Think-Talk

Valentines Day

I believe that Valentines Day is a global celebration. Its origin, though still unknown, has been alluded to the Romans. Read here for a brief history.

Valentines Day, like several other holidays, have been grossly abused. Why wait till February 14th to show love? And why show love to just your spouse or significant other? Please show love everyday to everyone. And please love unconditionally. Thank you!

Love Your Children

Please shower your children daily with love and not only when they please you, obey you, and/or excel in school. The best time to really love your children is the time they mess up and recognize it themselves. Surprise them with the best of unconditional love that you can and have a heart-to-heart talk with them on another day.

If, as a parent, the only time your children feel loved is when they’re good, obey you, or get As, you’ve done a poor job, your love has become conditional, and your children will grow up trying to please everyone in order to be loved. The outcome unfortunately will be that they feel used and never find true unconditional love. Should they find true love, they can easily mess it up with the faulty-thinking that they have been conditioned to. Please don’t put your kids through that as either they won’t understand, never will understand, or will understand much later, why they are trying so hard to please but end up being rejected.

Love Yourself

Also, learn to love yourself. Loving oneself is not selfish. Date yourself while waiting to be dated. So, when the date shows up, he or she arrives to compliment you and not complement you. You were whole and complete before s/he showed up. I hope that you will be; if not start working towards being complete before showtime.

Yes, it’s great to be loved. Everyone loves to be loved, but unfortunately most people are dying waiting for Prince Charming and Princess Tantalizing. Yet we wonder why he or she hasn’t shown up. It’s because no one wants a dead mate! No one goes to the morgue or mortuary (pardon my acuteness) to look for a life mate. It’s never done!

“Loving yourself isn’t vanity. It’s sanity.”

Andre Gide

This is something I lived. I dated and loved myself (still do). Went to movies, concerts, dinners, games, and more places alone – it was my Me-time. Bought myself roses lots of times; sometimes one stem some days a bunch. When my daughters were in middle school, and their friends’ parents would tell them (or tell their children who would now pass it on!) that they saw their Mom, my younger daughter especially would say “Mom, stop doing this, they’d think that you have no friends.” My response was that “well, you let them know that I do but chose to do this alone.” I used to wonder why it bothered them so and then, one day I realized that their school’s buddy system might have been responsible. The school’s buddy system was that the kids couldn’t go anywhere, including bathrooms, alone – they have to go with a friend. Of course, the short trip to the bathroom, with a friend, was an extra recess for them. The kids loved this and enjoyed multiple trips on other errands. So they thought it was unsociable to go or do anything by oneself. But, they now know and understand better.

To me, it means being comfortable in my own skin.

Anyhow, do love yourself and love others unconditionally.

5 Benefits of Loving Yourself

Benefits of Loving Oneself according to UCSC Counseling and Psychological Services (UCSC CAPS) include:

1. You validate yourself
2. You give yourself unconditional respect, appreciation and evaluation of being great
3. You consider yourself as worthy, valuable, and deserving of happiness.
4. You’ll be able to take care of others because you’ve taken care of yourself first.
5. You’ll have greater resilience to withstand any challenging life event or personal adversity.

Put Your Mask on First

We’ve heard this repeatedly onboard commercial aircrafts that, in case of an emergency, we need to put our mask on before trying to put the mask on any child flying with us or trying to help another passenger, right? I hope that you have; if not, you heard it here first 😊. It’s the same analogy with loving oneself. “It’s important to love yourself because of the simple truth that you cannot take care of others until you take care of yourself first.” Said another way, “you cannot give what you don’t have,” right?

Tons of people in relationships don’t know how to love the other person simply because they don’t have it in them. We all know (or have heard) of the resultant effects of loveless relationships. So, please do yourself and others a favor by starting to love yourself if you haven’t already been doing so.

Love God First

Finally, the first true love comes from God, our Creator. Without His love we are incapable of loving any other let alone ourselves. So, let us love Him indeed and allow His love to flow through us to ourselves and one another.

❤️✌🏾