
But here is the danger: What you neglect to give yourself mentally and emotionally you will seek to get from others in unhealthy ways. It leads to insecurity, fear, anxiety and co-dependency. And in the end, it is never enough. No amount of love or respect from another person can adequately substitute for the foundational love and respect you withhold from yourself. Like a bottomless cavern, you demand more and more but are never satisfied for long. Here is the paradox: when you don’t love and respect yourself, you can never fully receive love and respect from others, even from God. It literally prevents the love and respect from being felt, known, and experienced in your life. You desperately crave it but there is no place for it to stick and take hold. It is like a coating of polytetrafluoroethylene—akaTeflon—keeping out the very love and respect you desire.
The love, acceptance and respect that comes from others can only compliment that which you are already practicing toward yourself, but it will never undo, outdo, or make up for it.
In last week’s post, I introduced the idea that we all have a relationship with our self. You begin transforming this relationship when you stop looking to others as the foundational source for feeling loved, respected and accepted. FIRST you love, respect and accept yourself, THEN you can rightly give and receive it from others others. The way you treat yourself creates a filter for all other treatment from others. It effects not only how you interpret their treatment, but also the kind of treatment you actually allow or tolerate from them.
You accept the treatment from others that is congruent or corresponding with how you are already treating yourself. When you treat yourself with kindness, then your filter is set to receive predominantly kindness from others. You will find yourself surrounded more and more by kind people and will not tolerate those that try to mistreat you. However, when you are harsh and critical with yourself, your filter is set to receive mostly criticism from others. You will hear and see criticism from others (even if that was never their intention) and you will allow critical people to stay close to you.
You may not like it, maybe even complain or fuss about it…but you tolerate it because it fits with how you already treat yourself inside.
Only YOU can create this for yourself, and I can show you how.
To Your Great Life!
Becky