The Power of Self-Love: Live a Rich Life by Cultivating Happiness

It’s possible that we can all agree on one thing: love is transforming. But loving life, loving someone else, and loving yourself don’t always come easy for some people.

Does that mean we’re doing something wrong? In a way, yes, it does, although that doesn’t make you a bad person. Just one who doesn’t understand how to cultivate your own happiness through self-love.

One misconception many people hold is that there needs to be an outlet for love, that if there isn’t a person willing to receive our love, we cannot properly express it. But love, if you know how to see it and feel it, can be anywhere, and it doesn’t need to include another person.

Love and happiness contain energy. If you view life as not being that great, you have the power to change your view about anything and everything, including your view of the people around you.

As soon as you start the process in your mind of moving from where you don’t like being towards where you want to be, the love you give to your life comes back to you.

Why is the love you give to the world, your life, yourself, and the people surrounding you the way to happiness?

Love is energy, but how do you feel that energy and how can you work with it?

How do you find and identify the love within yourself and try to enrich it?

We live in a world where everyone has an opinion and the resources to express it, but opinions don’t matter to the truth.

Perhaps you’re judgmental; you look at your world with preconceived notions about how things should be, and when they don’t turn up that way or when someone falls short of your expectations, you judge their behavior by your own standards, by what you would have done.

Learning to love means accepting people the way they are and finding something good in them or about them, regardless of whether or not you actually like them.

Here are some tips that will truly enrich your life so you can experience more happiness.

Listen to Your Heart

It’s very easy to become distracted by all the things we need to get done in a day or a week, but you must make time for yourself.

• What do you enjoy doing?
• Who do you feel happy being around?
• Which people in your life don’t make you feel good about yourself?
• Be aware of all the little things that make you uncomfortable.
• Really listen to what your intuition is telling you.
• Don’t ignore your gut feelings.
• Be mindful of everything around you and how you feel so you will recognize all the little things that contribute to your happiness.

Stay Positive

• Stop looking at everything negatively.
• Don’t be a hater.
• Be happy for the abundance and good fortune of others. Your joy over someone else’s success will come back to you tenfold.
• Continue to find something that makes you happy, even if only for a day. Keep the energy around you positive by surrounding yourself with happy people.
• Don’t let others drain you with their constant complaining or bad attitudes.
• Treat yourself to a coffee or lunch out.
• Pursue what makes you happy. And don’t be thinking about all the things you need to get done. Just enjoy whatever it is you’re doing now.

Drop the Frenzy

• Is it possible to stay off social media for just one day? For just a few hours? Can you drop just one thing from your to-do list that isn’t really all that important or pressing?
• Stop your mind if only for a few minutes. Just sit in a chair without TV, phones or music and listen to the quiet.
• Don’t be attached to outcomes. If you plan to go on a picnic and it rains, plan it for another day or find a spot that’s under cover and enjoy your picnic while you watch the rain!
• And do it without advertising where you are on Twitter, Facebook, or via phone.

Find the Humor in Everything

Life is full of challenges, but it’s also full of opportunities.

• Keep everything in perspective, and when you feel like you’re ready to rumble, find something humorous in the situation.
• There’s a reason for everything and a purpose for what you may be going through, but you won’t see that reason or purpose if you’re angry, judgemental, and resentful.
• Humor heals and relaxes and allows you to view life from a different perspective.

Relax and Breathe

This goes hand in hand with humor, positivity, and dropping the frenzy. Learning to relax is one of the best things you can do for yourself when it comes to self-love.

• Care about yourself, how you feel, what you want, and who you allow into your life.
• Thinking about this when you’re in a relaxed state will make everything clearer.
• Don’t hate the people and things that are negative in your life. Just embrace the positive instead.
• Breathe in good energy and say ‘no’ to anything that feels like resistance.

Assume the Best

We all want to place the blame on someone or something when things don’t go our way.

• If a plan doesn’t come together because someone dropped the ball, assume they had a good reason for doing so and that they were doing the best they could at the moment.
• Just learn from it and move on.
• If you are the reason for not making something happen, take responsibility.
• Recognizing where you went wrong and adjusting, being flexible, will go a long way to continuing happiness.
• It’s ok to make mistakes, but always assume the best, always give the benefit of the doubt unless something proves otherwise. This is part of staying positive.

When you get in the habit of assuming the best, good things generally find their way to you.

Let it Go

Things happen. If you feel someone has wronged you and you can’t come to a reasonable solution through honest communication, let it go.

• You don’t need to understand the meaning of life to enjoy it.
• Sometimes it’s a good idea to just let everything go, even if just for a day.
• Pretend you have no job to go to, no mortgage or bills to pay, and nowhere you have to be.
• Hum a tune, dance while you make lunch, or just enjoy the sun while you read a book. Life will wait.