I did not know what I was truly capable of till I started to love myself. In the earlier days of my venture, it was strange as if I had entered into an alien world. It was not known to me previously.
Loving oneself truly asks you of one thing: to do whatever is in your reach to become better. The rule is simple yet profoundly effective. During the process we have to fight only one factor that greatly resists our will to love ourselves: laziness.
It is alone laziness that we do not engage ourselves in a work out program or an evening walk, or we do not enroll in a new course that we know shall be of great boost to our career or do not do things that at one day become an emergency.
We hide behind other excuses. We do not have time. I am too busy. The audit work is in progress at office. It is cloudy today. We’ll start tomorrow. The list is almost inexhaustible, but the fact is these are all masks for our laziness.
My greatest fight in the venture of loving myself was against my laziness. I was used to watching TV for hours daily. I would not workout or do a jog. I would not even go to a doctor if I would find early symptoms of illness in me.
And it kept on happening. Months and years kept passing by. Till one day I got tired and sick of it all. I had lost enough and had nothing to lose. Well yes, during all those times, I had one continuous unquenchable desire to grow,which never for once lowered in its intensity. One thing I never stopped doing was to read. I kept on reading and reading. Although reading books that let us grow is an act of loving ourselves, reading stories or novels or most work of fiction does not do much in the process of mental growth. I was actively involved in reading that helped me grow or that stretched my mind, but all my endeavors of loving myself were inside my head.
The problem was the same. I had desire to grow: mentally, spiritually, emotionally, financially, physically and relationship-wise, but I kept on procrastinating that desire till I had had enough.
The outer world begins to change only when we start to take action. Measurable, quantifiable, objectively verifiable action. Actions like I called 7 publishers in one month. I sent my work proposals to 93 organizations. I started spending almost 2 hours on improving my physical self doing things like brisk walking and jogging, workouts and aerobics. I started writing my thoughts on paper and on my laptop and on my blog.I dropped intake of sugar and carbohydrates from my diet. I reduced TV watching to one hour daily and then to 2 hours a week.
I began to take actions. I began to work out regularly. I began to love myself. And then things began to change. Yet on a slower pace but they began to change.
Small pleasant surprises started to develop around. I started getting work. I began to be noticed among professional networks. I started to feel better during all day and my energy levels started staying generally high. I started to sleep early and stopped punishing myself for staying awake till late hours. The list of yet so many to be read books began diminishing and it started to check off against those which were read. Offers for work increased. Incomes began to move in.
More than that all, I started to experience what is called the victory over oneself. We all drink water on a daily basis. There is nothing peculiar about this. But can you imagine yourself after going through two days in a wilderness without water and then finally being able to find a fresh water stream?
It is not water only then, it is a sign of endurance that you can survive the harshest and the toughest challenges nature offers us.
It is a sign that we can endure and grow and come out of worst scenarios, whether self-created or thrown on us as a test by life. We do not know what we are truly capable of till we start loving ourselves, through thoughts translated into actions.