Backward Aging 3.2 – Love of Self

In my last letter, I talked about other lifestyle changes. How to get out of your limiting comfort zone. A most difficult thing to do!

As William Shakespeare said: “Our bodies are gardens…. our wills are gardeners”. You can test my “Gardening Yourself” program on new ways to transform yourself by clicking here.

Why is it so difficult to change? Why is it almost impossible to get rid of bad habits? We know they are bad for our health, like smoking for instance, and yet most smokers are unable to quit. Why is that? There must be more than just physiological addiction to nicotine. Many people succeed in quitting smoking each year, but a greater number of smokers find it impossible to quit.

I remember a time when I smoked two packs of cigarettes a day, that’s quite a lot! Then I fell in love with my wife of fifty-seven years. We decided it was a stupid and costly habit ― at the age of twenty-three money was already an issue 🙂 At the time we didn’t know much about tobacco’s horrifying health dangers. It was just cool to smoke ― and yet we decided successfully to stop smoking. I have never smoked a cigarette since. The point I want to make is that love enabled us to achieve incredible things, like quitting this destructive habit.

Love is the ultimate power. I believe there are two forces that control the living world: love and fear. What does this have to do with getting out of one’s own comfort zone or changing bad habits? Everything! And it all starts with a love of self. Strangely, most people don’t like themselves. There is something inside of them they can’t stand. It can be physical, mental, psychological, or of any nature. Sometimes a person’s close friends and family have no idea why the individual may not like him or herself. The individual may have consciously or unconsciously integrated criticism from their environment into their own belief system. Sometimes, it’s about the fear of being inadequate or insufficient that drives a person to not like himself. In the end, fear may win the battle over love!

How can you love life, others, the world in general when you don’t even love the miracle that you are as a living human being—when you fear being yourself? How can you realize the unlimited potential you got at birth if you live in fear? Fear of rejection, fear of others’ opinions, fear of the powers in place, fear of being insufficient.

As a kid your family, later other children at school, then adults made you believe that you were too short, too tall, too stupid, too fat, too whatever you now believe is your own true limitation.
Before all this negative programming of your mind, you were eager to grow, push your limits, conquer your fears, and discover new territories. You had no fears, just love. Love of your parents, your family, your life, yourself, the universe. Just look at kids playing on the beach! So how can you now change your own limiting belief system and get out of your comfort zone, this cage of fear you’ve built around yourself?

What if you started with more love for yourself? One of the most misunderstood teachings of Christianity is :” Love thy neighbor as thyself!” Clerks of this religion even later made self love a sin! It seems to me that you can only give what you have. If you don’t have a love for yourself, how can you give love to others?

Besides what’s wrong with building strong self-esteem? What’s wrong with building the best possible for you? The healthiest body, the strongest mind, the wisest spirit? Why not improve your character by challenging yourself constantly with new ventures? How can you bring love to this world if you keep ruminating your hate for yourself and therefore for others? How can you create a better world if you keep focusing on your incapability? Why do most personal development techniques fail after a while? Lack of persistence?

What about yo-yo dieting? Could it be that instead of loving your body, the only one you’ll have this life anyways, you mistreat it because it is not to your liking? Why not accept the way it is now and start a loving program to optimize it in the future? The vision of the perfect body you can create is a strong motivation to keep growing these muscles and reduce fat. After all who’s in charge? Over time, you will even grow a stronger character, the ultimate tool to succeed in any field.

So the real question becomes: How can hate be replaced with love? How can we get rid of weeds, these negative beliefs that we made part of our inner selves? That’s what I call gardening yourself. I will talk more about it in my next letters.

Stay tuned,

Boris Clair

PS: Discover a new free fascinating personal development experience by clicking here.

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