Learn to love myself better

come back to this at many times during my life, but I think I’ve just been reaching that point in life where I have confidence that I’m capable of finding out what I want and then doing it. I know myself well, I respect myself enough, and I love myself enough to believe that other people can/will/do love me too. That may not be perfect, but it certainly counts as “better”, and it’s enough for now.

angry with myself, for how I’ve been feeling recently. I really need to stop this, I don’t think there’s any form of kindness you can get from outside yourself that displaces or over-rules that anger when you really are angry with yourself. But being less angry means accepting that what I feel is OK, and I feel so far from that; what I’m feeling is all wrong, dammit. Grrr.

that post about my job, I think being able to earn a living by working at something I really care about and have passion for is a sure way of loving myself better, as is not expecting myself to warp into the perfect professional just because I have a degree.

I can love myself best by being honest about the things I love and making the most of every opportunity to move into work that is related to those things.

Up until now there has been a lot of “I love myself except for…” I would like to accept all of myself, including all my flaws.

I have spent a lot of time trying to define myself as like other people or different from other people and I know I would be a lot freer if I realised that I will never be completely “normal” or completely “alternative” – I just am what I am and those are distinctions I can play out to my advantage as I see fit in group situations.

This year I have learnt to be lots of new things, or seen lots of new sides to myself. There are lots more adjectives I would apply to myself now that I never have before. I am learning that I can be whatever I like, really; that all those things I never thought I could be may be possible; and that the more widely I can think about myself and take chances, the greater variety of things I can be. This has been interesting and pleasing and has allowed me to be more of myself, out in the open. My self-image has definitely changed this year, for the better.

I am generally a really happy person and I know now that I come across as one most of the time. This is good.

There is just this one (very secret and huge) source of sadness that is kind of there all the time, whether I like it or admit to it or not. I have done a good job at being honest with myself and expressing it without getting so absorbed in it that it ruins my life. It is a part of who I am I guess, like a trap-door to a deep and dark underworld that I always have to keep my foot on.

BUT it does kind of affect my relationships with people, in that I am still looking for someone to make it go away, even though I know it doesn’t work like that, and I have been putting off indefinitely the massive task of attempting to fix it up myself, which I don’t even know how to do or think I can really succeed at, but it has to be worth a try, otherwise it will just be like it is forever, which isn’t the end of the world but just makes me useless and clingy which I don’t like.

The only idea I’ve had so far is to imagine all the things that I would need to hear, think, feel and believe to make it better, and make a huge list, and repeat that list to myself over and over until my beliefs and feelings change. Kind of like a giant experiment in the power of positive thinking. I’ve had some success over on the BMI goal with rejigging my instinctive reactions to food, so I figure it has to be worth a try – and maybe in the process some other ideas will present themselves!

I came home and turned my phone OFF and just committed the whole evening to doing nice things. I wrote a bit of a song and practised some piano and had a nice, healthy dinner, and was kinda relieved to get to bed early. It was a mad day at work but I didn’t think about any of that and didn’t really think about Mr. W. too much either. I feel better about myself today :)

I need to keep a bit of distance in my relationship to better maintain this. In general I give my relationships everything, sometimes to the point of codependency. As I get older (and learn more about how my husband ticks), I see that sometimes I need to step back and spend alone time or me time to gain perspective and strength.

• settle for something that wasn’t what I wanted, even if it was with someone I did
• pretend that I would have been OK and then had to spend ages trying to get my feelings to be what I wanted them to be
• commit myself to months of pretending that it was what I wanted (and thereby facing worse heartache further down the line)
• let someone else (at least appear to) do the loving for me because I’m scared I can’t do it so well
• do the relationship thing at any cost even though I would have been miserable a lot of the time

I do feel quite protected by myself. We went back and forth over it a couple of times, and it was a hard decision to make, but the kindest given the alternatives. So I am taking my chances on my own and have this fresh opportunity to discover how much of the self-esteem I automatically had from being with Mr. W, and K in his day, I can build by myself. It is a new era in a way, and it feels like the right way forward.

The weirdest collection of circumstances while I was on holiday led to this goal emerging, in my own words (in my journal) and someone else’s simultaneously – on the same day, in the space of a few hours. This is both the hardest goal I can imagine and also the one I think will make the biggest difference to my life – it’s definitely going to be a big theme over the next few months and so it is going to the top of my list!

I know to some of my (ex-!)subscribers it may seem like I already think way too much of myself, and that is kind of because I deliberately use 43T to generate momentum and celebrate my successes so I always have a positive place to return to. This goal has nothing to do with arrogance – I do love, accept and value myself as a person, to a degree, and this is clear to me when I look back at times in my life when I didn’t at all. But there are still so many ways that I am unkind to myself, ways I fail to take care of myself or treat myself with respect, and I could stand to love myself so much better. I have certain recurrent and slightly self-destructive or self-demeaning patterns of behaviour that I think would be unnecessary if I was really loving myself enough.

I have some starter ideas for how to get going with this goal – the easiest things are practical actions, making sure I am taking proper care of myself, doing things that build confidence and let me enjoy being myself, and probably the second easiest will be trying to focus my thoughts to be more consistently positive in my attitudes to myself. How on earth to build genuine, instinctive, self-esteem and the ability to be always accepting and loving towards myself – this seems just… impossibly elusive right now, but I am looking forward to seeing what comes up as I live this out and finding my own ways to be at ease with myself.

This is on the VERY top of my list of things to accomplish!! [: