Love Yourself: The First Step to a Successful Relationship

Judgment inhibits an individual to take risks, which is essential for personal growth and change to occur.

Another by-product of self-acceptance is that when I am less critical of myself, I am less critical and judgmental of others, which enables me to be around people who have different beliefs and attitudes, including political views or musical tastes. When I was self-critical, I would put people down who were different from me in any way. As a result

myself. Once I realized what I was doing, I started to hear that critical voice inside and stopped it dead in its tracks, replacing it with a more nurturing parent voice that said, “Give yourself a break. You’re not perfect, and you are going to mess up and make mistakes. After all, you’re only human.” I finally started to treat myself with self-lo

I was one of those parents rooting for their kids from the sidelines. After a match, if they lost, they would be very self-critical of how they played. Instead of chiming in and telling them how badly they played, I told them to give themselves a break. I would say things like, “Well at least you gave it your best shot. After all, you’re only fourt

Is the individual who is using these self-directed critical parent statements aware that he is causing himself a certain level of resentment? I don’t think he is conscious of what he is doing. Usually he notices the symptoms, with the number one being different levels of depression. Another symptom is a lack of motivation to get the things done tha

This security is really an illusion, because as I stated earlier, only you can give yourself real security. Any adult can abandon you at any given time; that risk always exists, and to think otherwise is to live in a sense of denial that will be difficult to handle when reality hits. Your partner could have an affair, fall out of love with you, and

This adaptive approach to childhood works when a person is a child, but when he brings this same adaptive approach to a committed adult lover relationship, it spells psychological disaster.

If the client tells me that he is comfortable with getting married, then I say, “Great, go forward. You most likely will not regret your decision, because it’s the right one for you.” It’s such a simple process, and yet so many people find it difficult to make personal decisions. We are not taught as children to listen to our feelings; we are taugh

Changing the belief or “should” from how we were raised to creating a new “should” or belief that we want to live with is a major psychological growth step in becoming an adult. This change represents cutting the psychological cord with your parents. I am not saying that everything needs to change, but the rules/“shoulds” that are obsolete or dysfu