“It took me a long time not to judge myself through someone else’s eyes.”
Sally Field
Love cannot be manufactured. But if you give it space and time and remove the barriers in the way, it is likely to grow.
The barriers between you and self-love are deep forms of fear like shame and guilt. They are strongly tied to morality and the blind destructive fear of being immoral.
The key to self-love is to completely detach it from what you think you deserve and make it an universal part of you. Life is too random and will throw both bad and good undeserved things in your face all the time.
Your relationship with yourself is the most important relationship in your life. It’s like looking at a mirror. It’s two times the same You. Cheating works well in closed systems. But in the opposite direction – Reverse-cheating. It has three main characteristics:
- You have to break the central rule of your surrounding system
- You have to not benefit from breaking it
- The benefit should go to another entity
Reverse-cheating is a powerful force in life because it’s rare. It changes the narrative from performance reward to genuine care. And this is a powerful message to send.
And if the other entity is… future you? Reverse-cheating is exactly the same thing that happens every time you change something in your life. You don’t feel like doing this the old way and you stop. You fail the habit. You give it up. You’re making a trade-off between a known pattern from the past and a more uncertain future.
You and future you are locked in this constant dance of expectations, reality and improvement attempts. But inertia and our inability to reverse-cheat can fail our development.
The popular “Fake it till you make it” approach is just a form of reverse-cheating between you and future you. You can Fake-till-you-make-it everything else in life but not love. It cannot be manufactured with a strategy. But you can create room for it to grow, create a nurturing environment (by being vulnerable) and know its enemies (fear, guilt and shame) so you look out for them and fight if needed.
In a relationship if everyone is willing to give in love without receiving anything in return a virtuous cycle begins:
- Being completely honest and transparent makes the other side react with the same. You now trust each other’s facts.
- Being kind leads to the other side being kinder. You now care about your feelings and really try not to hurt each other.
- Being tolerant of our alternating mutual failures creates even more trust and respect that holds through bad times.
- Fully accepting each other for who we are leads to a relationship of harmony.
In any relationship goodwill first steps are very important. You have to give what is not yet earned. You have to reverse-cheat.
Now in a relationship of two people they are not always in the same emotional state. If I’m happy and she’s sad, I’ll try to give her my best vibes. If I’m down she’ll try to do the same for me. There are constant occasions to make the goodwill first step, to reverse-cheat.
But in a relationship between You and You… it’s a another story. In one of your You-s is down, the other You is also down. Because they are the same. There is no one to pick you up. It’s a dangerous symmetry. You’re either well and the second You is loving and great but you’re good anyway, or you’re both emotionally down.
There are two separate skills we need – emotions and thoughts. And our self-worth and happiness depend on it.
Guilt, shame and anxiety emotions are extremely unhelpful on a personal level. They have evolved to keep our tribe together and have no purpose other than that. Whenever you spot them, drop them by any means. Vulnerability is a good counter emotion to those. Without vulnerability there is no unconditional love.
Destructive thoughts come when we’re down and don’t have a legit plan to get up. They appear small and casual but can quickly grow to terrifying proportions. While fighting for justice in a truly unjust world is noble, just thinking about the injustice is not helping anyone. As we explored in the balance post, either don’t care at all or care enough to make you do something about it. If you can’t do anything to change the unjust reality, try not to obsess over it as you’re hurting yourself without helping anyone. Another source of downward spirals is when you have nothing to do.
Be mindful and a compassionate observer. Don’t let such thoughts become yours. If it doesn’t work, distract yourself – this is fighting the symptom, rather than the disease but it’s better than nothing.
If you believe as a core value that everything good should be earned, you’re not giving yourself any love and compassion because you don’t feel you have earned the right to it. This is a fundamental problem for many people. They just don’t get reverse-cheating as a concept. Not even internally. They just won’t make the first step of goodwill in self-love. There is only one way forward for those people. Make reverse-cheating a part of your life and get used to those unfairly looking asymmetries. This way you’ll break the patterns of fairness and symmetry that prevent you to be loving to yourself even when you’re not at your best. This radical kindness by default is a practical path that costs you next to nothing, in fact it makes your life better. Once you emotionally accept the concept of giving forms of unearned love, you will be able to give the same to yourself.
Nature cheats on its own laws and if it didn’t, the Sun wouldn’t shine.
