There have been a lot quotes floating around out there these last few days about the whole idea of loving oneself.  No one can love you til you love yourself . . .     Love yourself and all else falls into place . . . . and so on and so forth.  You all know them.  And these things are true.  Always have been.

Formerly, I believed the purpose of such quotes were for those melancholy lonely romantics that have no self worth without love in their life.  Focus on loving yourself and Mr. or Miss Wonderful will fall in your lap.  Well, that’s bogus.  Not the whole “love your self before others can truly love you” bit.  I get that.  Whatever.  That message isn’t for me.  I am not really concerned about other people loving me right now.  Not really high on my priority list.  Especially romantic love.  Ish.   No room in my life for that crap right now.

But, I really need to listen to the preachy “love yourself” propaganda.  Because it truly is about more than how other people see you.  How you see yourself, feel about yourself influences every aspect of your life.  Your life is based on perception.  How you feel about yourself alters how you perceive EVERYTHING.  I am a true believer in this.  I believe in this more now than I ever did when I did indeed have love for myself.  Funny how now that it is gone, I can see how it truly affects my life.  I didnt see how I benefitted from self love when I had it.

Having your identity wiped from your life, hitting the reset button on your sense of self, alters how you see, accept, and love yourself.  The standards you hold yourself to, the criteria you judged yourself by, they do not change over night, even when your person does.  Those things lag behind.  Dramatically.

So, with the journey of rebuilding your life and figuring out who you are again, you have the added struggle of relearning how to love yourself.   For most of us it took the better part of two decades to form our identities and build self-esteem.  Even though they continue to grow and change, you did the hard work, progressed over developing years like everyone else.  To do that all over again, with a sense of urgency ( I need to accept myself NOW!!)  . . . well, lets just say it is a very different process.

A big chunk of it becomes a choice.  Mental gymnastics.  Choose the proper perspective.  Think the right way.  But no matter how you spin it, deciding you love yourself and doing so are very different things.  Its a bit more complicated . . .  and yet fundamentally simple all the same.  Simple.  Not easy.

If you pull yourself out of the equation for a minute and look at why we love.  Value.  We love because we value.   Simple concept.  We value our friends, our family, our pets.  Because they have value to us, we love them.    For those of us that love life and believe in the preservation of wildlife, and the environment, and people, we do so because we see the value in all life.   For those that love their money and their cars: its all about what one values.  Screwed up priorities not withstanding.

Bring yourself back into the picture.  What does it mean for those of us living life without love for ourselves?  We hold no value in ourselves.  For those that do love themselves they know themselves to be of value.

Its kind of a scary thought to know that truly, deep down, I see no value in myself what so ever.  The realization of something like that is far scarier than the oppressive life style of not loving yourself.  The understanding of that simple concept is ground shaking.  This is where I was when it hit me:  There is something very wrong with that.

It changed my battle tactics.  I have been hanging on to the excuses . . .the reasons why i do not love myself, with a mile long list of all the things I wasnt anymore.  sabotaging my progress.  The reality of it is . . .   well . . .    i am not what i am not.  I am what i still am.

The people that love me, still love me, do because of what I am.  And the reality is, they never loved me for the things I was and am no longer, anyways.  Those things I lost,  the career, the organization, the cooking, the reading, the running, the eating, did not define my worth, my value.  They did not make people love me.

What things in people are of value?  What things make some one loveable?  What are the things that others have seen in me?  Can I see those things in myself?

I am sure I could.  If i looked.  I just need to start looking at those things.  Need to take the time to evaluate myself on truthful and worthy characteristics, like loyalty, honesty, charity, kindness.  Those are the things that make a person up from the inside.  Its not about what job they go to everyday or how clean their house is, or  how healthy one is.  The unhealthy, messy, under-employed people of the world still deserve to be loved.   And so do I.  I deserve to be measured in the same ways I measure those around me.  Need to determine my actual value.  My worthiness of love.

It is in there.  I will find it.  After all, Amanda means “worthy of love.”