Favorite Inspirational Quotes

I have an everyday religion that works for me.  Love yourself first, and everything else falls into line.

Lucille Ball

One of the commandments in the Bible says something about loving your neighbor as yourself.  Looks like other religions besides Ball’s everyday religion put a lot of emphasis on loving yourself first as well.  After all, if you don’t love yourself how do you treat other people?

Then, too, is the analogy of putting on your own air mask on the plane first before helping someone else.  I just used that with one daughter who is stressing over the events in an on-again, off-again significant other’s life when she has more than enough in her own life she needs to handle first.  She needs to love herself and take care of herself first.

You have to take care of yourself first before you are truly capable of taking care of others.  This starts with loving yourself.  If you don’t love yourself, you won’t take care.  This I know only too well and is an area in which I have so much work to do.

Sometimes that takes a lifetime to learn especially if you’ve been indoctrinated with the idea that it is your job and your life’s purpose to sacrifice yourself for others.  So many women of my mother’s generation were raised this way.  This just uses up all your life energy till there’s nothing left.  Then it can be a long slow process toward loving yourself and even feeling like it’s OK to take care of yourself.

It takes study, meditation and kindness toward yourself.  Start with loving acts toward yourself.  I think if we learn to treat ourselves kindly, we learn to treat others kindly as well.

Tags: loving