Love Yourself, Love Others

It has been quite some time since I Blogged, but it is time to start writing again. Not everything can be said in the few words allowed by Facebook.



I have been reading Virginia Satyr lately and she has made some points that hit home to me. The first is about self-esteem. Satyr states that you cannot have relationships with other people unless you first have self esteem. In order to have healthy self-esteem you must be aware of the five freedoms. They are:

"The freedom to see and hear what is here, instead of what should be, was or will be.
the freedom to say what one feels and thinks iinstead of what one should
The freedom to feel what one feels instead of what one ought.
The freedom to ask for what one wants, instead of what one wants, instead of waiting for persmision.
The Freedom freedom to taks risks on one's behalf instead of always being safe and not rocking the boat."

For me each of these is a freeing statement. I will start with the first for this Blog. The freedom to see and hear what is here, instead of what should be, was or will be. We negativily effect our self-esteem when we do not allow ourselves to live in the here and now. Really, it is not about living in the hear and now, but about experiencing the here and now. We miss so much in life when we do not see and hear what is here. We miss time with out children, because we are worrying about how we are going to pay bills. We miss time with out spouse, because we have not truly left our job yet. We miss time with a good freind because we are too worried about those things that we should be doing, like cleaning the house, mowing the yard etc. We miss the childhood of our children because we are looking forward to when they can walk, talk, go to school, drive, graduate and then move out. Before we know it, the future is here and we have missed the present of the present.

If we want to have healthy relationships with ourselves and others we must learn to be present in the here and now for others. Some many times we should ourselves to death and get angry because we need to be doing something else and we overlook the possibilities of the now. The Bible tells us not to worry about tomorrow because today has enough worries of its own. This seems to me to be saying the same thing. Don't miss today because you are living in the land of what if.

Perhaps sometimes we do feel like we deserve to enjoy ourselves. It as if we can work our way to salvation or make up for something that was lacking in our childhood or inside of us. We can exist in the here and now only when we can accept ourselves just as we are. I work with children with Autism and thier parents. One of the most important things many of the children a Iwork with need is acceptance as they are. Some parents can do this, they can accept the child as they are. Others act like the child must change or they cannot love them. Of course, they would never voice this outloud, but that is the way they act. For most of the latter type of parents, they never learned to accpet themselves as they are and fell inferior in some way or another. That judgemental person you know, they are really judging themselves when they judge others. If we want good relationships, to be able to accept others as they are, like Christ did, then we need to learn to accept ourselves as we are.

This does not mean we cannot change who we are. On the contrary, when we accept the way we are, it opens us up to changing the things we do not like about ourselves. Otherwise, we live in denial that those faults are there or we reject the good along with the bad. When we can do this for ourselves, we can do this for others as well.

Shalom