Rise in Self-Love

Excerpts from the book ‘Are you a SuperLeader?’ by Manoj J Lekhi.

 

There are these two sentences:

‘I love myself and I will do whatever I like’.

‘I love myself, I like whatever I do’.

 

There is a huge difference between the above two sentences.

First statement says that happiness comes only after you dowhat you like to do while the second statement explains that we are already happy and express our happiness in whatever we do. The first one falls under an impression where one’s

love is dependent on outside factors and external situations while the latter expresses self-love. Love yourself; don’t wait for outward happenings to feel the love.

 

Majority of people, almost 99% fall under the section where they seek love through various elements in their surroundings. Likewise, I feel happy when I have a Coca

Cola. If I get a new job or hike in my salary or a new car or bike, then I get a feeling of happiness, then I see love in my life. In this way happiness is dependent on an outer situation and is always witnessed after an event occurs. This happiness

is not self-love. This can be called as pleasure though we confuse it with happiness, as we saw earlier.

 

This further brings us to question what is that fi ne line between self-love and pleasure? We often are mistaken comparing love and pleasure to be on the same pitch.

 

Nothing is wrong with pleasure, in fact our pleasure enhances when we are joyful, it is like the icing on the cake. Pleasure is achieved from outside whereas love is derived from within. There are two phases for this, one, where we run behind

something for fulfilment versus when we are already fulfilled and express ourselves through that.

 

Let’s say, I love a particular sweet; when I consume that sweet I feel happy, versus I am happy with or without a sweet, and if I happen to have one, it is like a cherry on the cake. There is no harm in experiencing happiness through different situations or elements, but that’s temporary. When you derive happiness from within and love yourself, we find genuine happiness which is permanent and stays forever.

 

One is going upstream while other is going with the stream, one is flowing against the river, and other is flowing with the river. When you are already joyful, you express it through different mediums, be it dance, be it music, sports, studies or cooking. What matters is being joyful.

 

How to be in self-love and in genuine happiness, no matter what happens? When we start living joyfully without a reason, we start expressing it through our daily behaviour. The action which flows out sets a beautiful example in our life. Likewise, when action flows through anger, irritation and frustration it will always hamper one’s journey of discovering self-love and happiness.

 

Self-love, is a process where one dedicates one’s time for oneself, for the ‘inward journey’ in order to catch one’s thoughts, patterns, and beliefs. When a person rectifies these patterns, he identifies the blocking factors and uplifting moments and draws out the negative thoughts and welcomes the positive ones. There are number of practices that one can take up to discover this path of self-love. One such practice towards discovering the treasure of self-love, which we saw earlier is ‘LiYA 1HOUR’ where you spend one hour for yourself, every day, by cutting yourself off from the outer world and spending that joyous time in doing something you like and enjoy.

 

As we are trapped in outer worldly issues, we often reap fruits of irritation, disturbance, frustration, anger and even sometimes revenge. But when we spend our time on ourselves, we reap the fruits of hopefulness, joyfulness, peacefulness, blissfulness and godliness.

 

Let us start to live life by loving ourselves. A person who is in self-love feels fulfilled from within and for him/her life is all joy. Let us rise in self-love and embrace a beautiful life. A Super Leader focuses on self-love and experiencing his/her happiness.