Love Yourself!
When I first published my initial blog for www.mamafales.com in July 2017, I wrote at the bottom of my home page the words: “LOVE THE LORD. LOVE YOURSELF. LOVE OTHERS.” I knew that the best “motherly advice” I could give anyone would be these seven simple words.
I have learned over the years that I need to show my love to the Lord by praying and studying the scriptures each day. I have also learned that I can’t love others if I don’t love myself first, so I have tried to love myself. I emphasize the word “tried” because I know my thoughts and actions towards myself often don’t show real love. Last month I listened to a book that taught me a simple plan of how to really love myself in a “truly and deeply” way. The book is called, Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It, by Kamal Ravikant.
I know when I truly and deeply love myself, I begin to love other people around me much more. I also know that as I truly and deeply love myself, I can feel my love for God grow and feel His love for me grow in a marvelous way! I wrote this in my journal on July 18, 2023:
I have always known I couldn’t love others if I didn’t love myself first. As I was praying this morning, the thought came to me that I also cannot truly love God if I don’t love myself first. God is a God of love. We communicate in the Spirit through LOVE.
I now understand that we must love ourselves first if we want to feel God’s love for us. Our negative thoughts and feelings towards ourselves trap us in a dark cave where the sunlight of God’s love cannot penetrate. We must crawl out of the cave by loving ourselves and trusting that God’s love and sunlight will be there waiting for us. I promise it will be!
These are two excerpts by Patricia Holland in a speech she gave in 1988 at Brigham Young University entitled, “Be Renewed in the Spirit of your Mind”:
When I was your age (and sometimes even now), there was often a struggle over how I saw myself. I was very “skilled” in the art of pummeling myself. I had a terrible habit of bringing problems inside when, in fact, they should have been handled in practical, external ways. I seemed to have a real knack for fighting life’s battles on two or three or four fronts at once—and I took a lot of needless shrapnel as a result. So as an old casualty myself, I plead with you to make a distinction between your problems and yourselves—there is a crucial difference. Problems can be painful and dark and disappointing—but we are not painful and dark and disappointing. We are children of God and must see ourselves as God sees us, recognizing the positive in ourselves, the part God loves so much, even as we work on what we may think are our freckles and warts and blemishes and big noses. You can change how you see yourself. You can!
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But I also think that the Lord will not be particularly comfortable dwelling with a person who (to the exclusion of all other joys and blessings in life) ponders continually his or her problems, who is obsessed and finally immobilized by them, who hasn’t learned to bear those limitations serenely. That isn’t humility, it is near-blasphemy. When you dwell on your limitations excessively, to the point that they affect your inner view and strength, you mock God in his very creation. You deny the divinity within you. You resist the gift of Christ on the cross. So be patient in your pursuit of perfection.
“Learning That Self-Loathing Isn’t the Savior’s Tool” is the descriptive title of the July 2023 Liahona magazine article by Valerie Hart Doll. She repeats this same message:
“It took me a while to learn that God didn’t want me to hate myself for my mistakes. I’ve spent a lot of time berating myself. Turns out, being hard on myself doesn’t actually make me better.”
Doll then quotes Elder S. Gifford Nielsen who spoke these profound words in his April 2021 General Conference talk entitled, “This Is Our Time!”
“Our Heavenly Father wants us to love ourselves … to see ourselves as He sees us: we are His cherished children. When this truth sinks deep into our hearts, our love for God grows.”
The Love Scripture
Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
— Matthew 22: 36-39
LOVE THE LORD. LOVE YOURSELF. LOVE OTHERS.