Do you know what you love? Do you love your children? You probably love your spouse. Maybe you love your dog. Cat? Fish? Do you love your car? Maybe your work?
Do you love yourself?

Lets play a game. Imagine the one person you can't stand. Maybe your boss, or an over-bearing parent. Think instead of an old lover, or perhaps a bully who used to pick on you at school. Now imagine living every single day in the complete presence of that person. You wake up and they are there. You eat with them, drive to work with them, eat lunch with them, go to the bathroom with them. You will never get a break from that person. Probably drive you nuts, right!

OK, now lets switch. Imagine your best friend. The one you always have a good time with. The one who you call when you are lonely, or scared. The one person you can always turn to if you are upset, who loves you for all your flaws, and will always fight for you. Now imagine the same scenario as above. You are around that person all day, every day... forever. Might not be too bad, right?

Obviously this is just a silly scenario. A little trick of the words to make you think of a different perspective. You can't spend every moment of everyday with one person right?

Wrong.

You spend every second of your entire life with you. You are the only one that you have to put up with forever. Not your parents, not your spouse, not your kids, not your co-workers, you.

So many people choose to spend forever with a bully. A person who always puts them down, and tells them they can never do a good job. Someone who tells them they are fat, or ugly, or a loser. Someone who tears them down and rips them apart every time they look in a mirror. If that were a lover treating you that way people call it 'domestic abuse'. When you treat yourself that way they call it 'low self-esteem'. I say it is still abuse.

I learned long ago that it is much nicer to spend every moment with someone who loves you. Someone who is fun, who tells you that you can do a great job. Someone who says its OK to gain 15lbs, and will allow you to cry when you need to.

It is completely exhausting to spend time with a person who hates you, why do so many choose, willingly choose, to spend their days like that!

If you choose to value you, others will value you.
If you choose to respect you, others will respect you.
If you choose to love you, others will love you.

If you choose to beat yourself up, others will bully you.
If you tell yourself you can't do it, you won't.
If you don't love you, do not for one second expect others to love you like you want to be loved!

Decide that you are the most important person in your life. No one will spend as much time with you as you do.

You have the rest of your life to spend with you. Now look in the mirror and decide that you are someone you want to have around.

Learn more about this author, Jac Alyn.
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