Ever felt like something were in your way?

Maybe you feel like something is preventing you from doing what you want; Starting that blog you are thinking about since last year or leaving that job you don’t like at all. Maybe it’s changing your hair or something more complicated like leaving a toxic relationship. And what if you can? What if we remove that block in front of you. What if we remove you of your own way?

There’s an easy way to achieve anything you ever dreamed of and stop acting as if your only goal was to sabotage yourself. Whatever type of goal you are setting, there’s this one little (huge) detail we often forget to talk about; Your own appreciation of self. This article is designed to help you understand how loving yourself a little bit more will facilitate your life and everything you want to achieve. And bonus; it’s free.

You are either in team A or B;

• Either you believe that you’re a divine creation that holds the power to create and have an impact in this world;
• Either you believe that you’re just a man and your existence and death won’t change anything in the greater scheme of things.

Whatever it is, I’m on your side. Because you are right AND wrong.

You are a divine creation. Everything from your nails to your brain is absolutely amazing. The way you think is exceptional. The way you create is a unique form of art. The way you love and make other people feel is your impact in this world.

On the other hand, your life is pretty much useless, and your death will only affect the one close to you and won’t change anything at all. Some will mourn for a decade, others a year and some only a week, then they will go on with their life.

It sounds harsh I know, but it’s the first step toward a more loveable self.

Understanding these two things will allow you to make something amazing; Standing right in the middle.

What does it mean? It means that you must know that there’s unlimited potential waiting to be free inside of you. But if you don’t, someone else will unchain his and your existence will have been pretty much worthless for the universe.

The decision is yours.

How do we define our worth?

How we define it will be different for each and every one of us, but there’s this process of judgment we all go through. Caring about what people think of us and how we will be perceived by our relative or loved ones is something that affects us all. We all want, at some point, to fit in — To be loved. No one wishes to end up alone living a life without love.

We live in society, and as far as we can go in human history, your worth was based on how other tribe members were valuing you. If you were lazy and not bringing any food or novelties to the tribe, you were considered useless and your chance to survive or find a partner was below zero.

We still carry some of that cultural behavior in today’s world. Instead of being judged on our usefulness to the tribe, a.k.a. society, and our reproductive potential, we are judged on a lot of useless aspect that we think defines ourselves — career, salary, car, clothes, followers, relationship status, and the list goes on. In reality, it only prevents us from being who we truly are (which could be much more useful to the tribe).

There’s what you think about others and what others think about you. This is the starting point of any of our emotions, actions, and behaviors. How we feel, how we interact and what we do with our lives are often dictated by these two variables.

But, what if somewhere along the way a third variable was corrupting the two others? Making us behave in totally different ways than what we truly wanted to — ending up diminishing our worth.

We must add to the equation “What you think others think of you.” This is it! The one thing we knew was there but haven’t been able to see all these years. Preventing us to do what we always wanted to. Making us do all type of crazy shits only to “feel comfortable about ourselves” and creating a (false) sense of worth; studying something you didn’t even like, accepting a job only for the money, having a kid to please your mom. He’s the one pulling the strings and we all want to be loved at the end, so we behave under its control.

See it like this; how you will perceive yourself will directly affect “what you think others think of you” therefore, you will see them and act according to your judgment, and your peers will judge you upon this behavior.

If in your head your existence worth shits and nobody’s loving you, you will always behave upon a feeling of shame and powerlessness, and you will be judged upon this behavior; as a powerless and useless person. And guess what; they will treat you like so. This is a vicious circle.

Good news is, loving yourself will let you truly expressing your true nature and be loved for what you are. Ironically, it will take away the power of the judgment of others at the same time. When you know your worth, you don’t need other opinions. You don’t need them to approve or not what you are. This is who you are, in all of its magnificence and all of its catastrophes.

A simple guide to love yourself

Truth is, we all have trouble loving ourselves for what we truly are for a myriad of reasons. But it all starts from the same place; we want to fit in and be loved — at least by the ones we care about the most.

Somewhere along the line, you’ve been told a story that defines what you think of your being. By repeatedly telling these stories, they become a form of affirmation. Devaluating your worth as soon as they can.

At a certain moment in your life, you experienced a situation that made you feel terrible — a kind of small trauma. Your brain, to protect you, wrote a story to remember yourself how it felt when this situation happened. Maybe at the age of 6, you felt on the ground in a room full of grown-ups, laughing at your clumsiness, and no one picked you up to tell you everything was fine. You might have felt ashamed and from this moment, every time you found yourself in a room full of people, you were afraid to fell, to be ashamed again, you might even felt stressed up for no reasons. It could have been at school or at home, but our personalities are built from these experiences. We are constantly trying to avoid these bad feelings we once had.

In fact, every time you find yourself in a situation similar to the ones who hurt you before, your body remembered the pain it felt and a little part of your brain called the Amygdala kicks in. She is responsible for the flight or fight effect. Her job is to keep you alive in dangerous situations.

“In dangerous situations.”

I think a lot of us should redefine what a dangerous situation is. Because being judged on your choices, clothes or point of view isn’t dangerous at all for your life. So, it’s kind of a brain bug we’re all experiencing on a daily basis. Knowing that this is happening, we can take control over the phenomenon.

This is where the real work begins

As of today, you got to understand that you have the power to stop your Amygdala kicking in and modify your behavior. It’s like if at a certain point, you were becoming her puppet. Is it the dog wagging his tail or the tail wagging his dog? You either pull the strings or being played with.

The decision is yours.

The quest for self-worth is way more complicated than that, but it is the first step toward loving yourself and it will be enough for today.

Here’s your homework:

I want you to write what you think about yourself and what you think others think of you.

Don’t be too kind or too harsh. Be as neutral as you can and as honest as possible. The goal here is not to tear yourself apart, it’s to see if there’s a difference between your judgment and the one you think others have.

Once it has been done, I want you to write at least five things you are proud of about yourself. It could be a talent, something you’re doing well, the way you make people feel. Anything that makes you loveable.

Now you know how the strings are pulled — and who’s pulling them — and knowledge is Power.

Albert Einstein said: “Either you believe everything is a miracle or nothing is a miracle.”

That stands for you too. The moment you look at yourself resentfully and with shame, you start digging your own grave, doing everything that is bad for your being. But as soon as you choose to see yourself as something amazing and powerful is the moment you begin to make the right choice for you and the ones you love.