I was talking to this chap the other day about Choice and wellbeing, and an interesting conversation ensued. The upshot of which was something of a lightbulb moment: If I can make a conscious choice about my emotions, about how I choose to react to a given situation where before I always felt that my emotions were being done to me by other people, why can't I choose other things as well?
Can I choose to love myself?
Self-hate has always been a huge issue for me. Hence the self-harming behaviours in my teens and twenties that saw me weighing 7 stone and in emotionally harmful relationships. Self-harming habits are hard to shift. Even now, when my life feels out of my control, I will go off and do something self-harming like eating a quarter-pounder with cheese meal (tummy poison for me) and feel soooo much better, even though I know I will suffer for it later. It may not sound much, but its really no different from the relief I used to get from stabbing myself with a compass point as a teenager.
I've always approached self love and self confidence as something that I had to work hard to develop. Something that comes from other people's approval, or from what you achieve. But what if it's not? What if I could make the choice to say, 'I love myself just as I am.' Just as I make the choice to say 'I'm not going to let so-and-so upset me today'. What would happen then?
Make the choice. Then act as if.
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