5 steps to love yourself when you suffer from relationship problems.

A reflection on the relationship between self-esteem and relationships.

Many people come to my coaching practice because they have problems with their partner. They are not happy and do not know what to do.

They believe that their partner does not love them, they live hooked (codependent) and suffer. They despair when they believe that love or approval must come from outside (through their partner) and it does not come exactly as they would like. They live with frustration, anxiety, possessiveness, jealousy, etc.

The relationship becomes toxic when you expect love to come only from your partner.. Your partner can show you more or less affection, affection and listening, but what you can not expect is that your partner fills your heart.

What self-esteem really is

The Heart cannot be filled by anyone else but you. You must learn to recognize that there is love within you. Self-esteem happens when you realize that love is within you, or rather, it is your essence.

When you discover that you are love, then you give love to all beings (and not only to your partner), because love is the perfume that your soul gives off, who you really are. Love is not something you have to do, it is your identity. Y when you learn to live yourself from your deepest identity, then you give without expecting anything in return and you can have a healthy relationship.

I said a "healthy relationship" and not "happy". This means that your relationship will be based on the acceptance of the other (without wanting to change him/her). You will not look for happiness in the relationship, but you will find it within yourself, and the relationship will amplify it. what the relationship will do is amplify what you have found inside you..

Self-esteem is recognizing or realizing that you are already a complete being and you lack nothing because when you live from love, you lack nothing. Self-esteem goes beyond what you think or may think of yourself.. It is not your self-image.

Self-esteem is what you are before you even think anything about yourself. It is the ultimate substratum of your reality and coincides with the substratum of everything created. It is the consciousness that is in you and in everyone. To be aware of being one with love, which is the essence of everything, is to live with self-esteem.

And why do we look for love outside of ourselves?

Because of a mental confusion. We have believed ourselves to be something we are not. We have identified ourselves with what our mind tells us we are. We have believed that we are an "I" that has a body and thoughts. But without realizing that this "I" is actually a thought that can be observed.

And in truth, we are nothing that we can observe or think about.. We are the space where our thoughts appear and disappear. But we have become confused (due to a lack of clarity or awareness) and have believed ourselves to be one of those thoughts that we observe: a thought that has cultivated a story around it and believes itself to be the protagonist of our lives.

We call that thought ego or "I". That "I" character by definition is devoid of love and lives from fear, because in order to exist it needs the "you" or "other" (which is unknown to it).

The ego lives believing that it is separated from all reality. The "I" bases its existence on duality where there are many "others". The "I" cannot exist without feeling isolated or separated, and therefore, it desperately seeks to complete itself.. And the most direct way to complete itself is to seek love through a "partner".

What the "I" does not know is that no matter how many partners it has, the "I" will never feel complete. The "I" by definition is the illusion of separation from reality, from what you really are (love). In other words, no matter how many partners you have, your "I" will always feel that something is missing and will never be satisfied..

How to solve a problem that until now you blamed on your partner?

You cannot solve a problem from the same level where it was created (the "I"). The solution does not lie in getting your partner to change. Nor does it lie in changing your "I" for another "I". The problem is ignorance and the solution lies in opening your eyes to your true face. The problem is that you have believed yourself to be a character who perceives himself to be separate from his partner and lives drowned in a sea of fear and emotions..

The ego is like a wave that believes itself to be separate from the other waves. But in truth, you are not the wave, you are the entire ocean manifested through all the waves. You are not the ego, you are the same consciousness that dwells within you and your partner and everything. Deep down you are the partner you are looking for, and your partner is another version of you. The partner is a mirror where you can see yourself reflected.

Trying to change your partner is like trying to change what you see in a mirror. Your partner only changes when you learn to look at him or her with different eyes.. When you stop looking for love in your partner and find it within yourself, your partner reflects the love you have found. The couple problem is therefore solved when you recognize the love that has always lived inside you.

Below, I am going to give you 5 steps to open yourself to the true and only love of your life (and it is you).

1. Focus your thinking on your highest center.

To begin to recognize your essence, your true identity (beyond the "I") it is important that you have faith in you, that is, in your true Self or essence. Faith in you is what will make you go, little by little, transforming yourself as a larva transforms into a butterfly. Focus your thought, therefore, on the highest that you can conceive within yourselfEternal Love, Eternal Wisdom, Eternal Truth. Those are the 3 essential qualities of your true Self.

As Master Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov said, if you imagine a fruit and see how to interpret skin, pulp and stone; skin, which envelops and protects the fruit corresponds to the physical plane; pulp, where the currents of life circulate, corresponds to the psychic world; and stone, which ensures the reproduction of the fruit, corresponds to the spiritual world.

If transposed to the spiritual life, the skin of the fruit is the wisdom that protects, retains and preserves; the pulp is the love that eats and maintains life and, as for the stone that we plant, it represents the truth because only what is true perpetuates life.

Remember that, deep down you are the ocean (love) expressing itself in the form of a wave (human). Love is you without identifying yourself with your ego. Your ego is the only thing that separates you from your essence. You must not change anything, you must simply learn to see yourself with different eyes. And to see, first you need to believe or have faith. Put it into practice and you will see. Cultivate faith in yourself as a being of love, wisdom and truth that does not change, or in simplified form, a being of pure "love".

• You may be interested in, "The 4 types of love: what different kinds of love are there?"

2. Take care of your temple (the body)

In order to recognize your perfect and complete self, it helps to have a healthy and vital body. It is difficult to connect with love if your body is suffering. The body is the temple you created in order to live in this earthly dimension. It is the spacesuit of your soul. If your body is not well, the spirit of love that you are, it is difficult for you to recognize who you are beyond your body..

3. Calm the mind

In order to recognize your essence, you must calm your mind. This is called "meditating".. But few people can meditate because there is so much chaos in their mind. That is why it is important to learn how to undo the chaos before sitting down to meditate. I recommend the meditation from chaos to calm that you can find on my website. It lasts 10 minutes and has two phases: the first one (5 minutes), consists of expressing all the chaos (or madness) inside you.

But you must express it by making sounds like (blablbablablabajaajasda asfa papfa afsw awwaga akkra rkkla pppara fa a) that is to say, you say things without sense. You must let go of your madness and without putting words to it, just sounds without any meaning. And when you finish this chaotic and intense phase, then come 5 minutes of calm. In this second phase you just have to breathe and observe what you feel.. This phase is for you to learn to familiarize yourself with the calm when there is no mental noise (or chaos) left in the mind.

4. Prepare the contact with your essence

Once our body is healthy and vital and our mind calm, we can go one step further inward. Y we will use the breath as the bridge to go within ourselves.. I am going to share with you one of the exercises I recommend to my coaching clients. It is inspired by the teachings of Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov and is an exercise that brings enormous benefits to your psyche and nervous system. It should be done on an empty stomach (minimum 5 hours after eating) and the instructions are:

• Cover the left orifice and inhale through the right orifice (4 seconds).
• Hold (16 seconds)
• Exhale through the left (8 seconds)
• Inhale through the left nostril (4 seconds)
• Continue in this manner until you have inhaled 6 times through each hole.

If you want to take this exercise to the next level, each time you inhale imagine that you are drinking Love or Light and become small as if you were the point of a circle. Each time you breathe in, imagine that Light or Love nourishing all your cells from within. And every time you exhale, imagine that you expand that Light to the entire Universe.

5. Open the heart

We have already begun to touch the invisible within us with the power of conscious breathing. Now we must go into the heart, which is where our true identity or essence really dwells. And we will do this with the power of chanting and devotion. You must sing to your essence with devotion, imagining it in the center of your heart as if it were a white, radiant, glorious and warm Light. Sing to that light with your whole body, mind, heart and soul. Let your voice fan the flame that dwells within you.

Surrender to your luminous center. Offer it your best song. Feel what you say. Feel passion, gratitude and devotion to you, to the purest and most sacred that dwells in your heart. And if you want to say a few words, I especially like these:

"I love your Wisdom; I have Faith in your Love; I trust in your Power. I surrender myself to You so that I may serve You". In other words, surrender your ego to the Love that you are in essence. This total surrender to the purest and brightest within you acts as the water for you to blossom in Love.

As you feed that flame that dwells in the secret chamber of your heart, you will begin to remember who you are. And as you awaken to your true divine nature (Love), the way you relate to the world and others will be transformed. There will be people who will not support your new identity (an identity that does not fear) and will move away from you because they will not support you being free and powerful, and there will be souls who will approach you to share their love.

In conclusion

Summarizing: if you want to get out of a toxic relationship, go inside yourself and get back in touch with your inner partner (the light inside you that is pure love). Only by making that internal change can you expect real external changes. It is not by changing your partner that you will really solve your problem, but by expanding your perception of yourself first.

Stop living from the "I" (which is afraid and seeks security by attaching to a partner) and discover what you are, always have been and always will be. You are love and when you live with that awareness, all problems cease to exist and you live the perfection of the present moment as it is.