In the last post, Is Your Spouse Defective? we talked about loving yourself. I am going to assume you have never been taught how to do this, so forgive me if I state the obvious. I would rather be redundant than leave out something important. Before we get started, I should state that the reason you should learn to love yourself, is that once you can do this, your life will be completely transformed, (and so will your relationships.)
[Tweet “As you process through all the icky stuff in your house and let it go, you will find that you are learning to forgive yourself and love yourself.”]
You can start loving yourself in different ways, and remember, it is a process.
The first thing you do is to make your home feel good to you. I am not talking about remodeling, and making everything “perfect” or worthy of being in a magazine. I am talking about walking in the door and being glad you’re home, instead of wishing you could leave again. I am going to assume your house is in a mess. Where do you start?
Clean your kitchen sink and shine it up. Don’t worry about the rest of your kitchen for now. We are going to take this in baby steps. (If you recognize this from Flylady.net, you’re right! For more help, I recommend her highly.) Before you go to bed at night, shine your sink so that when you wake up in the morning and go to your sink to make coffee, a shiny sink will be smiling up at you. Everything else may be a mess, but your sink is a ray of hope. Don’t try to do too much all at once. You’ll just get discouraged and blame your spouse and family for how messy everything is. And that is not loving yourself. You are doing this for you – no one else.
The second thing you can do is to get rid of clutter for 15 minutes a day. Clutter is anything that you do not love. Get rid of it especially if it contains some icky memories for you. Let it go. As you process through all the icky stuff in your house and let it go, you will find that you are learning to forgive yourself and love yourself. You don’t need to keep anything that makes you feel bad. This is your home, and it should make you feel loved and safe and cared for. This decluttering process will take some time. Try not to go out shopping and bring home stuff to replace it. Think of yourself as Michelangelo chipping away at the marble until David emerged. Your house and your life will slowly emerge as you let things go.