love. love. love. [05 January 2010]

Art by Honny ♥

“Live the life you love and love the life you live.” ~Andy Mack

I like to treat myself the way that I would treat my most nearest and dearest, precious best friend in the entire Universe. It’s something that is a constant work in progress—always changing, ever-evolving, not always fun, but definitely never dull. I haven’t always practised this though. It’s taken a lot of hard work and falling down many times and getting back up to get to where I am now. On any given day, I can still struggle.

There have definitely been dark times in my life where I haven’t been my own friend. There have been moments I just plain hated myself. While the thoughts from those moments make me cringe and feel icky nauseous, I’m not ashamed to admit it. Realising what you’re doing and owning those feelings is a step in the right direction towards igniting the romance with yourself.

Sometimes we can feel like strangling our friends! But ultimately, if we do care about them genuinely, we accept them flaws and all and encourage them to be their best most shiny, wonderful self. Just as there are times we need to be gentle, diplomatic, kind, patient, nurturing and understanding with our friends—we also need to be that way with ourselves.

Think about one of your most amazing, inspiring friends in your life that you simply adore. How do you feel when you think about them? How do you act towards them? How do you feel when you’re hanging with them? I bet the thought of it brightens your day. Your’re even smiling right now aren’t you?! Imagine if you held yourself in such high regard. Imagine if you thought about yourself in that way. You’d feel like you can do anything. Actually, I know you’d be able to do anything because I’ve been there and I’ve experienced it.

When you’re feeling good about yourself, when you love, love, love yourself, the whole world seems beautiful and bright. Think about how you feel when you’re in a relationship and you’re totally head over heels in love. Everything is so much sweeter—you hear the birds singing, you stop to smell the flowers, you stop tormenting yourself about all the little things you constantly worry about, all your mini dramas go out the window and you just chill out and get on with the business of living, loving and enjoying life which are all great reasons to have a solid, engaging, core shaking, life-long relationship with yourself.

A person who loves themself lives their very best life. A person who loves themself makes goals and goes after their dreams. A person who loves themself is a joy to be around; they vibrate at a frequency that draws people to them. They illuminate a room. They’re positive, fun and can laugh at themself. They embrace their uniqueness and celebrate their commonalities with others.

Having a positive relationship with yourself and being happy requires effort. I’m not going to lie or sugar-coat it. Your mission of self-love, if you choose to accept, requires guts, determination, discipline, strength— and most definitely P.M.A.

With my whole heart let me just say that I’m sure there have been many situations in your life that have just plain sucked, I’m sure people have hurt you, I’m sure you’ve hurt others and it’s easy to think the world is a horrible, f*cked up place. There are many devastating atrocities that happen around the world every single day that could colour your world view black—there are so many negatives out there; it’s easy to hate, it’s easy to be anti. Ask yourself do you want to be a part of that? I’m guessing your answer is ‘no’. What are you going to do about it?

I’ll leave you to ponder on that and I’ll even leave you with the following clip to get you on your way. This song, Negative Thinking by The DeathSet is a regular on my motivational mix tapes I make.

Let’s be awesome together!
Love, love, love,

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