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This Loving Self-talk Takes a Little Getting Used To
I was listening to an old interview with Louise Hay on the Hay House podcast, You Can Heal Your Life. Louise said when people started coming to her for help, she noticed that all of their problems fell into four categories, money, health, relationships, and creativity. At first, she tried to address each category separately in the advice she gave, and then she realized the best answer applied to all four: You must love yourself first.
She went on to say that from the time we are little, we’re told, “No. Stop that. Don’t do that. Do what I tell you.” Over time, we forget who we are and what drives us.
It was intriguing to me that she put creativity in its own category. Heaven knows we artists sometimes have a hard time loving ourselves. I heard about a study that showed the feeling of rejection registers in the brain in the same way as physical pain (learn more about that here). I told my husband, “Good Lord, writers ought to be called ‘the walking wounded.’ Remember in the early days of my career when I was getting 3–4 rejections a week?” I developed tools for dealing with all that pain, but I don’t recall one of those tools being self-love. I don’t remember ever soothing myself the way I would soothe one of my children who was hurting. I don’t recall ever saying, “It’s okay, Teresa. You’re going to be fine. I think it’s…
