How to Love You (and be a better person)

This is something very near and dear to my heart. Sometimes we don't understand why we are hurt by the people we love most. Sometimes we can be so low that we feel there is no way up. We think that staying low after we have been hurt or we have fallen is ok when it actually hurts us even more. Here are a few tips for building "self-confidence" and loving yourself. When we build our own self confidence, it is harder for other people to tear us down.

Whether it is a friend, family member, or significant other, sometimes we depend too much on others to make us happy and to make us feel secure. When we start to focus on others to make us happy, we fall short. True happiness comes from within. My personal opinion is that only true love and happiness comes from above. When you are happy and content with yourself, there isn't a need for others to make you happy (although it is nice to be made to feel appreciated).

No one can love you better than you love yourself. Don't get me wrong it feels great to be loved, but as I said before when we depend on others to define who we are, are we truly loving ourselves for the person that we are? Never take yourself for granted. Realize the person that you are. You are the person that God made you. And like a friend of mine used to say "God doesn't make any junk!"

There would not be lessons to be learned if we did not make mistakes. There is no way possible we can change the past. We can only learn from it and move forward. Know what you want for your future from what you've learned from your past. Look at all life's troubles and trials as a lesson and maybe one day you will be able to help others.

Never become dependent on another person to take care of you. Learn to take care of yourself! No one can take care of "you" like "you" can take care of you. When you help take care of yourself, you learn to take care of and help others. Treat yourself to treats. Buy yourself a gift every now and then to appreciate you and the person you are and the person you are becoming.

When you don't forgive a person, that person has "control" over you. By control I mean that you let that person consume everything that you do. Whether you are thinking about the hurt constantly or thinking ill of that person, this will not free you to become the person that you are, the person that God made you to be. It will not make you happier and it surely won't make you healthy.

At times we cannot truly love the person that we are because we are either comparing ourselves to others or we cannot forget the things that others have done to us. In order to move toward into our future, we have to forget some things in our past (especially the hurtful things). We have to allow ourselves to grow. In a way, we stunt our growth when we don't forgive and forget. We should always remember that God never puts more on us than we can handle.