Treat Yourself Like Someone You Love
When Warren Buffet was asked by a TV interviewer about how he measures wealth, he answered, "By how much love a person has in their life." He said that he knows a lot of high net worth people who have few successful relationships. For Buffett, these people are not wealthy.
I agree. . In Build Your Money Muscles I say that when you feel loved, accepted, acknowledge, and appreciated, you’ll be open to greater cash flow. And experiencing these feelings depends on your relationship with yourself and others.
Feeling loved, accepted, acknowledge, and appreciated by others begins with loving, accepting, acknowledging, and appreciating yourself. Many people I talk to admit that their internal dialog is more critical than loving. When this is your internal state, people will reflect criticism rather than love, and it is difficult to generate acknowledgement in the form of money.
To alter your internal dialog, start focusing on treating yourself like someone you love. Here are some suggestions:
- Listen to how you talk to yourself. When the critical voice comes into your head, tell it, "Thanks for sharing, but we don’t talk like that any more." Take a deep breath and tell yourself that you are a good girl/boy, followed by your power word.
- Stand close to a mirror and look directly into your eyes. Say outloud, "(Your Name), I unconditionally love and accept you exactly the way you are." This can bring up a lot of emotion, don’t try to hold it back.
- Buy yourself some flowers.
- Stroke your body gently.
- Give your body what it needs to function well.
You can also use the following statements with your power word to help overcome your resistance to loving yourself:
- I give myself permission to treat myself like someone I love. Power word.
- I release my resistance to loving myself. Power word.
- I am willing to treat myself in a loving way. Power word.
- I am willing to speak kindly to myself.Power word.
- I want to love myself. Power word.
- I am lovable. Power word.
Instructions for the power word
You can find many more ideas for altering your inner dialog in Build Your Money Muscles
This is a true thought because I have often read that everything starts from within and it will appear without (in your world). It took sometime to just look in the mirror at myself. I started with a small pocket mirror and gettig comfortable with looking at me then I moved on to a full length mirror and now I just enjoy looking at me and talking to me in the mirror. Also, when the voices in my head get too loud and negative I say out loud, enough already! For instance I am 51 and I’m taking swimming classes at the neighborhood state park to learn how to swim. This is a ten week class and today is the last day and I still don’t know how to stroke and breath and kick. I just can’t seem to relax and coordinate myself. Well, last week I wanted to cry and say the hell with it but then I talked to myself in the mirror and I said “listen nine weeks ago you didn’t even go in the water, didn’t own a bathing suit and had no clue how to even swim. At least you know how to blow bubbles, kick a little and besides you feel GREAT when you come out of the water!” So I just laugh at myself and cheer on the other classmates and I just resigned to taking the class again, at least this time I will know what to expect and have a head start. Since I’ve been reading your blogs and listening to your podcasts I realize I need to get the book “Build Your Money Muscles” so that I can have the complete steps to working on myself and my life. Thanks Joan!