A Beautiful Life Magazine

The Love Relationship with Self

By: Lynda Dyer

Love helps us understand ourselves more and attract everything that’s positive into our lives.

When we talk about relationships, I feel the most important relationship is the one you have with yourself. So it’s time to celebrate the power of loving you—the most important and powerful love of all. After all, according to the Universal Law of Attraction, the first step in all loving relationships begins with you. It seems so easy and effortless to say this today and yet it certainly took me a long time to figure it all out. It wasn’t easy but it was the best learning of my lifetime.

Love is a very powerful feeling in our world.

Love helps us understand ourselves more and attract everything that’s positive into our lives. I learned this through studying the Law of Attraction. I then got the principle that we only attract back to us from the Universe what we emanate out to the Universe. It was like a bell going off in my head. Talk about an ‘ah ha’ moment.

I also learned that without loving ourselves first, we make it difficult for others to love us. So, what does “loving self” mean? I believe that loving yourself is to start liking your individual quirkiness and have a strong regard for your own well-being so you can be happy with who you are and what you do. It includes taking time out for you, doing ‘stuff’ just for you, like self-indulgence, pampering you, putting yourself first, and liking you just the way you are right now. That is a big job for many of us and it’s so calming. What about you?

Like many others, I didn’t like me growing up.

I had many reminders from my parents, Aunties, and teachers that I didn’t measure up. My parents gave us everything they possibly could, but as one of seven children, I grew up thinking I wasn’t worthy of anything, especially love from others. Pleasing others was key, so I thought, or others, including my parents, friends and family wouldn’t love me. Everything I did was based on others liking me. I found the socialisation part of my teenage years extremely challenging because I didn’t like what most of my teenage friends did, but for some strange reason I found myself occasionally joining in with them or feeling lonely and isolated because it didn’t suit my values. If I wanted to be like that tennis player on TV I had better step up my appearance as well as my playing ability. Who did you model your behaviour on? Who or what influenced you?

After working four jobs to put myself through University overseas, and winning awards in the process, I still didn’t like who I was. It was still about others. I dressed up as a man and I went to England to find my Dad’s family. It was always my love for others that drove me. My values were absolutely family and other focused.

It was many years later that I got it, a long time later. It was so programmed in me that to get attention I had to love and serve others and I held onto it so tightly. Anyone resonate with this?

Then, like a bell going off in my head, and after a great deal of personal development, I realised that “I’m actually an OK person just the way I am.”

I started to laugh at my imperfections and some of my behaviours one at a time. I remember writing a letter to my son, who had been convinced by a present girlfriend that he should leave my home.

I wrote “For the first time in my life I get it. It doesn’t actually matter what you think about me, or what your girlfriend thinks about me. What is critically important here is what I think about me. I think I am a pretty special person on this planet and I love who I am and what my purpose is.’ I also love you and think you are an amazing person as well. What is important here is that you love who you are and how you are behaving. Loving us is the key here”.

That was a turning point for both of us. I use to say “what a pity I had to turn 50 years of age to get that loving myself was so important” but now I believe what is important here is, that I did get it and that I couldn’t wait to embrace it totally. I understood my hyperactivity, and that I could wear people out with my energy. I got that I would never be that world champion tennis player but I loved the road it took me on. I truly got that I would never be an outstanding business woman and that I would need people around me to help make my ideas happen and that will be OK. It’s ok that IT and I are like two worlds apart and that I can outsource that and we all win. Too funny and yet very true.

I took a long journey of discovering me before I truly learned to appreciate and love myself exactly the way I am right now.

And, by doing so, I’ve continued to attract others into my life who are capable of loving me for who I am, a caring, authentic woman with a really big heart that can’t wait to share her wisdom, knowledge and love with the world.

In my latest book “Be, Do Have” I write about the importance of Loving Self, of concentrating your energies on who you are being. After all Steve Bowe said: