“Love comes to you when you least expect it. Don’t look for it.” That’s something I heard many years ago. I think from a movie. It makes sense, and it happened to me with my husband. I wasn’t looking for it at that place we met, but I think I attracted it.

There was a time in my life when I was a single mom with a toddler. When I left my daughter’s father, he told me awful things like “no one would want me because I had a kid” and beat me down with hurtful words repeatedly while I was with him. I felt unworthy and very sad. I was a mother, terrified I’d be alone forever. I was brainwashed and fed many, many scams (wrong messaging), so much so that my ability to think rationally and healthily was diminished.

I gave my daughter, family, and friends love, but my programming up to that point didn’t allow me to feel love. Not from myself or others.

I attracted love by first learning to love myself. I’ll be honest. It was a slow process. I was up against years and years of low self-worth and dysfunctional beliefs that I was not good enough. I think I even showed my daughter those scams, and she believed them, too. I did the same thing that’s been happening in families since the dawn of time: transferring irrational beliefs to offspring. We can’t help it unless we first become aware and then do the work to change those messages.

In order to attract love (and I’m talking about real love, not just a relationship that fills a void but doesn’t bring you happiness), you have to love yourself first. There is no other correct answer to this.

You can’t just exercise your way to love, wear the right clothes to attract love, or even be the most beautiful, richest, high achiever in the world and hope to attract true love. You will attract a variation of what looks like love, but until you love yourself, all you’re attracting is a relationship.

So, then, how do we love ourselves? And I mean love yourself wholly and unconditionally.

• Forgive yourself (and eventually others when you’re strong enough to do so)
• lighten up on yourself (stop the chatter in your head trying to control every minute detail of your life)
• be gentle with yourself  (don’t berate yourself because you have the chatter going on)
• replace old thoughts with new ones (you buy new clothes and give up old ones that don’t serve you well, so do the same with your thoughts)
• fight for your happiness (let the child in you know it’s safe to be happy now)

I’ve read a lot of books on self-help, personal development, psychology topics, and the like, and I’ll tell you the common thread that runs throughout those books is that if you are unhappy with life, you have to change your thoughts first before you can ever change your life.

That’s the secret to loving yourself. We have to change the scams that we learned as children when our brains were sucking up information like the sand does to water on a beach. None of the negativity and dysfunction we got exposed to as little children was our fault, but as adults, it’s our responsibility to deal with it because we’re in control now. Not in the super crazy obsessive way. The way where you wake in the morning and feel great!

How many of us want to feel that? I know I do.

When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is thank God for waking up. I mean, think about it: we are not guaranteed that so why not be thankful for our lives the second we open our eyes? Just try it. It does start the day off well.

Then, throughout the day, I am continually thinking good thoughts. I sometimes have to force myself to if I get bombarded with negativity or an interaction with a wounded person. I have to be very focused, and so do you if you want to have a good mindset that serves you well and, most importantly, helps you to love yourself.  If you are hurt somewhere, like from an old wound (physically or mentally), or are sick, thinking good thoughts throughout the day of good health and feeling great can actually help you heal. I’ve done it, it works. Trust me on that one!

Thinking good thoughts might help you attract better food to help with inflammation going on in your body, thereby relieving pain, or will attract different people and situations that make you feel good, or you might just attract a wonderful partner who loves you as much as you love them. It all comes first from the mind. Then, it’ll show up in your life as something real.

As babies, everything around us is an influence. Words and actions from our parents, caretakers, family members, television, movies, everything influenced our tiny developing minds. Once we realize that what we have learned was what other people learned and shared with us (all of it, the helpful and hurtful words and actions), we can stop the cycle for ourselves and our children. We can change and help those around us change if they choose to live a happy life. We cannot force anyone to change. We can only do that for ourselves.

When we do change and begin to attract love from everywhere (because that’s the frequency we’ll be on), the people we wanted to change but couldn’t or wouldn’t might not seem that important to us anymore, and we move on – and focus on the good. There is nothing wrong with loving ourselves more than a painful situation.

I have attracted love. For myself, for and from my husband, and family and friends. If I think loving thoughts, I can even attract love from people I don’t know. I smile and get a smile back.

Thank you for reading my thoughts on this. I didn’t mean to mislead you with the title, but we need to love the most important person in our lives first before we can attract love from others.  I hope these ideas gave you something to think about. Let me know in the comments if you have other ways to show yourself love. ( P.G. responses, please, people! )

To attracting love,

Francesca