Self Love!!! We hear a lot about self love these days. Most of the time, the information is aimed more on the outward things we can do to shift our mood or our thoughts about ourselves. But what happens when we correct the outside, but the heart is not moved, or changed by our "doings?" It is absolutely possible to change what you do outwardly and it not change how you feel about yourself or your perspective about yourself. So what do you do then? The 3 concepts described in this blog will be a great place to start when dealing with changing the heart.
Discover YOU
Not as easy as it may sound. Self love information ranges from activities such as taking a walk in nature, taking a nap, reading a book, listening to music to spending time with friends among other things. The point of self love is to reconnect to your sense of worth in a real way. It's about taking the time to give yourself what you need, soul wise, mentally, spiritually and physically. But what happens when you don't know yourself on those levels? It would possibly be like trying to feed a full person more food when they are dying for water! This is when becoming self aware or discovering yourself comes in handy. When regular self help activities don't seem to matter to your heart, that becomes an invitation for you to ask yourself, what authentically matters to me? Here is where we block out our past experiences and people and the things we have told ourselves to like and you mentally try new things, and observe how you feel about it first, and then simply try out new experiences or even old ones with a new mindset.
For example, I grew up in the country, where there was always lots of space, clean air and water and was told many times to go outside and not come back in until called.
I didn't particularly like being outside. There were too many bugs, the grass would creep me out because I never knew what could be lurking within it, and let's not even get started with the sun being way too hot or the wind was too windy or there was never enough shade. However, I didn't realize until I got older that there was something calming to my soul and spirit about being in nature. I would say that being apart of nature became a grounding experience for me. When I would inevitably get lost in my own thoughts, and stuck between my analytical mind and my creative mind, taking a walk or just observing a sunset or honestly being anywhere where I can connect to the Earth would always bring me back to living in the moment, and I realized something. My mind would become less cloudy, and my soul would be refreshed, and at that moment I could feel a sense of peace within my spirit and with myself, a sense of approval for myself and reconnect to my sense of worth found within my soul. I was no longer at odds with myself but I could settle in that moment and my heart received what it needed. However, if I would have recalled my younger years' experiences, I would not have discovered this powerful way for me to feel empowered from the inside out!
So as you are discovering you, accept no assumptions, give yourself a clean slate, lay aside all judgments and experience what's in front of you with fresh eyes and an open heart.
Rid your Heart of Offenses
My my my! No one likes to talk about it but one of the biggest reasons in my profession (Christian Relationship Coach) that I have discovered that stops healing, love, peace, joy, enjoyment and pleasure, is offense. It is impossible to receive sunlight into your heart, if your focus is on holding onto offenses. The best way to describe offense that I've heard is to have resentful hurt or displeasure. Resentfulness always means there is hurt or injury that is involved and with hurtful feelings or an injury comes blame, anger, irritation, frustration and sometimes retaliation over what has happened. Allowing this type of feeling into your heart to live there occupies the space that love is suppose to have. No one can be vengeful and loving at the same time. With every passing day that we let darkness take over our hearts, it keeps us bitter, ungrateful and shuts down our ability to feel and experience soulful rejuvenation. Which means self love talk and activities will not have a lasting effect if any at all. When it comes to self love, holding on to offenses, becomes a distraction from seeing and dealing with the actual wound. Healing does not begin until we can say, I am offended, and I am hurt and angry by what has happened. This is an intentional act! Releasing and letting go of the things that have deeply hurt us has to be intentional. If we don't intentionally deal with offenses they will stay and grow, most of the time, undetected until we find ourselves not being grateful for anything any longer.
So what do I have to do to rid myself of offense? Forgive! 1)Release what you thought should have happened (or what they should have done according to you), 2) Accept that the experience happened, accept your true feelings of being hurt, ashamed, taken advantage of, anger etc.... (When you allow your true feelings to come in and be expressive, it moves you forward through the process towards releasing it. It's ok, to feel the emotions until it's done. Do not intentionally wallow, but allow your true feelings to have the floor for a moment). 3) Accept the truth about the situation. 4) Release it!!
When you release the issue and forgive the one that offended you, you take your power back. You are saying "I will no longer let you control my future happiness by what you did in the past." You become empowered to face tomorrow free from darkness and now able to receive rejuvenation and healing for your heart. This is the ultimate act of self love that any of us can do for ourselves. For without a heart that can feel love because it's been blocked by offenses, we are doomed to live a life without true pleasure, affection, enjoyment and love that can be felt and experienced throughout the soul, spirit, body and mind, which is God's will for us. "That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, that you being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend....what is the breadth, length, and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ, which passess knowledge, that you might be filled with all the fulness of God." (Eph. 3:17) We cannot hope to comprehend this kind of love with a heart that is bound with offense. Let's start today and intentionally release every block keeping us from receiving healing within our hearts.
Pleasure
Such a taboo word for Christians...lol. I know. So let me quickly clear it up.
The Bible says (Psalms 16:11) "For you shall show me the path of life: in your presence is the fullness of joy and at your right hand, there are pleasures forevermore. " So God created pleasure so you could have it. But this type of pleasure God talks about, is not worldly or lustful. It is the kind of pleasure that can only be found in His presence. When God teaches you how to receive His love to the fullest, without works and pours out His forgiveness of all your sins and you become fully persuaded that the Creator of the entire Universe, does love you deeply, beyond comprehension, you experience a pleasure that can't be duplicated by any worldly means nor by any stimulated living. This pleasure is felt on all levels and nothing here can even touch it. Christ says it like this. "These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you and that your joy might be full." or "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you, not as the world gives, give I unto you." These are pleasures that are independent of what's happening around us. But how does this relate to Self love?
Life can be very tough and I'm sure we have all had our fair share of disappointments and heartaches, struggles and pain. Because of this, it is easy for the heart to numb out. The only problem is that no matter what we do, we will always feel the negative things as deeply as possible. Without effort. Without being intentional. However, it takes work to unload your heart of all burdens and negativity and bravery to be willing to experience the pleasures life brings our way on a deeper level. We daily miss opportunities to experience pleasure deeply. Most of the time, it's for fear that it will be taken away from us. Sometimes, we don't realize how important it is to stop and feel things deeply, so we say we don't have time. Then we end up opting for worldly pleasure, or stimulated living that keeps our adrenaline flowing and or events that help numb us out to the pain, instead of opening up for the pleasures God gives us. (Psalms 37:4) Delight thyself also in the Lord, and He shall give thee the desires of you heart. Delighting yourself is the same as taking the time to experience the enjoyment. When was the last time you let yourself enjoy the experience of you? Do you authentically enjoy your own sense of uniqueness? Do you take pleasure in your sense of humor, or your perspective or your talents and quirkiness. Do you stop to enjoy being you? Be pleased with who you are. Don't just accept you! Be genuinely pleased with your beauty of spirit and mind and body. Be genuinely pleased with how far you've come. Be pleased with how you show up in the world. This may sound strange but accepting yourself is one thing, but being happy and at peace with yourself is another. This sense of enjoyment increases the power of your self love. Don't just take a walk. Enjoy who you are on that walk. Enjoy what you notice and don't notice. Enjoy what makes you smile. Enjoy what you feel and think about while walking. This is truly you falling in love with you!!! This is how Christ passionately loves you! For he notices when your "countenance has fallen" and wishes to exchange your "spirit of heaviness with a garment of praise." The ironic thing is, this is how we love others. We enjoy what they have to say, who they are, how they show up in the world, their perspective and their uniqueness. Let's take that same love and extend it to ourselves so that our self-love can become more powerful and even more effective when we need it to be.
In Conclusion, healing the heart can be extensive work. However, each of us is empowered daily to feed our soul, spirit, soul, mind and body what it needs in order to feel weak or more alive. When we embrace the acts of self love, let's make sure to make sure it reaches our hearts so that our lives can indeed be changed from the inside out.
As a passionate and goal oriented certified professional coach and minister, Jennifer has a Master's in education and a background in creative teaching, which allows her to provide out of the box solutions for her clients. Jennifer feels that Christian coaching is her calling and has coached hundreds of clients successfully worldwide. One of her strongest gifts is helping her clients overcome obstacles by matching them specifically to the right strategies for ultimate success in the their love relationship with God, themselves and with their spouse. She also uses prayer, and affirmations to help build up her clients so that the success that is experienced will be lasting. If you would like to learn more about Jennifer Suggs and Power"FULL" Living, can be found here. www.powerfullliving.com .
If you would like sign up for Christian Relationship Coaching that will help restore your relationship with God, yourself or your spouse, click on the link to learn more and/or schedule a time. https://powerfullliving.lpages.co/schedule-coaching-call. Any questions, feel free to email me: powerfullliving@aol.com.