How to love yourself: Finding your Inner Child

Today I’m doing something slightly different. This post isn’t so much about my current challenge, but about the new philosophy and attitude to life I have adopted since starting this whole thing. I am on a journey towards true self love – and this is my theory on how to get there.

Imagine you have a child.

Some of you may not have to imagine.

How would you treat this child of yours?

Would you feed them junk food every day? Would you starve them? Or make sure they have a balanced, nutritious diet?

Would you let them sit in front of the TV/computer every day and night? Or would you make sure they get outside and get exercise so that they can be fit and strong?

Would you let them get bored? Or would you give them stimulating activities to do? Would you limit their experience of the world, or encourage them to explore it? Would you teach them nothing, or help them to learn?

When that child makes a mistake, would you punish them endlessly? Or would you help them learn and move on?

When that child feels sad, would you let them wallow and indulge or would you try to cheer them up? When something bad happens to them, would you blame them for it? Or would you help them through it?

Basically what I’m asking is: if you had a child to look after, would you neglect that child? Or would you treat it with love and kindness. I’m sure you’re all thinking the latter.

We all know how to love other people, whether it’s children, friends, family, even pets. We know how we should treat them. But we don’t seem to know how to treat ourselves.

If a child is neglected they start to think that they are worthless. They blame themselves. They become unhappy, unhealthy people. They cannot love themselves because they don’t know love. But when a child is loved they can feel it. They start recognize their own value, because they see how much they are valued by others.

Now I think you know where I’m going with this.

If you want to feel happy, you have to treat yourself with the love and care that you would treat that child with. Eat well, exercise, find balance between work and play, encourage yourself to learn more and experience more, stimulate your brain, forgive yourself when you make mistakes, do things that make you feel good. And by good I mean genuinely good, not ‘this is gonna hurt tomorrow good’ (although there’s room for that sometimes – indulgences are good too!)

If you don’t treat yourself with love, you won’t feel like you deserve it. If you don’t treat yourself with respect, you won’t feel like you deserve it. Happiness comes from within, and you are the only person who can make that happen. So find that inner child, and stop neglecting them.

As for the challenge – I am finding myself spending a lot less time vegetating and a lot more time thinking, feeling, doing, talking, writing. I think we can expect more posts like this this month.

Twenty four more days.