When you get up in the morning look into the mirror and say “I love you”. It’s not about vanity. It’s about loving the self, accepting the self. Tell yourself, “I accept myself just as I am.” It’s about removing the conditions from self. We all grow up with lots of ifs and buts and we keep telling ourselves that we are good enough only if we do this or that. Actually our mind is conditioned for this since the time we are born. 2 days back my school friend called me up who is a single parent and has a 4 year old daughter. She asked me, what’s the best thing she can do for her daughter especially when she is a single parent and only thing I had to say to her was love her unconditionally. You need to be with her unconditionally irrespective of the circumstances. I asked her if she tells her daughter that she would be loved more if she scores high, her answer was positive and she replied with great pleasure that yes this is the first thing I tell her. Our parents tell us, you get a chocolate if you do that. You get a kiss if you achieve a score and so many things which we get as a reward. They do this out of love and to motivate, however, they forget to tell us that even if we fail, their love would be same. To make us learn our lessons, they force upon us that, we are losers if we have not scored a good grade in exams or if we did not win the race or if we did not get the position. We get so conditioned to live with such imposed conditions and conditional love while growing up that we forget to love ourselves unconditionally. We are unable to accept ourselves. Result is, we keep picking on self for whole life and start stacking up all the fears, guilts and loads of insecurities inside us. We start giving importance to everyone around us and want everyone’s approval as we are not able to approve of self, so we want everyone else’s approval. We always would search from outside what we lack inside, however, it can be filled only from inside. The thing which you lack inside has to be filled by you, whatever approval you get from others, you will always lack as you have still not approved of self.
