Stepping stones to loving yourself

[Unbound]

I find that starting at the very bottom level it is useful to first identify the negative thoughts and beliefs you have about yourself, and being totally honest with yourself about it. If you ask yourself how you feel about yourself, and you answer is that you don't like yourself, accept that that is your current state of perception. Then, once you are aware of how you do actually feel about yourself, sometimes it's easy to start to by negating that.

For example, perhaps you say to yourself, "I can't do anything right!", you may stop, and think "Why can't I do anything right?", and then maybe proceed to go in circles where you attempt to get some answer from yourself that will justify the initial idea. Or, again relevant to this, we may say "I love myself!" and not feel it, then we may question "Why don't I love myself?", "What does it mean to love myself?" and again, we begin to go in to circles of questions.

Now, hopefully if we catch ourselves, we may be able to intercept. "I can't do anything right!", and then we intercept "Well, technically there is no right", or "It's impossible to do everything wrong!"

Then, perhaps slowly, we go through a process where we take the initial concept, and then through the processes of examination and reasoning, hopefully conclude that our initial self-perception was actuall distorted.