Hey there readers.

As I was sharing always my true and honest experiences, feelings, and lessons.

My therapist asked :” when was the last time you remember loving youself?” Yes indeed, it was hard to answer!

Today I am writing about self love. One form of self love, is self respect. And self respect can manifest in many ways, starting with relationships.

The most painful thing we can experience and do to ourselves, is not love and care for ourselves, before loving and caring for others.

This lack of self love, wherever it comes from, impacts our entire life and choices and actions. We tend to accept things as they are, impress others by overcompensating, try to fit in, be good and nice, accept toxic people in our life just because they “care”.

Recently I learned, how I have let in so many useless people into my personal space. And by personal space I mean, mental space, emotional space, and of course my day to day life. I do admit, if it weren’t for this experience, I would have probably not re organized my priorities and put more focus into myself.

I saw how a partner can ruin someone else’s life and mental health, how few jealous colleagues can sabotage someone’s work progress, how relatives can be manipulative and abusive and set someone back.

All of these are things happening everyday, with all of us, we just dont notice the negativity a person can bring into our life, until after the damage has occured. We look back and see long trail of wasted time and energy over people who dont deserve that much, and most probably held the red flag up high, but we chose to overcome these alarms in an attempt to be “tolerant” and “accepting” to be accepted in return.

Pay close attention to what someone does for you and not what they say. Pay attention what makes you you, and what they reflect on you.

And by what they do, it does not mean the wasted time they spend over fun or money or any other thing. Pay close attention to how they treat your weaknesses, to their honesty, to their clarity, to the effort they put explaining themselves to you so you understand who they are and what they expect from you, pay attention to whether you feel special or easily replaced by some random stranger, pay attention to the natural reassurance , pay attention to how they hold your hand when someone puts you down, but also keep an eye if they are actually the ones that put you down, pay attention to whether they ask about you when you are alone, whether they ask how your first day at the new job went, how much presence they put into your life, even when they are distanced by time and location.

Those who truly care about you, family, friends, a partner, will only make sure, they are reasons for you getting up higher in life, making a better version of yourself, showing you how far you could actually go. People who care, no matter what, will always be there, will always care enough to ask and connect, and will make sure they are fighting with you against all external challenges life puts at you, and not actually put you in a challenging situation.

Pay close attention to the people surrounding you, because these have the most impact on your present and future. Not all what shines is gold, and not all good people are necessarily good to you or for you. And in that sense, make sure you given yourself a reality check, whether you are manipulated or not, guilted into accepting toxic behaviors just because someone has been good to you in a certain situation.

The best thing you can do to yourself, is let go, whether you have a closure or not, your closure is when someone stops asking about you. Your closure is when they manipulate you. Your closure is when you dont feel important. Your closure is when you feel left out.

That is all the closure you need, to stop, cut off and to move forward.

The best thing, and the hardest thing to do, is to stop seeking approval from others, stop seeking external care, and start looking inside to figure out a few answers to “why do I do this”, “what is hurting me about myself”, “what would I like to improve in myself” that eventually you stop looking for others to accept and “fix” you.

Having the ability to self heal gives a great amount of power and freshness to open doors for new people who actually align with your life purpose, and who you are in this world. Giving more self love, gives space to choose people for the right reasons in our life.

When was the last time you stopped caring for a failed relationship or a useless friendship, and actually started asking yourself what do you actually need to fix by yourself in your own life?

How much time, money,care, love, sacrifice, hope and patience we invest into others,without actually knowing the outcome of our investment, instead of doing the same to ourself and knowing for sure it will come with great return.

Love yourself a little bit more, ask who is serving you well, and who is not, and just cut out whoever is consuming you.

Self love, never ends in disappointment or betrayal. Self love is just like how the sun keeps itself, burning, glowing and shining.

Leaving you with a picture of self loving sunset from Lebanon last week.