I was listening to my neighbor cleaning up the leaves in his yard this morning. I was up on my roof doing yoga and tai chi in the healing energy of the sun which I do every morning after I run. I do this because I love myself deeply, completely and unconditionally. Because I love myself, I naturally and instinctively do what is best for me. I tend my own garden because I love my own garden. And that garden is me.It occurred to me that most people spend more time and effort on their gardens, yards, cars and houses, then they do on themselves. They seem to take a distant second to everything else in their life.
We don’t have to look far in our western society to see that most people are not tending the garden of themselves. It’s very clear, for instance, that most people are not taking care of their body. The serious disease rate in this country is epidemic. It may be making drug companies, doctors and hospitals rich, but it’s creating a lot of suffering in the human population.
And emotional, psychological and spiritual suffering is also epidemically high. People are just not tending their gardens.
The only explanation I can see for this is that most people just don’t think they are worth it to take care of themselves the way they would if they truly loved themselves. Their garden, house or car are worth more to them than they are to themselves. Instead of taking care of themselves, they look to others to do this for them. They look to doctors, drug companies, fitness trainers, self-help books and spiritual teachers. They do this because deep inside they just don’t think they are valuable enough to do this for themselves. The most common excuse is “I don’t know how.” But this is really not true. If we care to look, we all really know how to take care of ourselves. And, if we love ourselves, we do. We eat food that is good for us, not simply what we crave or are addicted to. We exercise in exactly the right way for us, not what the latest fad is. We do things that express our peace, love, happiness and connection with life, not what the experts say we should do. We all know these things. We just don’t love ourselves enough to do them.
Instead we choose the quick fix of comfort foods instead of food we know and our body tells us is good for us and is loving to eat. Then we hope that the doctor or the fitness trainer will save us. And this is not loving. If we are a little more “enlightened”, we may choose to eat foods we read about that are supposed to be healthy. And if our body disagrees, we continue eating those foods because some expert told us we should. At least we are trying, but this is also not loving. We already have the answers. We don’t need experts. We are the only expert we need. If we love ourselves we take full responsibility for ourselves.
I often hear people say, whether out loud or to themselves, “I’m not good enough.” And I have said this myself in the past. The natural question I have is “Good enough for what?” You may not be good enough to play in the NBA (National Basketball Association). I’m not either. But you are certainly good enough to be yourself. And that’s far more important. And more than that you are good enough to simply be. You are good enough to exist. The proof being that you do exist. And that simple fact merits all the love there is.
And this is the great secret of loving yourself. We live in a society filled with competition and comparisons. We are conditioned to believe that we should only love ourselves if we measure up to some particular standard. This conditional love is guaranteed to result in love rarely or never. To truly love yourself you can only love yourself unconditionally. And this is also true of all your relationships. If it’s not unconditional, it’s really not love at all. It’s a business arrangement.
Why do you love yourself? Because you are. Because you exist. There doesn’t need to be any other reason. Any reason you give for loving yourself is conditional. And conditional love will always fail. Love yourself simply because you are, because you exist. This is unconditional love. And this cannot fail. If you love yourself unconditionally, you will naturally take full responsibility for yourself. You will realize that you are the expert on you. And you will act accordingly. You will tend the most important garden there is. The garden of You. You will tend it in all ways, physically, emotionally and spiritually. You will stop relying on others to do this for you. Nobody can love you the way you can. And when you love yourself in this way, you find that you love everyone and everything else in this same way. You discover there is only one garden. And that garden is love.
Please discover this for yourself.
Have you been peeking inside my head?! I was just thinking about this and how I haven’t run in a couple months and how bad I feel because of it. Not just physically, but emotionally because running was my stress reliever, helped me clear my mind, and just made me feel happy. There is a direct correlation between me not running and how I currently feel and yet I haven’t starting running again.
That needs to change today; I WILL get a run in today and I WILL feel better. Thank you for this great article and the reminder to tend to myself first!
Wonderful, Nadine.
Very well written & truly inspiring. You know after reading this, I feel so happy to be me…
Wonderful, Kristle. Me too! 🙂