Self love forms the foundation of your single, most important relationship - that with yourself. The strength of all your other relationships is exactly equal to the strength of that foundation. To love yourself is not simply a self esteem boosting piece of advice. It is the prerequisite to truly loving others. The golden rule tells us to “love your neighbor as you love yourself”. You are likely to have heard it many times, expressed in different ways, thinking it is about loving others. Look a little closer though and you will find that at its very center is the command to love yourself.

The secret to all personal transformation is intent. We can only transform ourselves to the degree that our intent is engaged. The good news is that it’s easier to engage our intent than it may seem initially.
The first step is to actually decide that transformation is what you want, and this is not such an easy decision to make as you might think.

If you consider that transformation is the process of changing the expression of your being so as to embody as much of the true essence of who you are as possible, you will realize that implicit in this process is the possibility that your whole world will change. It is a paradigm shift of immense proportion. Are you really ready to be all you can be and accept everything that entails? Are you really ready to take full responsibility for who you are? Do you feel the inherent empowerment that this will bring you, and is this what you want?

How important are your thoughts? What impact, if any, do your thoughts have on your life? Can one new thought make any difference?

James was a junior tennis champion. He was 16 years old and was hoping to enter the professional circuit. He came from a “tennis family.” He was four years old when he had his first lesson. He won his first competition when he was seven years old. There wasn’t enough cabinet space to display all the trophies he had won since then. The media often billed James as a “future star” of tennis. He was usually seeded number one for the competitions he played in. A lot was expected of James.

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” Lao Tzu

Indeed, it does.

It also begins with knowing where you want to go. After all, you can take as many steps as you want and walk your entire life without arriving anywhere because you don’t have a destination. Once we choose a destination, not only can we begin to head in the right direction, we are also able to map out our precise path accordingly.

When set properly, goals act as markers. They allow us to establish where we are on our journey at any given point. They also help us steer our direction in life so that we can constantly be heading towards the destination we choose for ourselves.