How Louise Hay Saved Me.

Her constant reminder to look at our own thoughts and change them for better thoughts has brought great results to my life.

Self-criticism, self-attack and a constant state of general self-disdain is rampant in our culture.

It runs deep in our media, humor and minds.

And it hurts.

It is incredibly painful to be constantly letting ourselves know how much we dislike our choices, our appearance and just about everything that we do.

It takes great courage to change these self-hating ways.

But it is worth it.

Really, once we have decided that self-love is important to us, taking steps to change the ways our minds talk to us is our only choice.

I have found one affirmation that Louise Hay offers us particularly useful and efficient for bringing awareness and change to where we are hating on ourselves.

This affirmation is, “I love myself, I accept myself, I forgive myself.”

Straight to the point, huh?

When we first start to work with this affirmation, it can be a bit of “fake it ’til we make it,” but this is how we stir up the dirt before we sweep it up and toss it out the door forever.

This affirmation brings to the surface anything that doesn’t match it.

So, it can feel a little weird at first.

Like the more we are telling ourselves we love ourselves, the more we are seeing all the ways we aren’t loving ourselves.

If this is happening to you, then you are doing an amazing job.

Loving ourselves looks like getting rid of any belief systems that aren’t aligned with self-love.

This is a process, and we need to be patient with ourselves. We need to be willing to go through some hard stuff to get to the goodness underneath.

And the affirmation, “I love myself, I accept myself, I forgive myself” is a really effective means of getting to the good stuff.

Here is how to use the affirmation—it is very easy.

Every time you notice yourself thinking something negative, mean or unkind about yourself say to yourself:

“I love myself, I accept myself, I forgive myself.”

When I first started working with this affirmation, I had to say this to myself about every 30 seconds for three days.

And from that I saw results.

I started smiling more, and I started to feel more motivated to make self-care a priority in my life.

It hurt.

Saying it hurt.

It felt awkward, like the words didn’t belong.

But I said them anyways, and I hope you will too.

~

Relephant Read:

5 When-Life-Gets-Bumpy Affirmations.

~

Author: Ruth Lera

Editor: Toby Israel

Photo: Susanne Nilsson/Flickr

~