With the new year upon us and resolutions in full swing, several people have emailed me over the last week or contacted me on Twitter asking me for my recommendations on the best self-help products for finding a romantic partner or manifesting more abundance. It seems that people everywhere are determined to make this the year they find true love or finally get their finances in order! You can find my recommendations for love here and abundance here, but I’d like to use this blog to reiterate the importance of self-love in creating your ideal life or manifesting specific results.
The truth is, until you can truly come to a place of loving and accepting yourself exactly as you are, results will ultimately always elude you because deep down you don’t feel deserving of the success you’re trying to achieve. I came up with exercise below (it's fun!) to help you get into a place of really loving yourself, which will speed up the process of attracting whatever you want to manifest in your life this year.
I call this exercise, “Writing a Love Letter to Myself.” Basically, you're going to do just what it sounds like. Take out a sheet of paper, or do this in your journal or on the computer. Next, get busy writing a love letter to yourself and describing all the wonderful things you love and adore about yourself! You could write about physical features, personality characteristics, things you have accomplished in life, basically anything you appreciate about yourself. And don't think you have to only focus on big things. You can even appreciate yourself just for doing this exercise!
For some of you this may seem extremely difficult, if not downright impossible or uncomfortable. We spend so much time beating ourselves up and trying to change things about ourselves, so at first it might be challenging to find things you truly love about yourself. Do the best you can, though, and if you keep looking I guarantee you will find lots of great things you love and adore about yourself!
Here’s an example taken from my own life:
Dear Mary,
I love the fact that you are so committed to personal and spiritual growth, and that you are determined to create your ideal life. I love that you have created a website to help others do that as well, and that your passion is helping others to achieve their wildest dreams. I love that you stay positive even on those days when you don’t feel so great, and that you always stay optimistic and focused on your ideal outcome. I love that you are constantly getting to know yourself on deeper levels, and are always improving your relationship with yourself.
I love you,
-Mary Knebel
Feel free to do this exercise several times or as many times as you need to really amp up your self-love. I guarantee you will feel better after doing this, and you may even realize you love things about yourself that you hadn’t even thought about!
If you’re single and want to manifest your ideal partner this year, write a love letter to yourself from your dream partner. In most cases you probably haven’t met them yet or don’t know who they are, but use your imagination to think about your ideal partner and think of things that he/she would find particularly attractive or appealing in you. Then write a love letter to yourself from that perspective and sign it from your future partner. You can even keep it and give it to them when they show up in your life!
This can be a useful exercise because sometimes we spend so much time focusing on the type of person we want to attract that we forget to focus on how they’re going to treat us. Sure, we want a person with specific qualities, but if they show up and don’t love us as we are then we’ve missed the point entirely. If you’ve ever met someone who has all the qualities you’re looking for but they're just not that into you, then you know exactly what I’m talking about!
I’d love to hear about your results with either of the above two exercises. Write away!
For additional self-love resources and exercises, be sure to check out the self-love page on my site.
It will be interesting to see what else you share about what you are up to here on your blog.
ReplyDeleteKindest regards,
Tom Bailey
Mary, this is a great exercise that I recommend for all my clients. A neat thing to do after you've written the letter is to actually mail it to yourself. When you receive the letter in the mail, sure you know that you sent it but you don't always remember what you wrote. It's a nice reminder and makes you take a moment to reflect on how wonderful you are.
ReplyDeleteI LOVE it!! It's a genius way to take notice of our many qualities and gifts because often times we can get too focused on beating ourselves up, sometimes unintentionally!
ReplyDeleteAnd Nat, I really love the mailing of the letter! I'm sure your heart kinda skips a beat when you receive it!! (In a good way ;))
Best wishes in 2010!
Hi, Mary! Something I've begun doing is when I send myself an email to remind me to do something the next day or in the near future, such that the message really begins and ends on the subject line; in the body of the email, I write myself a love note! Sometimes, I choose a special font the way I would if I were writing someone special. Sometimes I just write mmmpppwwwaaa! which means "big wet kiss!" and I close it with my favorite smiley face from the selection aol offers me. It's a fun way to send love to myself by first sending it out into the universe then having it return in my inbox!:-)
ReplyDeleteI just did this exercise and read it to myself. I felt good writing it and even more better and motivated to hone these qualities within myself more as I read it. I really like Sarah's email idea. I think I may do this with my to do list daily. Thank you everyone for your ideas! :)
ReplyDeleteLove isn't about finding the perfect person. Its about finding what is perfect in the imperfect person.
ReplyDelete