21 Jun 2021 · 6 min
Brendon Burchard argues self-love starts with awe at simply being alive, then builds through a clear personal vision and daily alignment with it. Guilt can redirect you toward better behavior. Give yourself credit for small steps, and look to people who've survived illness and loss while keeping faith in themselves.
Chapters
It's easy to start comparing yourself to other people and then feel down about yourself. But we have to remove other people from the equation about how we feel about ourselves. We even have to remove, at some point, sometimes our own stupid thoughts, our own bad actions, our own poor habits. And we have to start with the fact that whether you call it the universe, luck, chance, God, evolution, spirit, whatever you call it, you've been blessed with breath that you are alive. Right now, the odds of that is so extraordinarily rare that I really believe loving ourselves starts from a place of reverence for life. So when people say love yourself, I go, yeah, you know what? First love life be honoring of the fact that you are alive. Love yourself because you've been granted life. You've been given this gift of life. There must be a reason or a purpose or a mission behind that. At least that's what I believe. I believe in God. I believe in the fact that the odds of us all being here is pretty rare. That may not be your belief, and that's totally cool, but what I really do hope is that you have a reverence for your life, an appreciation, a deep gratitude, a sense of enjoyment or enthusiasm that you're alive. That's where loving yourself has to start. From outside of self, outside of others, right? Starting from that place, everything can turn for you in positive directions. If you really want to love yourself, have a vision for yourself and be congruent with that person. That's how you really love yourself. A lot of people hate themselves because they have a vision for who they really want to be, and they're never acting like that. They see themselves as an honest person, but they're lying all the time, so they hate themselves. They see themselves as a healthy person, but they choose junk food, three meals a day, and then they feel bad about themselves. And I usually say, you know what? I don't think we need to hype up that person. I think that person should feel negative about their behaviors. You know, there's a lot of us who don't want to feel the guilt of doing a bad job. But sometimes feeling that guilt allows us to do a better job. You know, sometimes we don't want to feel bad for the behaviors that we did that hurt someone's feelings. But you know what? Sometimes feeling bad about what you did that was wrong can set you back on the right path. So I say, have a vision. Who do you want to be? And what I've tried to do in my own life so that I care about myself and I respect myself, is say, how do I want to be as a person in the world? Like, what do I want to stand for? And then I say, how do I want to treat other people? And then I say, what would I have to grow into to serve at the next level? And then I aim my behaviors and my habits and my thought patterns each and every single day to be that person, to. To treat people like that and to ultimately become that person I'm aspiring to be. We're never, ever gonna be perfect. But if we can sense we're progressing towards a higher ideal of ourselves, like, if we can feel like, yeah, I am becoming better at what I do, kinder to other people, more like the best version of myself, then we'll love ourselves. We'll feel a deep gratitude and a sense of connection with ourselves because we're being congruent with the best of our. Best of our. Give yourself credit because people are so hard on themselves. Give yourself credit for the small steps you took this week, but in general, give yourself credit if you have a caring heart and you're still nice to people. Oh, my God. Give yourself credit if you have a passion, but it hasn't been paying off the way you hoped it to, but you still believe in it, and you're still working diligently. And give yourself some credit if you know you've been mistreated and someone was a jerk to you, but you still have love in your heart and you still believe in the power of a beautiful relationship for yourself. Give yourself credit. Sometimes the way to love ourselves is to recognize the extraordinary power we have and the strength within that still believes. I've dealt with the most difficult situations. People who were literally in their last days of life, people who've been disabled, paralyzed, lost jobs, lost spouses, lost kids. And when people describe those hardships and difficulties and, you know, just strings of bad luck, the ones who I know will make it are the ones who can describe it and still have a belief that things are going to get better, who still believe in themselves, believe in their God, believe in their family, believe in their faith, believe in their goal, believe in their heart, believe in others. That those people, there's still a kernel of belief there. And that thing never dimmed. And even if it dimmed for a little bit, it came back stronger because they knew that the struggle would lead to progress, that the struggle caused the transformation for them to grow to that next level. And I'll tell you, if you still have belief in your heart after all the hardships you've had in your life. And it's so much easier to believe in yourself and to love yourself because you'll give yourself credit. But if you won't give yourself credit, man, ain't nobody going to be able to do it for you. There's no external person or reward, accomplishment, bank balance, new job, fancy car, new place to live that's going to help you love yourself. Because wherever you go, there you are. So you got to learn to give yourself credit and still believe. And then it's easier to care for yourself.