I have asked the following question in many of my prior blogs. Matter of fact, I started the blog before the very last one I did with the question: “Do you love, you?” Well, do you? Do you really? I am going to challenge you to that.

So before we answer that, firstly lets ask ourselves “who are you?” If I may, I could answer it one way: you’re composed of many things, but fundamentally YOU can be said to be composed of body, spirit and mind.

The first is yours to feed and maintain up-keep. The second, rather intangible, a lot of people struggle with feeding and maintaining up-keep. We’ll elaborate on this in a later blog. The third is truly yours. Yours to feed and manage. Completely.

Back to my question at the start. I have always wondered that if everyone did indeed, love himself/herself, then why is it then that they seem to rate their own judgement of themselves below that of others? How is that so? Have you asked yourself that question? Why do you have more respect for what your neighbors think of you than you have of yourself?

So, do you love yourself – all body, spirit and mind? If you did then I think you would not even consider what your neighbors thought of you or any less than you thought of yourself. Its because of this, that I ask if you really love yourself. I think we have to try to define what love is first. How would you define it? We can all see it in action all around us – see kids with their pets, observe couples holding hands down the street, notice the gift-giving looks during Valentine’s Day. We all know elements of what we think love is. I looked up the definition of it in the book that knows all the answers: the Bible. Love is defined as “ … patient, .. kind … does not envy .. does not boast. It is not proud and not rude. Not self-seeking and not easily angered. It does not revenge and always protects, always trusts .. hopes. Never fails [1 corinthians, ch. 13]. I can confidently predict that we’re all failures, some with a capital F!

Now, can you honestly say that you love yourself in that manner. Not me. Does not mean that I don’t try but I fail on some aspect almost every day. Like I said in a previous blog, you might as well succeed through failure. Don’t stop trying. Aim to love yourself more, each and every day, through your body, spirit and mind. So, how do you know if you love you?

When you’re being selfish!

Yep, I know this will come as a bit of a shock as it goes against everything we have been taught and learned in our lives thus far, regarding the necessity of altruism. We all succeed with this definition of love, we all handsomely succeed. We’re all champions at being selfish. So, from this standpoint, don’t give prominence to what you’re neighbors think of you. Do you agree?

My challenge and homework for you is every time you do something that you think is selfish, take note and tally it in a book over a week. Ask yourself, does my definition hold true to varying degree. Don’t fret about your tally. It confirms that you love the most important person in the world: YOU.

One more challenge: become more selfish.