Alright, hear me out, but I think we have it backwards. What’s the Golden Rule you may ask? It goes something like this, “treat others the way you want to be treated” in theory this sounds fantastic. I’m sure all of us would like to be treated like royalty so treating others that way would be nice!
The more I think about it, the more flawed it is. For starters, people are typically much much harder on themselves than they are on other people. If I actually treated people the way I treated myself? I would be mean. I didn’t even realize this about myself until recently. How mean I am to myself. It’s the automatic messages in my brain, they’re not very nice!
For example:
Husband: “Lily you have so many wonderful qualities that make you super lovable.”
Pshhhh, and so many others that make me not.
Stop!! Why did I just think that? Hell, I almost just SAID that. Out loud. As an appropriate response. At the time I was paying attention to my automatic messages and I stopped myself from saying that out loud. Instead I made note of it. Why does my brain want to fight back against compliments? Why can’t I believe people when they tell me I’m lovable or kind or good?
Here is my new golden rule: “Treat yourself the way you would treat a really good friend.” Period. Because we’re GOOD at treating people with kindness. Humans are inherently good and want to help. All we do all day is help and care and love. Some days this is hard to do and that’s okay but our default setting? It’s totally set to “good!”
When a friend of mine “fails” or gets knocked down, I’m the first to throw an arm around them and remind them why this failure doesn’t matter, or how they’ve learned a valuable lesson in this failure. I find the positives, immediately. But what about when I fail? Do I throw an arm around myself? No, definitely not. I totally beat myself up. So much so that I get to a place of feeling like a “bad person.”
How many times have you told a friend, “I wish you would see yourself the way I see you.” Well throw that lens on yourself! Put on your best friends glasses and take a look at yourself. There’s a reason they stick around. A reason they love you. Probably many! Take note.
It’s all well and good to treat others in a magical made-up fantasy way to cushion their lives and make them happy, but what about you? We can’t possibly expect to love others if we haven’t even mastered loving ourselves. This is something I’m still working on!!! I can attest, it is not easy. I spent a lot of time convinced I loved myself only to tune into my automatic thoughts and find that simply wasn’t true.
Pay attention to the way your brain treats you. You taught it to do that!! You can unteach it. Throw out the golden rule being about how you interact with others, this is about you and the way you interact with yourself. Loving yourself is so hard that once you’ve mastered it, loving others will come naturally, easily, like second-nature. Your brain will have all the wirings for positivity and growth and you’ll absolutely shine that light everywhere you go. It won’t even be an effort anymore. You won’t feel exhausted after giving because you’re giving to yourself first.
So, sling an arm around yourself and squeeze real tight! Another important side effect of loving yourself? You set the precedence for how you receive love. If you’re treating yourself a certain way, others won’t dare treat you as less. Positive interactions start with interacting positively with yourself.
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