Love – A Gift to Yourself

Love – A Gift to Self

• Do you often give love to others?
• Do you have others around that love you?

Most people say yes to one or both of those points. However, how often, if ever, do you think about giving love to yourself? Perhaps you find the last question rather unusual. If so, perhaps you have not experienced self-doubt. If in doubt, read on.

 

In my case, self-doubt became apparent with the changes in my abilities and reduction in capacity. From a usually productive fulfilling day, it shrunk to one of fatigue and frustration.

My world shrunk in the available hours, rapidly and significantly. My body was not performing, my mind was blank, my memory was compromised. The fatigue left me exhausted and easily distracted, I couldn’t concentrate to read and my memory was so poor, I had difficulty remembering the names of people, even those close to me.  My job was simply unmanageable.

No longer could I function at the level I had known. Worse, no longer could I trust my abilities to sustain a job. All this caused a real loss of confidence.  At that time, I was in a type of denial. I had been told by the specialists that this may continue for a while, but recovery would not be far away – maybe a few months or a bit longer.

Like everything in in life, there is a spectrum of how people respond.  It became obvious the treatment affected me in more ways than many others.

 

DISCOVERY

Left feeling like an outlier as the nature of my response to treatment did not fit neatly in the bell curve, it dawned on me that it was MY problem to sort out. I adopted an approach to reverse my situation choosing to do good things for body, mind and soul.  But I had to do it in a way that made sense to me, and the messages my body was giving me. It did not reverse the situation. What it did was drive my focus, and whilst it didn’t turn anything around in a hurry, it contributed to my ongoing improvement towards a ‘new normal’ for me or rather learning to live an adapted life based on a ‘norm no more’.

 

LOVE of SELF

People in my life were incredibly supportive and encouraging during this time.  However, regardless of what they said and did, I was the only one who really knew the difference between the BT (before treatment) and the AT (after treatment).  It was a significant step change and being self-critical for not being able to perform at BT standard, was not helping. I had to find resilience within myself and to set up my own benchmarks to build myself up.

That is where a love of self and self-love comes in. I knew I had to become gentle on myself, to accept the circumstances as they were, and importantly, build upon the things I had and manage those areas that had diminished or gone. That was a turning point. In acknowledging even the smallest of things that I could achieve, they became the biggest things. I would reward myself, as no one else was going to reward me for some of the things I did, that to them would be nothing, but to me was a landmark victory.

The GLLASHIO guide is the gift, that I gave myself to take me through that difficult time and I continue to get benefit from using it.

 

CONCLUSION

In my experience, when love is not around, nor the support you may be looking for, try giving the gift of love to yourself. It may seem strange at first, though it’s not long before you see and feel the value in yourself!  Find a way that makes you feel worthwhile, good, deserving – however small that may be. Use affirmations, self-talk, experiences that make you feel good, do something constructive and meaningful for yourself.

You can find it. Take the time to look. Be gentle on yourself and trust that something will speak to you from your inner being. Acknowledge yourself, reward yourself and above all be grateful for life itself.