“The greatest love of all is easy to achieve…
Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all.”
You arrived in this world with the expectation that you would be loved. You were programmed to love in return. So, what went wrong…?
There are many phrases and “buzzwords” being thrown around on social media. Loving yourself is one of those phrases. Toxic thinking is another.
But just how do you love yourself in a healthy manner?
How do you shift toxic mindsets?
And what is the connection between the two?
The key is to understand the causes. Then you can begin to experience what it feels like to nurture yourself. You can find emotional release and well-being in balance with mental well-being (no, they are not the same!) You can experience growing self-worth, self-esteem, and self-belief. As these vital affirmations of self are put into place, letting go of any toxicity in your life becomes easy. You find a place of ease with yourself. As you truly begin to love yourself, the beauty within you shines outward into the world.
You are a complex being, being comprised of the physical, emotional, energetic, psychological and the spiritual. Any aspect can go out of balance because of the emotional wounds and hurts you may have passed through in childhood. This is well-recognised and documented (The Effect of Childhood Trauma on Adult Attachment Styles).
The patterns of childhood then repeat throughout your life interwoven with generational patterning, unless there is a healing intervention. The most destructive effect of emotional trauma is damage to self-worth, upon which toxic self-beliefs are based. Life can then rise to meet those expectations and to confirm them, trapping you in a negative spiral of repetition. Healthy self-worth is linked to higher levels of happiness and lower levels of stress.
The following 7 vital steps are offered as a way to break out of this self-defeating pattern of lack of self-worth and toxic thinking by increasing your self-awareness.