MENTAL DIET: MAXIMIZING THE FOUR LEVELS OF RELATIONSHIPS (2)
RELATIONSHIP WITH YOURSELF
Love requires self-esteem and independence. It is based on your ability to share yourself with others out of choice and not out of dependent necessity. A harmonic relationship between two individuals is one in which both have the ability to sustain themselves separately.
- HERBERT HARRIS
Your capacity to give and receive love hinges on your capacity to love yourself. To have a harmonious and succeeding relationship with other people, your relationship with God must be updated and you must have a healthy and balanced relationship with yourself.
This implies that until your relationship with God is in sync, your relationship with yourself will be out of sync with what you were created to be, and when you are out of sync with your true self or identity your relationship with others will be out of balance and harmony.
You must never diminish your sense of importance nor should you exaggerate your sense of importance. The modest but accurate estimation of your importance breeds confidence in what you were created to be. You will manifest confidence with others because you are aware that you are important even as the other person is important. This breeds mutual respect.
The way you treat others emanates from the way you see others and the way you see others is birthed out of the way you see yourself. If you feel miserable about your life, you will extend the same misery to others. Until you value and respect yourself you will remain unable to value and respect others.
You must be on good terms with yourself before you can ever be on good terms with other people. Until your self-acceptance is in place; self-respect is out of place. Forgiving yourself is giving yourself permission to forge ahead. Ignoring you breeds ignoble living. When you don’t like yourself you subconsciously suggest to people not to like you.
The ability to see yourself objectively and honestly is an indicator of a healthy relationship with yourself. The beginning of a healthy relationship with self is to recognize and live in the awareness that you are absolutely responsible for yourself and consequently take personal responsibility for your actions. Failure to care for yourself in your spirit, mind, emotions, and body breeds failure or friction in your relationships with other people.
Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” This is one of the first commandments that you must comply with in order to unlock the success package. This presupposes that you cannot love your neighbor without first of all loving yourself. Until love is internalized, it can never be externalized.
Unconditional love proceeds from your experience of the love of God and is lubricated by the depth of value and respect you have for your own life. This abundance of unconditional love then overflows and extends to make a difference in the lives of others. But until your self-esteem is determined by your intrinsic worth, you will be handicapped of the security that equips you with the capacity to give unconditional love to others.
Furthermore, your intrinsic worth is not based on your background, opinions of people, or other external factors, but on your value as a person, which God made in His image to fulfill a unique purpose on earth. Positive self-esteem upholds self-value.
Developing a healthy relationship with self is not an easy pie to chew but it takes chewing the humble pie because when you begin developing an honest, objective relationship with yourself, fear will rock within by what you see but you must have sufficient self-esteem to dare to see your actions for what it is in order to grow above it and make changes to become the best version of yourself and have succeeding relationships with others.
An extrinsic source of self-esteem makes life ineffective and jeopardizes the very elements that cement the fabric of success. The source of your self-esteem creates an inner core from which the basic tenet of your life emanates and shapes the frame through which you see the world.
