What is the Cost of Not Loving Yourself? on Talks with Dr Shafer. I read something today that posed the question, how much has loving them cost you?
My immediate response internally was to reframe that question, to turn it around and ask,
How much has not loving yourself cost you?
Because, at the heart of it, it wasn’t loving someone else that cost us something. Love is truly free. Love is not predicated on it’s being returned. It is something you gift, without any control over what happens after you feel it or you share it.
But when we love, when we share our time and energy, when we open ourselves up and become vulnerable, for that to be a healthy and nourishing endeavor, we must always be simultaneously loving ourselves, and staying true to ourselves. Holding our values, our morals up high, and honoring them, no matter what external forces surround us.
It is when, in the pursuit of love or connection, that we set aside our love for ourselves, that we abandon ourselves, that love can cost us. Not because we loved someone else, but because we stopped intentionally treating ourselves in a loving way.
I can’t bring the love I seek, if the relationship I model with myself is one of disrespect of my core beliefs and values.
