How can I love myself a little bit more today?
This next pearl of wisdom from Louise Hay on how we can love ourselves more is probably the one that I cherish the most....with awareness, willingness, patience and practice I am here to say you can do this - you can. I have.
STOP SCARING YOURSELF - if you love yourself stop scaring yourself
"Stop terrorizing yourself with your thoughts. It's a dreadful way to live." Stop taking a small situation and making it into a bigger monster. And, don't take a scary situation and make it even worse...be there for yourself!
How often do we find ourselves laying in bed at night wanting to fall asleep and going over and over a problem creating the worse possible scenarios?
We do this with illness – we get a pain, find a lump (or someone we love becomes ill) and instantly we are planning funerals!
We do this with our health. Recently I scared the s@#% out of myself during an exam by my dermatologist. He found something "suspicious" on my lip of all places and suggested we just "watch it for a month or two.." With my history the word "suspicious" and “watch” immediately invokes my flight/fight response.
Some of us do this in our relationships when someone doesn't call or text we immediately think we are totally unlovable, that we will never have a relationship and feel abandoned!
We do it at work - we receive an email inviting us to a meeting with no subject disclosed or hear a small remark and we immediately think oh my God I'm going to be fired!
These frightening thoughts are affirmations only they are NEGATIVE affirmations. Reminder, all thoughts are affirmations ~
If you have a habit of having negative thoughts that scare you, Louise suggests that we find an image that we love. It could be a sport, a sunset, a beautiful view, flowers, anything. Use that as a substitute - pick that as your image - your "switch to" image. Every time the negative thought comes up or you are scaring yourself just switch to this thought or this image.
Say to yourself, "no, I'm not going to think about that, I'm going to think about sunsets, or golf, or waterfalls or whatever your image is - whatever you want to choose.
I like to say to myself “no, I AM not going to think about this. I want to feel and think like God.” I reach up in my imagination to a make believe trolley strap and connect to my Source. It works! That image of me connected to my Source along with a few long and deep pattern interrupt breaths throughout my day (and my ritualized meditation practice) helps me to stop scaring myself.
If you keep doing this - switching the scary thought and replacing it with your "go to image" you will break this habit.
It’s a practice.
Love yourself enough to STOP SCARING YOURSELF
Just stop that.
You love yourself too much to continue.
And, keep meditating!
Sending you peace from Long Island, New York.
Namaste ~