I saw a post on Instagram by Lewis Howes that contributed to my inspiration for writing this article. The post reads, “So many years of education, yet nobody ever taught us how to love ourselves and why it’s so important.”
I would suggest that we reflect and think about our own strategy for loving our self and why it’s so important. I’ve discovered that people who are highly productive, successful, and fulfilled have found their way in how to love themselves. Regardless of our past, we can learn and improve upon this to help us achieve even greater success.
Strive to be LAST by following these four suggestions to become the success you desire.
L – Love others as well as yourself. What we focus on expands. If we focus on what we believe to be our shortcomings or the areas that cause a dip in confidence, guess what becomes our experience? We expand our feeling of inadequacy, even perhaps self-loathing vs self-loving. However, if we focus on what we already like and admire about our self and couple that with what ,and how, we would like to become, guess what becomes our experience? Our feeling of self-love thereby expands.
Self-love is knowing we are enough just as we are. Many mistakenly fear that if they dare believe they are enough they will stop going for what they want; they will settle. If we sit on the couch all day and do nothing, it is precisely because we don’t think we are enough. We’re afraid of failure, or rejection. To us, this is proof positive that we are, indeed, not enough so we do nothing. Believing that we are enough is when we take action, something new, and take risks. Even if we do fail we don’t take it personally because it’s not us. We are enough. So it must be our method, approach, skill or whatever and because we are enough we can improve those methods, skills, or approach and try again. Living with the belief that we are enough is self-love.
Modeling it for others is loving others.
A – Always do our best. This ties in closely to helping us love our self and our behavior. We all have a capacity, or capability – what we can do and how we can be. When we are living in accordance with that potential, we are more apt to feel happy and accepting of our self, which equates to self-love. On the contrary, when we know we are not performing at the levels which we know we are capable, it creates a fertile environment for self ridicule and criticism, which equates to the absence of self-love. Successful people step up and play their “A” game so they can feel good more often than those that settle for their own mediocrity. By the way, settling for mediocrity is more emotionally and physically exhausting than always playing your “A” game. If we do our best, we believe we are enough, which inspires our energy. Feelings of not being enough expire our levels of energy.
S – Seek to serve others. Confident, successful people understand the power of serving others and helping them get what they want. Zig Ziglar is known for saying, “You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.” We cannot give away what we don’t have. We can serve others by loving ourselves and loving others.
T – Transcend your past. We live in an ever-expanding universe. We are part of that universe and, therefore, our nature is to seek expansion as well. More money, better health, deeper better relationships, and progress in our career are all natural desires. The more we observe and acknowledge our progress along the way, the more we get what we want. If we play with the word “transcend” and flip it around, we get end-transc or “end the trance.” The trance, in this case, is us buying into, and believing, we are not enough and ,therefore, not lovable. When we end the trance and wake up to the truth that we are enough, we are lovable and capable of loving, we show up in our full power and ready to achieve our full potential.
Let’s show up bursting in our full potential and ready to help others get what they want so we can get what we want. True success starts with loving ourselves.
Make it up, make it fun, and get it done!