“Imagine when we are born we are given a human and told we need to take care of that human for the rest of our lives….We are our human—we are in our own custody.  We need to take care of ourselves. Loving ourselves isn’t a feeling, it’s an approach, it’s a job.  You don’t even have to like yourself today to love yourself; loving yourself today is your job and we have to take that job seriously because we are our human,” Matthew Hussey.  I wanted to share this little reminder.  So often we give care to others that we don’t give to ourselves and we burn out.  Either that or we don’t know how to care for others, we don’t know how to reciprocate or receive care.  In remembering our worth we are able to see our value and do not question that we need care.  We are not alone on this planet but our journey is our own.  Sometimes we forget the care we need.  We forget the difference between like and love and we don’t realize we need to apply those emotions to ourselves. 

Loving others is complex enough—the concept of love in itself is complex—but we take that task on with little consideration for the implications behind it.  We take on the responsibility of other people before we understand how to take that on for ourselves.  Love is never a burden, but it is work.  The funny thing is it’s also effortless.  Love is innate and we put a burden behind it thinking love needs to be or look a certain way but love is the most natural thing out there.  We know it when we feel it but we can’t describe it.  So when it comes to loving ourselves, it’s simply knowing we are worthy of having boundaries that keep us on our path that allow us to achieve our goals while interacting and experiencing or creating a particular outcome with others.  Love guides us and keeps us through our knowing and our intuition of what feels right—we know the care we need, we know what we need, and we know what we need to do to fulfill those needs.  In a world of distraction and false information it’s easy to lose sight of what’s important including ourselves.

We are the only person who is with us from day one and no one else is responsible for us—just as we aren’t responsible for anyone else (except our children).  Children are a good example here because we have that innate love for our kids, these beings we know we have an influence over.  It isn’t our job to determine who they become, it is our job to shape them and guide them and help them become who they are meant to be.  We understand the love required in those circumstances, we need to remember to apply that to ourselves.  No one will give us what we want, it is up to us to form a relationship with ourselves, spirit, the universe, and those around us to create the life we are meant to have.  We have to be able to look at our efforts at the end of the day and be happy with the result.  We need to be proud of what we’ve done, how we’ve behaved, how we’ve treated people, and how we’ve treated ourselves.  Hate begets hate so if we do not feel love for ourselves, we can’t truly feel it for others.  Understand our care determines how we show up in this world—and choose to care for ourselves well so we can do the same for others.