The amount of love that you can give to any other aspect of life – person, animal, situation etc – CAN NEVER EXCEED the amount of love that you have for yourself.

Read the above line over and over again. It is THE single most important universal law of love. Before we can really love another person, we must learn to love ourselves. When a person understands and applies this law completely, then he experiences pure love in all his relationships. Sadly, very few people actually know that the key here is self-love. Their low self-esteem and ingrained belief of unworthiness has made them accept that they are useless and good for nothing. When you fail to realize the beautiful and refulgent being that you truly are and punish yourself by considering yourself as unworthy, you fail to love yourself. And consequently, you fail in life.

To love yourself, among many other things, primarily means to accept and respect yourself unconditionally, and to acknowledge that every part of you is a perfect reflection of divinity, i.e. to acknowledge that you yourself are a pure divine being, with every conceivable power within, and not some worthless person. When we were young children, we knew that we are perfect reflections of divinity. We knew that we are divine beings. At that young age of 2-5 years, we expressed ourselves openly, without any fear, not because we were unaware and small kids, but because we were fully aware only during that time. (I will talk in a separate article about special gifts that all kids come with, which eventually vanish by the time they reach seven years of age). As kids, we were free from all pressures, anxieties and uncertainties of life. Once again not because we never had anything important to do and just play around. The true reason is that only a child would be fully aware of the immense power that he has within him. With such a power, he does not need to worry about anything at all. He lives in the now. The kids exemplify the true meaning of self-love. That is why everyone loves kids so much. Simply because they too love themselves very much too!

So what happened in the course of our lives that caused us to lose the ability to love ourselves. Many things happened my friends. Many things. The people and the environment around us conditioned us to behave in a specific way and pressured us to accept contorted truths about ourselves.

I’ll give you an example. By the time a child starts schooling, he has developed the ability to consciously recollect his experiences. He will be jotting down every comment that people are making regarding him. Especially important to him are comments made by his parents, elder siblings and teachers. He regards this group of people with the highest of respect and acknowledges everything that they say. This is the beginning of the lack of self-love.

A child who is a slow-learner often has to face the music from his parents and teachers. In school, his performance will be compared against the other students. While most teachers don’t actually do such comparisons openly in classrooms, you can’t generalize this scenario. Many teachers would feel that telling the boy how weak he is compared to other students might motivate him to prove the teacher wrong. His friends might do just that, but for a different reason, i.e. to mock at him. When the child goes home, he will have to face the same old music from his parents and siblings. The situation gets even more complicated if his siblings are over-achievers. His parents will try all means to improve his grades: send him for tuitions after tuitions, restricting his playtime, scold him etc. And the worst that they can do is to scold the child these words: “You are a good for nothing hopeless child. You will never be able to do anything in life. You will always remain an underachiever”.

The last statement automatically gets registered into the child’s subconscious memory and depending on the environment when the statement was made, it might just leech-on to the child for the rest of his life. His family might just have been the cause of his “lifetime underachiever award”.

It is extremely important to realize that we as humans have a very great tendency to regard ourselves based on what others think of us. And this is especially true when we are young. So if a parent continually calls his son “useless, hopeless and stupid”, then he will accept that as truth because he highly regards his parents and will turn out to be just what his parents are calling him. It will not give the boy a chance to explore his innate and latent talents that might have appeared at a later stage in his life. For his entire life, he will regard himself as a useless, hopeless and stupid bum, either consciously or subconsciously. In a way, his parents have basically ruined the life of an otherwise brilliant young boy.

This sort of psychological conditioning happens at all stages in life, however I must agree that its efficacy depends very much on the age of the person. When a person grows older, he may be attacked in other ways. Discrimination of any sort has a very negative effect on a person. It infuses within him the dualistic notion of “good and bad”. The person who is negatively discriminated against begins to accept it as a truth that he is just a low-caste and useless person, and therefore he deserves less than the others. Discrimination is a very powerful means to condition a person to behave in a specific manner because it concerns not just one person but a big mass.

In the case of love, unlike poles attract. In almost all other instances in life, like poles attract. We have this innate ability to magnetize people and situations into our lives who will confirm for us our beliefs. A person who thinks and believes something firmly often tends to attract and go along very well with another person who shares the same belief systems as him. When these two like-minded people meet, their belief systems will be amplified by twofold. For example, if you have person A who thinks that he is a loser in life and along comes person B who thinks that he is a loser too. When A and B meet, they will multiply the intensity of their beliefs. Both will now feel that they are not just losers, they are big time losers! Think of the sort of effect this can have in the case of discrimination. It is therefore very important to mingle with people who have a proper and positive mindset. That will motivate others to have a positive viewpoint towards life too.

The thoughts that a person has about himself are very important too. I think therefore I am. I feel therefore I manifest what I think I am. This is a law of manifestation. In a separate article, I will talk extensively on the power of the thought and thought manifestation. Whatever we believe about ourselves within us, we will continually manifest in our external lives. If we believe we are worthless, no matter what opportunities we are presented with, we will find a way to sabotage ourselves and fail.  At the surface, we might be saying things like, “I really want to do well in this new job”. But the truth is, we really want to use this new job to confirm how worthless we are.

FRIENDS

Throughout our lives our circle of friends changes. When we were sixteen most of our friends were people we went to school with. As we grow older and start meeting people in different situations we sometimes find that we don't have that much in common with mates we've known since we were kids. Just because friends drift apart it doesn't mean that there's something wrong or they've stopped liking each other. Sometimes, for no very good reason, people just fall out of contact. Whatever happens this drifting apart isn't something to worry about. What matters in a friendship is not how long you've known someone but how well you get on with them.

Although it's usually small kids who will tell someone that "you're my bestest friend" it's worth bearing in mind that not all friendships are the same. Some people you can be very close to and feel that you can tell them anything. Then there are other friends who you may not feel like telling them your deepest secrets but they're still good fun to be with. Acquaintances are those people you see around, and you'll both have a bit of a chat, but you don't really know that much about them. These relationships are not always permanent and can change over time. A really good mate can move away from the area and so you might just end up seeing him a couple of times a year. But then you can find that someone you're only on nodding terms with can end up becoming one of you best mates. Of all the people we know we usually have a larger number of acquaintances than friends, and fewer people we'd call close friends. When we're faced with any kind of problem it's more important to have one really good mate than loads of acquaintances.

You can have a look at all your friendships and see which category you'd put them in: Close Friend, Friend or Acquaintance. Are you happy with the results? Or are there some kinds of relationship you feel you need to develop?

Often it seems that every film, TV programme and magazine is full of people in relationships. But in real life people quite often choose not to have a partner, and others just haven't met the right person. Whatever your reason is for being single it's always worth bearing in mind its advantages:

• Not tied down to one person
• You can do your own thing - even if your own thing is watching re-runs of Charlie's Angels in your underwear.
• Have the space to think and make decisions for yourself.
• Don't have to consider partner's needs
• More time for hobbies, sports, study and semi-naked TV-viewing.

In an age where even bank managers have genital piercings few people are going to consider it strange if you're unattached. Being single is definitely becoming more common, but there are things that will help you meet someone if that's what you want:

• Develop new interests so you've got more stuff to talk about
• Join a club to meet people who share your interests
• Do some voluntary work
• Keep up with friends and family
• Take care of your appearance. Unless you're a member of Oasis, it helps to be clean, presentable and wash your clothes every now and then.