possibly outward later. It’s a vicious cycle of aggression. Thank you for sharing your important insights on how to start loving yourself and for spreading the message of love. That is exactly what we need more of in the world right now. Yes – we all deserve love. Be well.
Thanks for the comments Rani. Very nicely said.
Another shooting in Florida overnight, certainly the world needs more love and, as you say, this starts with the self. We can all start working on this.
Hope all is going well for you.
Here’s a nice article by Allison Dryja that reminded me of some of the sentiments in this article of mine – “How I Overcame Emotional Eating & Embraced Self-Love”.