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Class OverviewLove is the most powerful force on the planet. Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all. We’ll discuss how a positive relationship with yourself can help you live a life that shines! (Check out the Top 10 Big Ideas from the class below!) Your ProfessorOzioma of BurnBright, is an internationally recognized speaker, writer and educator, CEO of BurnBright Lifeworks, Inc., teaches at Columbia University, and is the inventor of the International Day for Dreamers.How to Fall Madly In Love with YourselfIt is not your business to love me. It is mine. ~Byron Katie   Love truly is one of the most powerful forces on the planet. Wars have been waged due to lack of it. Temples have been built on account of it. Many of us are unaware of it, but one of the keys to optimal living is learning to deeply appreciate and love yourself. Falling in love with yourself is not about walking around with your chest puffed out thinking “Yeah, that’s right! I’m the S***.” It’s more about being an advocate for yourself and stepping out of your own way, and into your own power so that you can shine fully as a unique contribution to the world. Learning how to give ourselves love in a way that we can fully receive it is one of the most powerful choices we can make. Actually, it’s a keystone choice- a choice that impacts our ability to thrive, or just survive. Here are 10 ideas to support you in developing an optimal, thriving relationship with yourself starting from TODAY! The Top 10 Big Ideas1 Practice Loving Acceptance with Yourself and Others Too often on the path of evolving our sense of self, we beat ourselves up in the process. It makes absolutely no sense! Falling in love with your self requires a willingness to be human and accept yourself completely and give others the room to do the same. No matter what your past story is, if you are committed to bringing more honor and support into your life, you must learn the art of Loving Acceptance: accepting people for who they are, as well as who they aren’t, and always doing your best to respond with love. Loving Acceptance is also about learning to love and accept yourself in the very same way: for who you are and who you aren’t.  The practice of Loving Acceptance is a powerful one. It teaches us how to invent new ways of meeting the rub and rejection of the world with tenderness. It also helps us to access our innate excellence in a way that positively impacts those around us. The most compassionate action we can take is to see with eyes of wholeness. Remember: fundamentally you are a whole and complete human being whose life works. It’s up to YOU to see with eyes of love and frame yourself that way.2 Take the Time to Get to Know and Court Yourself When you are seeking to wins someone’s heart, you invest time and energy in them, don’t you? Well, have you done that with yourself lately? A lot of us don’t love ourselves not because we dislike who we are, but because we have never really taken the time to get to know ourselves. Human beings are quite fascinating and magnificent when we begin to delve into our multi-dimensionality.Invest some time exploring your personality type, your value systems, your love language, and other aspects and attributes that make you who you are. It’s important that on the journey to developing a deeper more positive relationship with yourself that you begin to see and treat your self like a jewel of great value. You are worthy of your time, your affection.  Becoming better acquainted with ourselves is like getting to know a diamond. Make it your business to make knowledge of self your most valued resource and fall in love with every facet of your being. 3 Take a Restorative Trip Down Memory Lane During the course of your life, you have had many different relationships with yourself. There have been times when you have liked yourself more and there have been times when you have liked yourself less. In fact, if you think long and hard enough, I bet we all can remember specific moments in our lives when though they may have been deserving of them, these moments never experienced the glow of our own affection and appreciation. It’s important that as you begin to envision a more loving relationship with yourself that you identify parts of your life experience- your journey, aspects of yourself- that you have never expressed compassion or love towards, and that you take time to send love to that version of yourself. Send love to the awkward you at twelve years old. The confused frightened one. Send love to the mean you, who was only mean because they were scared. Yeah… that version of you deserves your love too. Every version of us deserves love and understanding and it’s our responsibility to give it to ourselves. I guarantee that when you begin to send love to the lost neglected parts of yourself, you will discover that you never knew a love like this before.4 See Yourself From Someone Else’s Eyes Many people on the path to loving themselves arrive at this very question: If people seem to like me, why can’t I like myself? Well, it might be because you have never taken the time to see yourself from someone else’s vantage point and fall in love with the you they get to experience. When people compliment you, rather than humbly shying away, explore it. Honor the part of yourself that inspired the compliment. When we see ourselves with the lens of those who authentically love us the most, we tap into the energy of our magnetism. As we draw others to our inner flame, we have to allow ourselves to be drawn into the energy of our own magnetism.5 Issue a Self-Love Edict As they say: if you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything. On the path to deepening and falling madly in love with yourself, you may need a bit of help upholding your end of the self-love bargain. A self-love edict is a written personal statement for what you will and will not accept as it relates to the love you maintain for yourself and what you hope to experience in your relationships with others.Now, this is NOT about turning into Cartman from South Park and screaming “Respect my Authority!” everywhere you go. This is about creating your own standards for how you give and receive love in a way that supports and holds you to your highest. Sometimes we fall into the “land of less than” when we have not set a standard that we ourselves have created. Devising a personal self-love edict allows us to explore how we would like to give and receive love. A self-love edict has the power to enhance the quality of your own life, as well as how you show up in the lives of others. 6 Fall In Love With Whoever Stares Back at You in the Mirror EVERYDAY Mirror-mirror on the wall who’s the fairest of them all? We all know what happens when we use a mirror to knit-pick and tear ourselves down. Developing a self-love practice calls for seeing with new eyes and believing with an open heart. Positive mirror work invites us to learn how to use mirrors to develop healthy perspective. Mirror work is a powerful gift on the journey to falling in love with your self. Engaging in mirror work can open you up and prime you for the more powerful relationship with yourself. By staring into the mirror and consciously choosing to love whoever happens to stare back at you in the mirror, is the best way to be your own advocate, because there are going to be days when who gazes back at you hurts and there will be days when who you see shines so brightly that it hurts your eyes. The opportunity is to love whoever shows, NO MATTER WHAT!7 Take a Risk That Builds Confidence Sometimes, in order to build your confidence you have to take a risk and put yourself out there. Speak up in a meeting. Approach someone you may be afraid to approach. Building your confidence is an important aspect of building self-love. By moving out of your comfort zone and exploring new actions and perspectives, we can expand our perspective of ourselves and the world we live in.  The more you see yourself as capable, the more you develop a healthier self-concept. It develops step by step- action by action. The healthier your sense of self becomes, the more fully you will emanate with the energy of self-love. The more we see what we are truly capable of, the more our honor and respect for ourselves begins to blossom. Confidence takes action, and blooms over time. Self-love is worth risking it all. 8 Define Your Personal Shine We all possess a unique spark- an energy signature. Each of us has a special way of existing in the world. This special ray of magnificence is our shine. Some of us have hidden our shine so deep that we believe it doesn’t exist; falling in love with ourselves is about identifying that spark and letting it shine so brightly that it begins to illuminate your life and your world. When we can define it, name it and claim it with no qualms, a powerful awakening starts to take place. Start by asking: What is the unique essence that I carry within me that makes things brighter? Is it my humor, my intelligence, my spirit of collaboration? Don’t stop till you arrive at 3-5 qualities that exist in your heart and reflect the truth of who you are. The desire to embrace our greatness and the fear of all that comes with it is nothing new. Chill out. You can handle it. When you lay claim to the unique power that emanates from within you, you fall more deeply into self-love and personal bliss and then can confidently share that with the world.  9 Remind Yourself That You Are a “Masterpiece in Process” When speaking of our efforts to create positive shifts in our lives, one phrase that is often used is “I am a work in progress.” When this thought is expressed the underlying commitment is: it’s going to take a great deal of work for transformation to take place, and it AIN’T gonna be fun. A more loving, and beneficial perspective might be to see yourself as “progress at play” or rather a masterpiece in process. By doing so, you are brining loving awareness to the joyful masterpiece that is the unfolding of your life. When you embrace being a masterpiece in process, where your progress is in play, every part of you, every experience you have ever had is another brushstroke in the journey of your life. When you begin to appreciate every color and nuance and then begin to anticipate the exciting new strokes being applied and apply them with more consciousness and care, you will appreciate and love what you are co-creating with the universe. 10 Consciously decide to become a Love Generator So often we seek forms of external validation that are unsustainable. When they are present, our spirits soars and we feel cared for, when they are absent, our spirits sink and we feel worthless. These fluctuating emotions diminish us. They have us playing small- seeking the next compliment to make us feel worthy.A more optimal approach to validation would be to become a Love Generator: someone capable of generating love for themselves, and others in any situation, and at will. When you are having a dark night of the soul, as a Love Generator, you can activate the capacity to generate loving kindness by remembering who you really are: someone who possesses the power to choose love over fear. When a situation seems challenging and people are at odds with each other, as a Love Generator, you can supply the words and/or perspective to turn things around. When love is present, we possess the power to transform anything. Becoming someone who decides to generate love on demand enables you to connect deeply to the good that lies waiting for you to discover it. When we begin to invest energy in treating ourselves the way we truly want to be treated, our belief and lens on life positively transforms. Life takes on a new dimension. We begin to shine more boldly. By making a concerted effort to consciously bring an active love of self into our everyday lives, the quality of our life experience shifts. We begin to love life and ourselves a little bit more every day. And guess what? When we learn to love life, life loves us back!