Self Love vs Self Martyrdom

They say you are what you eat. I also know you are what you think. You are what you see and choose to see. If you don't choose to define who you are then everything around you will define you whether you would like to think so or not. Self love.. a topic that every book guru speaks on under the alternate title of self help books, but how many of us are truly helping ourselves? It's a question I have had to ask myself recently.

I have been one of the many that have invested dollars with book shelves of other people's suggestions of how to love myself. It's not an air of sarcasm I speak as I respect there are those out there with wisdom they want to share that perhaps can give us all a breadcrumb of a clue on how to get to a place where we can be truly happy. Some people read and apply and there is an amazing change, alot of hard work and voila-- success. So then what about those of us that don't seem to come to it so easily? Hold on wait.. better yet those that seem to have gotten it easy we may wanna look at their lives again... we might just see that the grass is not always greener on the other side. They are still working. There are those never ending lessons and those that revisit us when we think that we have conquered them. Do we dare to think that the same people that write these books we so often use as our road map to navigate life like a letter of the law don't struggle in themselves? How is it then that they have come up with so much material to write for you to read? They have been there themselves and one would ask themselves how did they come to a place to find some resolution of self love? They obviously had to find it somewhere. If I could guess I would say it was within themselves. We have become a society of quick fixes and spoon fed ideologies in which rarely these days do we have to think for ourselves. The intention of many of the writers I would want to so graciously say, pour their thoughts and energy onto pages hoping that you would truly help your self, which means THINK yourself and their book is but a guideline not meant for mindless regurgitation and temporary life application. Quick fixes don't change the fact that it is a tireless endless work to work on self. A dirty grimmy deep work that many of us don't want to get our hands soiled for but yet, what is the true point here to realize? What we are looking for is within ourselves....

No one has the capability to make us love ourselves more than we can. So the question is how is it that we choose martyrdom at the demising expense of ourselves over living a life of sacrifice that is invested in loving ourselves? Now let me clarify.. loving yourself is not to be confused with selfishness, narcissism or even arrogance. Loving self is knowing self worth and being able to make the necessary sacrifice of saying no to a relationship that is not serving you, setting up boundaries to not being taken advantage of, to walk away when you want to stay most, to try to fix someone that does not want to be fixed or to be a Savior to someone in which you can not walk on water yourself. We so often have a fear of being alone and being unloved and out fear creates desperation. This desperation straps a fluorescent vest and glowing batons that make you a landing strip that says "land here". Over and over again we guide people into our lives that should have never landed but kept it moving. We want to justify that it's a natural progression of lessons that were "supposed" to happen. Wonder if they were not? Do we think that we choose lessons or they choose us? It's like the question of what comes first, the chicken or the egg? No we can't always predict situations that come across our paths but we DO have choices on how they will play out in our lives. Nothing or no one has permission to enter our lives with out us acknowledging it, opening the door so to speak. We are always making decisions and one of those is will we look back and say " that was a lesson or this is a lesson". Do we ever think about when we most often call something a lesson in our lives? I tend to notice it's after we have not made perhaps the best decisions or exeperience regrettable outcomes of something that did not work out the way we so desired but we were a contributing factor to it. Don't think that many times you can't find YOU in the equation with your hand caught in the cookie jar. When are you gonna get tired of saying .. " that was a lesson learned"?

This has been a personal struggle for me as I find myself a walking example of someone that is discovering she needs to love self. You can love yourself to death over loving other people beyond what you can give and should give. You keep realizing that you grow more weary realizing that if you allow it, people will take, life will take from you and if you lack self love where is your replenishing reserve? Why are you giving away what you won't give yourself first. We want to give everyone the benefit of the doubt and what about giving ourselves that? We don't understand the taking, but of what value does another see in taking from you if you don't give yourself any worth? It also becomes of no value to them in which maybe not maliciously, is mishandled without care. I am starting to see that how I love myself is how another will love me. It's a sobering estimate of myself that is hard to look at. I have become a personal martyr and in some twisted way find solace in the self sacrifice. Somehow it equates for me a back door means to find love and acceptance. I say backdoor because I haven't decided that love and acceptance coming through the front door is what I deserve. It's being face to face saying what I need and want and deserve, not because I had to "earn it" from anyone but they gave it to me willingly. It's honoring the truth in oneself to not manipulate through this self martyrdom, but to trust that you are more than enough. There is true wisdom within ourselves to have the discernment to create our own personal loving reality in us and our lives. We are beholden to nothing and freed to embrace everything we desire good in our lives. Yet, this is the greatest challenge many of us face.

It takes time to sit with oneself and be honest, yet it must be done. It takes focus to look into our own person and not at the other person. We can't keep running to the next fix without fixing ourselves. We don't want to keep coming back asking ourselves "why is this still happening"? or "why am I dating the same type of people" ? We don't want to keep saying that something was a lesson learned because we made unwise choices that got us there in the first place. It's time to stop perpetuating our old patterns and manifesting self sabotaging situations. As said many times no one can love you better than you. Sacrifice to let go of the world long enough to grab a hold of YOU and the love you deserve.


With soul,

Artistic soul