Self-Love Ignites Love for All

Put on your own oxygen mask before helping others!

When you hear this announcement, where does your mind go first?

Do you experience internal resistance? 

I know that I always have to visualize the instruction. The words always trigger an internal conversation because my first reaction is that it’s counterintuitive, that it goes against my “true self.” It goes something like this:

• Why should I help myself first?
• Relax, it’s ok. They aren’t telling me to be selfish.
• Makes sense. If I don’t have my oxygen mask on right away, I will run out of air and won’t be able to help myself, let alone someone else.

Why is it that taking care of and loving yourself brings up feelings of guilt or selfishness? Where did we learn this response…parents, teachers, grandparents, church, books, or even friends? Or is it buried in my DNA or hanging in the air we all breathe?

Remember this. Everything we take in from outside sources can become something we take on as our own. It can become a layer of “truth” that gets in the way of your own true self. But, as a child, when we hadn’t yet developed the skills to edit what we were told, it was easy to believe that parents and other authority figures knew what was right. We might even have sensed that it didn’t seem right. But we also knew this. If you argued, you might be punished. If you tried to explain why it didn’t seem right, they may have stopped listening or told you to be quiet.

Whatever your experience was, if you still find guilt coming up when you take care of yourself before you take care of others, that experience has left its mark. It has become attached to you. Like it or not, you internalized the attitude of your parent or other authority figures. In other words, without your knowing it, their “truth” attached to you and became part of your “truth.”

So, if you feel guilty when you take care of yourself, you may believe you are selfish. If you don’t listen to your body when it is telling you that you are tired and need rest, you may ignore that message and just keep working. That’s often the beginning of aches and pains that could become an actual illness, physical, or mental disorder. You are no longer helping your body renew itself and stay in its natural flow. Don’t ignore the messages from your body; your body is trying to get your attention.

Every course offered at Transformational Tools is designed to equip you with “tools” to identify and address those “truths” you have taken on. You will be able to fill your “highly sensitive/intuitive toolbox” with new ways to communicate with your body and with child aspects of you that may be holding you back.

The beginning of self healing is recognizing that you have taken on beliefs or habits that don’t resonate with your Knowing Self. It’s amazing how fast these layers of beliefs and attachments can be transformed with the tools you learn.

The internal conversation you read near the beginning of this post can start the process of self healing. It is you speaking to the child self that took on the belief that it was selfish if it took care of itself.

• Why should I help myself first?
• Relax, it’s ok. They aren’t telling me to be selfish.
• Makes sense. If I don’t have my oxygen mask on right away, I will run out of air and won’t be able to help myself, let alone someone else. 

As an adult you can change the internal conversation by just asking yourself a couple of questions.

• Does this message or belief that I have taken on make sense to me?
• When I feel guilty does that help me be a better person?

When you are honest with yourself and listen to your Inner Knowing, you will be able to step back and see how and why you took on this message. Speaking to the part of you that feels guilty is a way of loving yourself. 

The more you build a life that has balance, the more energy you will have. Taking care of yourself often means you have more energy to offer help to others. Being of service is built into humans. It is part of your life’s purpose. 

When layers and layers of messages and beliefs have gummed up your ability to know what is right for you, you may tend to get resentful, or your acceptance of yourself may get lost, or you may just give in to guilt and abandon yourself. Without that oxygen mask of self-care, you may feel yourself growing more tired and more unhappy.

One of the reasons I created the class Journal with Your Knowing Self was to help you take back your internal empowerment. Being able to communicate with your Knowing Self gives you a way to get clear about messages you have taken on that are not true for you. You can even ask your Knowing Self how you can begin to live from what is right for you.

Empowering ourselves gives us the energy and joyful desire to make a difference in this world. Let’s take one step today in that direction!

And so the end becomes what was the beginning:

Self-Love Ignites Love for All