Focus on Love

“There are so many people who love you.Don’t focus on the ones who don’t.”

Saw that meme on Facebook the other day.

I don’t know who quoted that but it is a powerful revelation. I guess it’s not just me who seemed to want to prove my love to people who couldn’t have cared less. Maybe I’m not the only one who spent time agonizing over an unread text or a nonchalant reply from someone I’d invested so much of my energy and time in to.

Sure there are people who love me a great deal! I’m not blind or dumb enough to lie about that. There are people who sit in my inbox waiting for my reply. People who are always wanting to encourage me, loving me for who I am, where I am. So why don’t they get more of my time and attention? Why do I seem to care so much for those who leave me wounded or alone?

It occurred to me when I read that quote, that I focus on eeeeeeverything that’s wrong with me. All. The. Time.

So much so that the compliments of those who really do care about me are just not enough to quiet my insecurities.

I did some research and found that some psychologists have said that as humans our need to find fault within ourselves is just our innate desire to always want self-improvement. So I wonder if every time that I look at my photos and comment on how fat I am, how uneven my skin tone is, how prominent each blemish on my face seems to be...am I self-loathing or just wanting to self-improve? And where is the line in between?

Self-loathing is a focused act where we only think of ourselves as inadequate, undeserving of life and repulsive. Naturally, when we hate ourselves that much we tend to give our time, energy and even our affections to those who agree with us that we are in fact inadequate, repulsive, and undeserving of life.

The people we seem more apt to focus on who are more difficult to please, the ones who make us so aware of our shortcomings, the people who are more closed in their interactions with us can actually serve as a filter to help us as we continue to improve.

“The antidote to despair is action."

By either Joan Boaz or Lisa Nichols...the internet doesn’t seem to know for sure and neither do I. But it’s pretty powerful stuff ‘cause it means that if we don’t like something about our lives or our or appearance or whatever, we can simply act on it and change it!

We do not have to lament about it and we don’t have to focus our energy on people who help us to do that.

If we stay stuck or focus on how prevalent our failings and inadequacies are we are sure to become inactive in our endeavors to grow and improve and we will eventually spiral into the depths of despair. In this case, the only people we will give our focus to will be those who agree with our own selves about how despicable we think we are.

But like a filter is used to strain out the bad and keep the good and is then thrown away, so should be our disparaging thoughts about ourselves and the people who exploit them.

So basically when we focus our energy and time on ourselves by improving the things we don’t much care for or have outgrown or want to just be better we will, in fact, be loving ourselves. We will, therefore, just kinda automatically focus more on the people who love us too.