The most important love we can experience

When you think of love, what’s the first thing that comes to mind?

Do you think of the people you love?

Do you think about things you love?

Do you think about yourself?

Self-love is the most important love we can experience.

We can only love others to the extent we can truly love ourselves.

Our level of self-love affects every relationship, every decision we make, our boundary or lack of boundary setting, our reactions or responses to others and our way of maneuvering through our lives.

I believe we’re born with total self-love. When we’re young, we sing, play, and dance without judging ourselves or thinking about what others might say. It’s only after we start listening to others that we start questioning our worth. As we doubt our value, we gain a voice inside that criticizes, sometimes our every thought, word, and action.

Over time this voice can become so loud that it runs our life, keeps us from doing things we want to do, keeps us stuck feeling bad, and keeps us from the  love and connection we desire.

I can tell you that I had a critical voice most of my life and it was so loud that it kept me from trying lots of things I wanted to do. It kept me in a cycle of perfectionism and waiting for everything to be perfect before I felt like I could do something new or different. It was the normal way for me to think until I learned that it didn’t have to be.

I’ve learned to make peace with and love this voice enough that when it does show up now, I notice it right away and send it away with love and gratitude for showing me how far I’ve come.

Quieting your critical voice is a step in remembering your value and loving yourself.

Join the Critical Voice Challenge

If you struggle with a critical voice, I can help you.

Join me in my Out of Hiding Group and Judy James FaceBook Page February 12- 16 daily at 7am central for my Critical Voice Challenge.

We’ll talk about awareness, presence, commitment, and consistency.

We’ll talk about where our critical voice comes from and what we can do to tame it.

We’ll take a self-compassion quiz to see how much compassion you have for yourself.

I’ll do a short live video each morning with a little challenge for you to become aware of and tame your critical voice.

When we change the world changes.