10 Keys To Loving Yourself Like God Loves You

By Nicole Rivas

1. Spend Time With God

God loves us unconditionally. What that means is that He loves us no matter what – even in His anger He loves us, which is why we are not struck down in the midst of our mess. If we are going to love ourselves like God loves us, we have to learn to love ourselves unconditionally. That is, we must love ourselves when we are successful, when we fail, when we are loved by others, and when we are hated by everyone. The problem is that most of us have no idea how to love unconditionally. We don’t know how to love others unconditionally, and we definitely don’t know how to love ourselves without judgment and without conditions. So we have to learn this skill, and the only way to do that is to go to the only source of unconditional love – your Heavenly Father. You spend time with God through prayer and through reading your Word.

2. Stop Defining Yourself By Your Past

God is very clear – once you repent of a sin, he forgets about it. It is as if it never happened. When you keep dragging up your past, you are in effect calling God a liar. You are saying I know you said you forgave me, but I don’t believe you, and so I am going to keep dragging around the heavy chains of my past. Stop it!!! If you look closely at the chains, you will realize that they were unlocked a long time ago. All you need to do is put them down. Who you were or what you did yesterday does not determine who or what you will be tomorrow. Indeed, who you were five minutes ago does not control who you will be five minutes from now. Free yourself from your past.

3. Forgive Yourself And Others

The key to freeing yourself of your past is to forgive yourself and others. No matter what you did, no matter how many times you did it and no matter how many people you hurt, God forgives you and it is time for you to forgive yourself. Everyone makes mistakes, let it go. The same is true for those that hurt you. They made a mistake, forgive them and let it go. When you constantly think about what someone has done to you, you develop a victim mentality where you do not control what happens to you. You cannot even make them sorry that they did it. But, you can stop them from controlling your future by forgiving what they did to you in the past and moving forward with your life.

4. Accept The Fact That No One Is Perfect (Give yourself permission to make mistakes and failures in the future)

Many people will listen to this today and swear to turn their lives around. They will forgive themselves, forgive others, let go of their past, and they will feel really good…for a moment. Then they will make a mistake or fail again…and the cycle of self-loathing will begin all over again. Stop the cycle – not by avoiding mistakes or failures (that is impossible), but rather by giving yourself permission to make the mistakes and failures sometimes. No one is perfect. Indeed, if you do the first step (spend time reading the Bible), you will learn that virtually every great person in the Bible was an absolute mess. David was an adulterer and murderer, Abraham was a liar and coward, Moses had anger issues, and the list goes on. Face it, you are not perfect and you never will be. God does not expect perfection. All He wants is your trust so that when you make the next mistake, when you fail for the hundredth time, you run straight to Him and allow Him to bandage your wounds. Then you go out there and fight another battle.

5. Give Yourself Permission To Love Yourself

The church has done individual a great disservice by teaching there is something wrong with self-love. Most people believe that self-loathing is the same as humility. It is not!!! Being humble does not mean that you think nothing of yourself. To the contrary, being humble means that you know you are blessed, but give honor and glory to God. To say or think that there is nothing special about yourself does not bring glory to God. In fact, it does the exact opposite – if God created you and there is nothing special about you, what does that say about God? I do not know about your god, but my God only creates works of art, which means I am and you are a masterpiece.

6. Focus On The Solution, Not The Problem (Self-analysis vs. Self-loathing)

Even though we should all love ourselves as we are right now, there is always room for improvement. Focusing on those areas that you need to improve can easily take you down the path of self-loathing, which is unproductive. Instead, when focusing on what you need to change, spend as little time as possible pondering the problem. That is, spend just enough time on the problem to identify what it is and what is the source of the problem. Then immediately switch your attention to the solution. If you are overweight, for example, it should take you about five minutes to identify that fact. Instead of spending the next two weeks hating yourself because you are overweight, spend that time thinking about why you became overweight – do you eat as a substitute for something else? For instance, do you eat because you are lonely? Once you have identified the cause, start working on the solution. Start an exercise plan and diet. And, if you eat because you are lonely, start looking for volunteer activities, take a class, join a club or accept a position within your church. Never make the mistake of focusing on your flaws, instead focus on how you can fix your flaws.

7. Get Control Of Your Thought Life

If you have engaged in self-loathing for most of your life, you probably are constantly criticizing yourself in your mind. You constantly compare yourself to others, and are constantly reminding yourself of past mistakes. When you decide to change, your brain may not always cooperate. It will continue with the same old thought patterns. You therefore have to make a conscious effort to control your negative thoughts. When you start to have those same old thoughts, stop yourself – say a prayer, sing a song, shake your head, do whatever you have to do to make it stop. At first, the thoughts will keep coming one after the other like waves on the shore. But, after a while, your brain will become trained and the thoughts will be fewer and farther in-between.

8. Stop Hiding

Many of us spend most of our lives hiding who we really are because we think if people knew about all the mistakes we have made, they would judge us. The problem is that as long as we are hiding, the devil is able to taunt us with our past. That thing that you are so scared of others to discover is the thing that he constantly reminds you of and uses to convince you that you are not worthy of God’s love or anyone else’s love. The funny thing is that the moment you stop hiding, you will discover that there are many other people who share your struggle, who want to help and some who already knew even though you thought you were hiding it so well. Yes, there will be those that judge you, but you will find that there will be many who don’t.

9. Get Rid Of Toxic People

When you don’t feel good about yourself, you have the tendency to surround yourself by people who also don’t feel good about themselves. These people are only comfortable with you as long as you are stuck in a cycle of negativity. Once you start to break that cycle, many of these people will move away from you or try to tear you down. If you want to start anew, the toxic people in your life will have to go.

10. Spend Time Alone

You may find that once you let go of the toxic people in your life, you are left all alone. This is ok. People who do not love themselves often define themselves by what others think. You have to break this habit, and the best way to do that is to learn to be alone with yourself and God.

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