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How often do we think, “Nobody loves me”.

How often do we get terribly hurt by others’ words, actions, and inactions?

How often do we criticize ourselves for not being good enough?

How often do we compare ourselves to others?

The truth is most of us do it quite often. We are extremely sensitive to what is happening around us and usually take most things personally. Have we ever wondered why we give the external world so much rent-free space in our minds? The reason is we don’t love ourselves enough.
When we love someone, we care about them, we try our best to make them feel happy. Do we treat ourselves that way?

Our mentor explains that we can’t make others feel loved unless we love the almighty and ourselves. How can we have good relationships with people if we ourselves feel neglected, sad, and heartbroken?

So, here are some tips by our mentor to improve our relationship with ourselves-

1. Maintain A Healthy Lifestyle

Our mind is directly connected to our body. When we feed our bodies with healthy food and work out regularly, our mood remains stable and we feel energetic. Similarly, when we feed our minds with positive thoughts, our body parts function properly and we stay away from diseases. So, we need to take care of our health so that we feel confident and we can give our best shot at everything we want to accomplish.

Here are some tips by our mentor for a healthy lifestyle:

a. Drink a lot of water
b. Avoid fried food, high calories food
c. Have simple food (Dal, roti, sabzii)
d. Eat lots of fruits and salad
e. Exercise daily

2. Stop Expecting Others To Make You Happy

Our mentor explains how we all are the “ocean of love” and “true happiness” lies right within us. We all are the children of God and we all have an element within us that is timeless, prem-swaroop, anand-swaroop. Since the element lies within us, we can’t find that element outside, no matter how hard we try.

So, let us stop expecting others to make us feel loved and happy when we ourselves are capable of giving that to ourselves. People often start maintaining distance, when we start seeking too much attention from them.

Instead, let us be the source and spread the love by smiling often and helping others.
Let us remind ourselves that we love ourselves by saying “I love you” when we look at ourselves in the mirror.

3. Stop Comparing Yourself With Other People

We often feel resentful, and jealous when we focus too much attention on what others are doing.

Our mentor says, “You are unique and special”.

We all have different capabilities. Competing with others limits us from achieving extraordinary heights. So, let’s instead compete with ourselves and uncover our true potential.

Also, let us stop judging ourselves for our mistakes and be compassionate towards ourselves like we are towards our children, parents, friends, etc.

4. Invest In Yourself

The best investment you will ever make is investing in yourself. Our mentor says that we should keep studying throughout our life.

Here are some tips on how we can improve ourselves-

a. Learn new and difficult things by setting realistic goals, and practicing consistently.
b. Develop hobbies, and keep yourself creatively busy because an empty mind is the devil’s workshop.
c. Practice solitude and start journaling to understand yourself better.

When we develop good habits, we grow and start accomplishing our goals. As a result, we respect ourselves more and our self-esteem gets boosted.

5. Discipline

We can’t have a good relationship unless we stop cheating on ourselves. Discipline is the best way to ensure that we don’t betray ourselves. We should learn to say ‘NO’ to procrastination, distractions, negative thoughts, and people who suck our energy. We should plan our day in advance and try to stick to a timetable.

We should make sure that we are living in the present, because “Past brings tears, future brings fears and present brings cheers”

6. Stand Up For Yourself

We often face situations where we feel hesitant, shy, or afraid in expressing difficult emotions when we have been wronged by others.

Our mentor says, “Apni baat kehna seekhein”. We should learn to voice our concerns in a loving manner so that others understand us without getting hurt.
We should not try to “please” people too much by doing things under obligation or going too much out of way. Staying silent for too long can lead to long-term resentment in the future.

7. Learn To Ignore

People who don’t love themselves are extremely sensitive to what others say about them and do to them. They tend to take a lot of things personally and cause damage to their own well-being. They don’t realize that the behavior of others has less to do with them and more to do with the inner world of others.

So, our mentor says that we should follow the KFP approach i.e. “Ki farak penda hai”
instead of BFP “bhot farak penda hai”. This approach protects us from unnecessary stress and hurt that we give to ourselves.

8. Positive Affirmations

What we believe subconsciously, turns into reality. So, we should start programming our subconscious mind by practicing positive affirmations.

The universe says, your wish is my command. So in order to achieve our goals, we need to believe that it is possible for us to achieve them. We should also attend satsang regularly to stay motivated and positive.

9. Develop An Attitude Of Gratitude

Whenever something no matter how little, goes wrong in our life, we tend to get very upset and depressed. This is because we tend to focus on the one small black dot on a white sheet of paper. We ignore the fact that the entire page of life is white, except for that dot (difficult situation).

This is where the attitude of gratitude helps. When we are thankful for each and every little thing that we have got from God, be it a well-functioning body, house, food, money, family, job, etc, we become more resilient in difficult phases of life and our emotional health is stable no matter how hard life gets.

10. Improve Your Relationship With God

Our mentor says, “All is well in God’s world”. If we accept every situation in our life, as God’s will and have faith in God, we would never have a negative outlook towards life. We try to do things for “others”, rather than “God” and end up getting disappointed when others don’t appreciate our efforts.

Our mentor says, “apne bhaav ki rakshaa karein”.

We should make sure that our inner feeling is always correct i.e. aligned with God. We should make sure we are making efforts for God and for our own happiness, rather than other’s happiness.