Your First Love
January 29, 2009 
28 Comments
In order to be in love with a woman or a man, who is the first person that you need to fall in love with?
Yourself.
How can somebody love you if you don’t love yourself? How can someone respect you if you don’t respect yourself?
You need to be in love with yourself. I like to call it “masturbation of your soul.” You have to fall in love with yourself first.
When you go out and do things everyday to meet women or men, you’re going out each day really enjoying yourself and loving yourself. You love what you do and love the moment so that you can create the energy within yourself to attract other people.
I love myself! I really do. Sure, there are things that I don’t like about myself – but I embrace those things, and I work on them. Overall, I’m totally in love with myself!
There are always going to be things that you don’t like about yourself. But first you have to accept that they exist. Once you accept those parts of you that you wish were gone, you’ll begin to accept yourself as a whole and love yourself entirely.
At this point, you can work on yourself from a much better place. Rather than being so critical and self-judgmental, you can really embrace yourself and who you are and learn from the lessons in your life. You can learn to embrace the whole beauty of what your life is.
I have a great new product for men and women that goes deep into the importance of self love. A must for anyone who wants and desires to attract that special person in their lives.
Check it out here for men and check it our here for women.
Too true words, David.
When it comes down to the nitty gritty, it all starts with you.
Well said, David. Often, we treat ourselves in ways which we would never treat anybody else, let alone that special person.
amazing post David. I read a post like this before, but it’s great you put it up again. good job!
“masterbation of your soul”- nice way of putting it D~
I really like the theme of this post about self-love, without self-love we will always not be fulfilled.
Love is all that really matter in the end.
I finally got a girlfriend, i’m so happy just want to pass by share my feeling with everybody. Things between me and that person are working out very well. We kinda met on http://homegear.com/r/?q=23127836&r=1301 , after couple times email back and forth we had 1st date. Long story short i ask her out on the 2nd date and now she’s officially my girl friend. Let me tell ya being mid 30 year-old guy is really hard to find a soul mate to be with. =]
Today’s blog is very touchy.
One way to learn to love yourself is to act as if you already do which means “fake it till you make it”
Another way to enhance your love and self-esteem is to be aware of your self talk (things you say inside your head).
Many of us have very harsh inner critics. When we make mistakes, a critical voice inside our heads bneat up on us, saying things like, “That was so stupid! I can’t do anything right! damn it what a loser! We need to replace these negatives messages into positives and say things like. If I made a mistake, so what! no body is perfect. I’ll know beter the next time.
In order to increase your confidence say something like, “I’m happy and successful. I’m powerful and I know how to control myself. I should appreciate everything that God gave it to me. I’m bright, loving, caring and worthy of love. So, love yourself, be good to yourself and treat yourself well.
Thanks!!
Anyone remember that movie “The Secret” that was all the rage a while back? I think the black lady was saying the same basic thing.
I do love myself! I am totally in LOVE with myself and love being ME! That’s the only person I want to be is me! I no longer let people put me in a box anymore based on their boxes that they are in. I really feel free to be me and am working on progressing in learning and practicing so that I may be free from the past and clear enough to enter a relationship when the time is right.
Tariq or David – I do have a question. Does that harsh critic EVER go away? Every time a bad thought comes into my head I know I am supposed to talk back to it positively to negate what it is saying. Does that ever go away though to where I live positively all the time? I guess I don’t understand how that works because I am not there yet. If you could offer some clarification, that would be nice. Thanks!
It took me 28 years to discover that, and all by myself. I event had to go through a personal crisis in order to get this insight.
I love myself and accept myself as I am. The starting point.
I love the woman that I have found within myself. I am thankful for each day of learning the goals in life. Each day is a blessing and a struggle for each of us. I am thankful for who God wants me to be. We have stumbling blocks that come up in life but we have to look out towards that ocean of life and question are we going to sink or float?
….yes…we swim!
Gabrielle,
I found this podcast to be very useful. Listen to that, it will help you, and to all members of david wygant.
http://www.pathwaytohappiness.com/podcast/self-judgment.mp3
Let me know if it helps.
Gabrielle,
I found this podcast to be very useful. Listen to that, it will help you, and to all members of david wygant.
http://www.pathwaytohappiness.com/podcast/self-judgment.mp3
Let me know if it helps.
lol david, masturbation of your soul!I guess any masturbation is better than no masturbation! : D
This past June I decided to just take care of me, except myself as I am and be happy. By August it was all starting to come naturally. Now when I sometimes fall back into the old Negative self talk, I catch it immediately and substitute something happy/positive. It seems that there is hardly a situation that you can’t put a positive spin on, or just walk away from it. It takes some effort to keep it all going, but it’s been well worth it. Being negative and hard on yourself doesn’t happen overnight, so we should allow ourselves time to reverse things. I’ve read that it takes a month to change a bad habit; seems like time well spent to me.
Another thing that has helped me greatly is to surround myself with positive people and things as much as possible. I remove myself from negative situations and people, and try not to dwell on anything that has no benefit to me and brings me down.
I don’t advocate living in a vacuum, but I haven’t watched the nightly news in ages. It’s just too negative. I figure that if it’s truly important, they’ll interrupt on the TV or radio. Perhaps that’s wierd, but it works for me.
Gabrielle – I know you directed your question to others, but I’ll chime in as it’s something I’ve worked on myself. I initially tried to just silence that harsh inner critic. I’ve since learned that ignoring or trying to silence that critic doesn’t work for me. I like to learn from my mistakes hoping to avoid repeating them. What I’ve done is when that inner critic speaks up I try to figure out what I’m being so critical of. Then figure out what I could have done to have steered things in a better direction, and then I’m completely done with it. It’s behind me and the harsh critic is gone, hopefully I was able to glean some lesson out of it, or some idea of how to approach a similar situation in the future. I also step back and realize that even though I might have done something I wasn’t completely satisfied with, I also did something that was good and that I was proud of. The things that I’m proud of ALWAYS outshine the bad, and there is ALWAYS something to be proud of. Pretty soon that harsh critic shuts up because it knows the positive voice will speak up and shut him down.
I also accept that I’m human and I’m going to always make mistakes. This applies to everything, not just approaching someone I find attractive. That’s my 2 cents.
Self-love is a tough concept when the inner dialogue is at a fever pitch. Sometimes we aren’t so willing to share ourselves fully with others. I’m talking self-disclosure. Do you suppose that’s because we don’t like ourselves enough or maybe sometimes too much?
Or is it the same thing?
Those of us that have been given the joy of being with people that enliven other peoples lives, know everything David is talking about. We almost don’t need to respond because we sit there there and nod and feel grateful we were so lucky to have had this chance in life to see it first hand and live it every day.
What DW and his team is teaching is about life and what it means to be alive. You read about them as Dating coaches but really they are so much more than that, they are life and motivational coaches..
It enlivens my daily routine to take the time and reflect on the daily topic. Maybe I know most that’s written but it’s always nice to take the time and talk to a lifelong beloved friend and make sure if she does not need a kick in the ass- Me, I am my best friend and I have to treat her with the outmost respect, just like I would others.
Gabrielle: The voice is your false self. Dont listen, thats the only way it lives. Observe but dont entertain, it will go away!
The false self, in Donald Winnicott’s developmental schema, refers to certain types of false personalities that develop as the result of early and repeated environmental failure, with the result that the true self-potential is not realized, but hidden. This idea appears in many papers and is fully presented in “The theory of infant-parent relationship” (Winnicott, 1965c).
Gabrielle, and anyone else who has nothing to do that read this babble.
I don’t think you can just add positive thoughts to replace the negative inner critic, sometimes we are consciously not aware how deep these thoughts goes, you can’t just do some positive coverups, it’s like a band aid on an infected wound, temporary no new germs but the infection is still there. Short term you can, but in the long term it will come back. I think you have allow your feelings and figure what that’s really the issue. All those I suck, I am horrible, I can’t do this is often a cover of some much deeper issues, I don’t think a quick fix just with positive thought will help long term. It’s a slow process where you slowly allow yourself to release the feelings, these thought will come up, but the more you learn to accept and release them you will finally reach a point where you are in control of them and they will be gone. I like to ask myself indirect question to my soul with “I wonder why/if” these indirect questions to my self often leads me to the real issues, it’s amazing if we listen to ourself how much we ourselves are able to fix or figure out. Once I really know what the issue is then my process of accepting and releasing become a walk in the park.
Be wary of having emotional goals for yourself. If I reach this then I will be a better person, then I will be happy. These emotional goals is what triggers you strong self critics if you don’t reach them. Not only did you fail you goal but also all the emotions you attached to them will come back at you ten folds. Lets say you goal: if I can only loose this weights everything will be different and I will be a happy person, well you did not loose the weight and now because you put all those emotional expectations with the weight loss the negative self judgement/critics come back full speed. You are a failure if I only I had lost the weight I would have been happy.
In any situation I always think what is the worst that can happen..Jf you don’t reach your goal sometimes when you answer that question you end up laughing as it seems so ridiculous. That is why just observing you feelings in a non judgmental way is the best way for you to be able to work on whats really going on in your mind. It is possible, but you have to practice it over and over, and slowly you self criticism will diminish. Within reason embrace your self criticism and look at it that it’s sign you have to work on something.
I you ever read about high end athletes this is something they work on all the time, there is no quick fix. It’s a process but you will need to search different self help tools try them and just stick with one your instinct feels is right. In the end you want to reach a point where you are your own therapist. But it requires practicing.
I have been very lucky never to have had very strong inner negative self doubts/critics, honestly I don’t worry about things that are out of my control, I might have very overall goal in life but there is no guarantee I will be able to reach them, and that’s ok. My son on the other hand has especially tremendous self doubt/critics, both in life and when he plays tennis, tennis is very hard inner game which really is the biggest obstacle to be really successful.
What looks like the closest what I have always used myself is the sedona method and what has helped my son a lot, it’s an easy tool to understand and they let you get the main idea of the program for free. It’s a great little simple tool. Besides once you sign up you get free email that covers different areas. But is just one of many. Another great book I have read is Tim Gallwey who has written a whole series of inner game books.
Marina
I’d just like to chime in with this thought: I think there is a reason for that inner voice – that critical voice, if you will. I know whenever I am acting in a way that I am not particularly fond of, my inner voice nudges me, reminding me that I am better than the way in which I am behaving. It reminds me to take a breath; take a step back to evaluate how I might be better, how the situation might be handled better. Sometimes it’s hard to do, but I don’t think that inner voice needs to be silenced, but rather, listened to. We can learn so much from simply listening to ourselves!
Elle
Do you know about the first instinct? Sometimes we can sense what the outcome of a situation can be. There are times I can sense certain things like how a person feels about me or etc. The voices can be actual thoughts coming in. I am on medication that I have to be careful of for it may mess up my ceretonium of the brain that controls thoughts. Just wondering. I sometimes get thoughts that should not be there. There is away that I deal with them though to keep them from coming back.
Sandra
So I guess it may come down to whether or not you have learned to trust your ‘little voice’…no?
First instinct/first impression?…..isn’t that different from the negative voice/thoughts we sometimes get?
The script/recording? I know all recorders have a stop button……
Hunter
do you remember the song by Simon and Garfunkel The Boxer: there is a lyric that says a man will hear what he wants to hear and disregards the rest. Looking for a place that they would know. Yes we do have a stop button but you can’t say that when you zone out that you are not thinking about certain things in your existence. A thought is words that can be spoken to you by someone or something that you seen what happened and how you interpreted in your own mind.
Sandra
No, I don’t remember the Simon and Garfunkel song, sounds like a nice song.
At times, we do hear what we want to hear and disregard the rest. We do interpret thoughts differently.
It is a nice song. It was sang possibly back in the seventies. And you are right men don’t think like women. But that is what we are here for.