***Others Treat Us The Way We Treat Ourselves

"Everybody is like a magnet. You attract to yourself reflections of that which you are. If you're friendly, then everybody else seems to be friendly too." --Dr. David Hawkins, Physician and Lecturer

Have you ever noticed how true this is?

I would change it a bit and say that we attract to ourselves what we choose to be in any given moment.

What we intrinsically are, is our true essence, which is a spark of the Divine - unconditional love. But since we don't always attract unconditional love to us, others are generally reflecting who we've chosen to be.

It is my experience that when I choose to interact with others as my true Self, others usually relate to me from their true Selves. At those times when I allow my ego wounded self to be in charge, others relate to me from their ego wounded selves.

Of course, this isn't always true. I can be my most unconditionally loving self and others still might stay in their wounded selves - angry, closed, withdrawn. After all, I can't control how another person chooses to be. But I have found that the more loving I am to myself, the more loving I am to others, and the more I attract loving people to me.

Most people unconsciously pick up the energy of how you treat yourself. They might not be able to articulate it, but their behavior generally reflects this. If you tend to be judgmental of yourself, then it is likely that you often feel judged by others. Sometimes they are actually judging you, but many times you are projecting your own self-judgment onto them and believing they are judging you when they aren't. In either case, your experience is that of being judged.

Years ago, I judged myself all the time. If I made a mistake, I relentlessly beat myself up for it. So of course I attracted people to me who judged me; then I would try to control how they felt about me by judging myself! All this effort to control myself and them was exhausting.

When I was finally able to connect my constant anxiety and feelings of shame with my own self-judgment, I was gradually able to completely stop judging myself, and instead learned to move into compassion for myself. That's when I started to attract compassionate people into my life.

One of the most powerful things you can do to attract love into your life is to shift your intent - from controlling yourself and others with judgments - to loving all aspects of yourself.

"Love the Unlovable in Yourself"

Marci Shimoff, in "Love for No Reason," states that one of the keys for the doorway of unconditional self-love is to "Love the Unlovable in Yourself." I totally agree.

In the Inner Bonding process, we call the unlovable part of ourselves our wounded self. This is the part of us who is always trying to have control over getting love, avoiding pain, and feeling safe.

Our wounded self is NOT who we are - it is who we decided to be, as young children, when we did not receive love for who we were. This part of us is not bad, but since most people don't like it when we try to control them, it is not likely that anyone is ever going to love our wounded self.

Yet this part of us cannot heal without love. Therefore, it is our job to love our wounded self - the part of us who believes we are not good enough. It is only through our love, compassion, kindness, gentleness and tende ess toward this wounded part of ourselves that we can heal our core shame and false beliefs about ourselves.

You will be amazed at how differently people treat you when you treat all aspects of yourself with compassion.