What role does the mind play in Self-Love?
When we think of the whole self-love thing we often are focused on the heart and feelings. Which is rightly so. Love is a feeling thing. It is heart-based and felt throughout the body. As opposed to a funny feeling we experience in our heads. Although love and light-headedness do go together on occasions. When we talk about self-love we are talking less about hormones and swooning ourselves, or buying ourselves romantic gifts to be opened by ourselves while we have a candlelight dinner by ourselves. Don’t get me wrong, the gifts and romantic dinner sound like fun, but let’s get back to this question of ‘what role does the mind play in self-love?’
Doing the data download thing
Prior to about 7 years of age, our brain is on one of its biggest growth spurts. Our brain is trying to data download as much information as it possibly can, so we become (more) self-supportive and able to ‘survive’ in the world. To do this it opens up the floodgates and lets in everything. There is no filter. No discernment of good and bad, right or wrong, useful or useless. The brain is in a brainwave state equivalent to hypnosis, where it takes everything 100% LITERALLY.
If you are told enough times you are unworthy, then unworthy you feel you are. If you are told enough times you are stupid, then stupid you think you are. If you only get love and affection when you do something ‘good’ (from the perspective of your parents for example), then when you do something ‘bad’ you will expect not to be loved or worthy of love. These ‘programs’ are what I generally call beliefs. Some are great. Some are good. Some are bad and as I am sure you can attest to, some of your beliefs, also known as thoughts or inner dialogue, are like a sucker punch to the left eye.
The mind & feeling roller-coaster
When I talk about the mind, in a very general sense, I am talking about the activated brain – mostly the thinking, conscious stuff. When we have a normal everyday thought it is usually a ‘belief’ or is filtered through our beliefs, usually unconsciously, and sets up a chain of events.
Here is the unscientific way to explain the roller-coaster: We have a thought, we associate meaning to that thought, then the limbic part of our brain, produces a bunch of chemicals, which flow through our bloodstream, bump up against our cells, and cause them to respond in a particular way. The limbic brain will also flick the switch on the autonomic nervous system and give us a bit of a stress response or a relaxation response, depending on the ‘meaning’ we give to our thoughts. So thoughts generally cause feelings. Good thoughts generally produce ‘good’ feelings. Bad thoughts generally produce ‘bad’ feelings.
Bouncing off walls
The majority of the thoughts we have are not the result of ‘consciously thinking’, but pop into our heads uninvited and then bounce around our heads. Apparently we have about 60,000 thoughts a day, most of them are repetitive, and most of them are negative. But in defence of the brain, it is just like a very over protective and sometimes paranoid nanny. Its role is to learn and protect.
Our thoughts (aka: beliefs) are also not true 100% of the time, in 100% of cases, so they are not FACTS. They are mostly just stuff we bought into, from the time of our big data dump and other data dumps and experiences through life. But the reality is those thoughts – if we latch onto them – will make us feel a certain way. And if one of your BELIEFS is I am not worthy of love because of A, B, or C; or when I do X, Y, or Z; or because I am not P, Q, or R; or because I do not have G, H, or I; or numerous other combinations; then every time those criteria are triggered we feel unloved. Unloved by others and unloved by ourselves.
So what does this mean?
My point is that thoughts and beliefs lead to feelings. Good feelings or bad feelings are most often the result of the internal dialogue we are having and the pre-programmed beliefs we adopted when much younger. They can lead to us feeling self-love or not feeling self-love. The good news is that just as we bought into those old beliefs, so too can we put them in the recycle bin and consciously choose and ‘activate’ new beliefs. Like this belief:
‘I am worthy of love’
(And abundance and optimum health and amazing relationships, etc., etc., etc.)
By consciously choosing a new empowering belief, repeating it often, connecting to the feeling of being loved, and replacing it with any thoughts that say differently, you start to feel different. You start to become your belief. You start to become loved. Not because of some external conditions, but because you chose to accept the actual reality; which is you are worthy of love, just because you showed up on planet earth.
Make sense? Are you playing the right program in your mind or that one that scores you a lower number in self-love. if you ever need a hand or help, just hit the Reply button or get over to my Facebook page to connect up.
Carl teams up with One of Australia’s leading Raw Food Chefs, Cat Cannizzaro in Raw and Radiant Retreat (R&R for your Body, Mind and Soul) in Bali, for an amazing 4-days of gourmet raw food, master cooking classes, personal transformation workshops and so much more.