檳榔嶼

- M. SCOTT PECK : "Commitment is inherent in any genuinely loving relationship. Anyone who is truly concerned for the spiritual growth of another knows, consciously or instinctively, that he or she can significantly foster that growth only through a relationship of constancy."
- Commitment to truth telling lays the groundwork for the openness and honesty is the heartbeat of love. When we can see ourselves as we truly are and accept ourselves, we build the necessary foundation for self-love.
  - If you do not love yourself, you will be unable to love love anyone else.
  - Most People who think they are not lovable have confusion because at some point in their lives they were socialized to see themselves as unlovable by forces outside their control.
  - We are not born knowing how to love anyone, either ourselves or somebody else. However, we are born able to repsond to care.
- Self-love cannot flourish in isolation. It is not easy task to be self-loving. Simple axioms that make self-love sound easy only make matters worse.
  - spiritual growth
  - trust, commitment, care, respect, knowledge, and responsibility, we can work on developing these qualities or, if they are already a part of who we are, we can learn to extend them to ourselves.
  - Stages to love self :
    1. Examine negative thinking and behavioral patterns learned in childhood, particularly those shaping my sense of self and identity. 
      - it is far too easy to stay stuck in simply describing, telling one's story over and over again, which can be a way of holing on to grief about the past or holding on to a narrative that places blame on others.
    2. Actively introducing into our lives constructive life-affirming thought patterns and behavior.
- Nathaniel Branden's, <<Six Pillar of Self-Esteem>> :
  -  "the practice of living consciously, self-acceptance, self-responsibility, self-assertiveness, living purposefully and the practice of personal integrity."
    - Living consciously means we think critically about ourselves and the world we live in. We dare to ask ourselves the basic questions who, what, when, where, and why.
  1. "To live consciously means to seek to be aware of everything that bears on our actions, purposes, values, and goals - to the best of our ability, whatever that ability may be- and to behave in accordance with that which we see and know."
    - Affirmations work for anyone striving for self-acceptance.
  2. Self-acceptance is hard for many of us. There is a voice inside that is constantly judging, first ourselves and then others.
      - We have learned to believe negativity is more realistic, it appears more real than any positive voice.
      - When we are postive we not only accept and affirm ourselves, we are able to affirm and accept others.
      - The more we accept ourselves, the better prepared we are to take responsibility in all areas of our lives.
  3. "self-responsibility as the willingness to take responsibility for my actions and the attainment of my goals.. for my life and well-being"
    - Does not mean that we deny the reality of institutionalized injustice, like racism, sexism, and homophobia all create barriers and concrete incidents of discrimination.
    - Means that in the face of barriers we still have the capacity to invent our lives, to shape our destinies in ways that maximize our well-being.
      - Most women are married to men who were unsupportive when they decided to further their educations
      - Most of these women did not leave the men in their lives, they engaged in constructive strategies of resistance.
  4. "self-assertiveness : the willingness to stand up for myself, to be who I am openly, to treat myself with respect in all human encounters."
    - The course of action we learned is we most frequently choose as a way to avoid conflict.
    - Many of us learned that passivity lessened the possibility of attack.
    - Sexist socialization teaches females that self-assertiveness is a threat to feminity. Accepting this faulty logic lays the groundwork for low self-esteem.
      - The fear of being self-asertive usually surfaces in women who have been trained to be good girls or dutiful daughters.
      - One reason women have traditionally gossiped more than men is because gossip has been a social interaction wherein women have felt comfortable stating what they really think and feel.
    - To complicate matters, women may feel the need to pretend that they are self-loving, to assert confidence and power to the outside world, and as a consequence they feel psychologically conflicted and disengaged from their true being.
      - Shamed by the feeling that they can never let anyone know who they really are, they may choose isolation and aloneness for fear of being unmasked.
  5. "living purposely : taking responsibility for consciouly creating goals, identifying the actions necessary to achieve them, making sure our behavior is in alignment with our goals, and paying attention to the outcome of our actions so that we see whether they are leading us where we want to go."
    - Throughout my life I have endeavored to not only do work I enjoy but to work with individuals I respect, like, or love.
    - Doing what you love may be more important than making money.
    - Many jobs undermine self-love because they require that workers constantly prove their worth.
    - We can encourage friends and loved ones to move toward greater self-love by supporting them in any effort to leave work that assaults their well-being.
    - Jobs depress the spirit. Rather than enhancing self-esteeem, work is perceived as a drag, a negative necessity.
- The very idea of self-love implies too much narcissism or selfishness. We all need to ird ourselves of misguided notions about self-love. We need to stop fearfully equating it with self-centeredness and selfishness.
- Self-love is the foundation of our loving practice. Without it our other efforts to love fail.
  - Although is is not impossible, it is very difficult and rare for us to be able to extend unconditional love to others, largely because we cannot exercise control over the behavior of someone else and we cannot predict or utterly control our responses to their actions.
- One of the best guides to how to be self-loving is to give ourselves the love we are often dreaming about receiving from others.
  - We fantasize about finding a lover who would give us the gift of being loved as we are. It is silly, isn't it, that we would dream of someone else offering to me the acceptance and affirmation we are withholding from ourselves.
    - You can never love anybody if you are unable to love yourself. Do not expect to receive the love from someone else you do not give yourself.
- The light of love is always in us, no matter how cold the flame. It is always present, waiting for the spark to ignite, waiting for the heart to awaken and call us back to the first memory of being the life force inside a dark place waiting to be born -waiting to see the light.