What does being yourself have to do with love?

Really being yourself is all about being authentic, showing your true self, not the false self that we can create in life to protect ourselves for whatever reason.

I have just watched a programme about Eric Clapton’s life. What a story! His life is a clear example of how the lack of love and the feeling of being out of place and rejected, can screw peoples lives up. Clapton always felt different and his comfort was his amazing guitar playing, but he did not want to feel his pain and so anesthetized himself with drugs and alcohol for much of his young life. So tragic in many ways. Fortunately he had a son that he adored, but his son was killed when he accidently fell out of a window on the 59th floor of a building. By this time Clapton had been clean for some time. Now most people might think something as tragic as that would send him backwards, but it didn’t. His son had made him care for something more than himself. Of course he was heartbroken and that heart rendering song “Tears in Heaven” was born out of his grief, but he has become a stronger wiser person. It’s strange how adversity either breaks us or makes us stronger. He has gone on to help so many people. Truly an inspirational story! He went on to have more children You might say that finally he found the love and security he always needed to become his real self.

Sometimes life can be tough and unkind, so unkind that we find ways to hide ourselves. We wear masks to the world, afraid to show our vulnerability. Or we learn to please others because we are afraid of losing them. We hide our true self. While we do this we are never at peace with ourselves.

Love is the answer.

I am not talking about finding someone to love you necessarily, although it is nice to have someone in your life that does love you. When we feel empty inside and long for love, we need firstly to find it in ourselves. This is hard if we don’t really know what love looks like. Love looks like this…….

Firstly we need to be kind to ourselves and through kindness to ourselves we can learn to accept ourselves warts and all. What do I mean by being kind to yourself? I mean learn to turn off the critical voice in your head. Realising that you are ok just as you are. Not trying to please everyone in order to be liked and realising that there are others that will love you as you are. Who said that you don’t deserve love. especially your own love? Where did that message come from? We can spend the whole of our lives thinking we are inadequate in some way or not good enough, not pretty enough, not a good conversationalist, awkward, unacceptable. We can be afraid that we don’t measure up compared to other people. Who said that we have to? Where did you get that message? You most probably got that message from someone else’s opinion. Just that! An opinion. The truth is we can be whatever we like.

You are a spiritual being in a human body.

No human on this earth knows truth. A truth is true to an individual, not to everyone. Your divine self is love. Your human self doesn’t always know this. It is our purpose to find out just who we truly are. The way to start doing that is to accept yourself. You are unique. There is no-one else quite like you and who you are is ok. Loving yourself is about learning what is in your best interests. Learning to listen to what your body says along with what that little inner voice says too. It’s called intuition. Learning to do what is good for you is not always easy, sometimes it’s tough but our gut instinct tells us what feels right. When we can learn to depend on ourselves knowing that we will try to never let ourselves down, we start to feel confident and at peace with ourselves. Yes there is diversity out there, many people are different from you and will have different ideas than you, but if people do not accept you as you are, they are not your kind of people. It’s as simple as that. Stop longing for someone to come and rescue you or waiting for a handsome guy to ride up to your door and change your life. When you are being true to yourself, you are in a much better place to meet others without needing them. You may want them but you don’t feel needy about them. Also you are in a better place to love them, because you have learned to give love to yourself first.