Most of us want to change something about ourselves.  We want to eat more healthfully, get more exercise, procrastinate less, make love more, feel less stressed, feel more confident, etc., etc., etc.  Really, I could go on and on!

Of course, some of these issues are easier to change than others.  You might find a few forms of exercise that you really love, find ways to work them into your schedule, have them become a routine and voila! your “exercise issues” are solved.

But there will always be those issues that are harder to change.  And some may never change at all.  But the worst thing you can do is hate yourself for those things or for not being able to change them.

Why is hating yourself or your ailments or issues so destructive?  Because hate prevents change.  Hate prevents healing.

What’s With All the Hate?

Somewhere along the line, most of us learned that things were wrong with us, and, as a result, that we should strive to overcome those things by denigrating them.

In other words, if you grew up fat, you were supposed to hate your fat - hate yourself for being fat - and forever apologize for your existence until you were able to get to some socially acceptable level of thinness.  Even if you had a little “extra fat,” like thighs that were a little larger than your friends’ thighs, you were supposed to go around thinking or saying, “I hate my thighs.”  If you weren’t considered very bright, you were supposed to affirm that you were stupid. If you had certain health conditions, you may have felt like you had to conceal them.

And all of this hate didn’t change anything - well, at least not for the better.  It may have led to poor choices, or loads of shame, but it could only reinforce the perceived “problem” rather than resolve it.

Hate cannot create change because hate stops the conversation.  Hate demonizes what is, so that what is cannot become a source of information.  When you allow yourself to feel love for yourself and your problems, you allow yourself to see your problems for what they are.  You allow yourself to see how you might start to create change.

Using Love to Stop the Hate

Energetically, hate cannot create change because it blocks the flow of energy, and the movement of energy is needed to allow for change.

So how do we transmute the energy of hatred?  By using the energy of love.

I hope you’re already tried this week’s tip, but if not, here it is again. I really want you to try thi:

Take a deep breath, and close your eyes.  Picture, imagine, or feel the flow of love in your body (use things and people that you love in order to channel the emotion).  Do you feel the way the love moves through you, into you and out of you?  Can you feel its energy, and that feeling of possibility that it holds?

Good.

Now, feel the energy of hatred.  How does that feel?  Does it feel heavy?  Solid?  Miserable?  Burning?  Cold?

Now, open your eyes. Did you notice anything about that hateful feeling?  Did it feel like the way you feel about the areas of your life that you want to change but that feel stuck?

Try this exercise throughout the week.  Whenever you feel confronted with one of your issues or problems, take a deep breath, and see if you can picture, imagine or feel the issue or problem in your body or visualize it outside of you.  Then, allow that feeling of love that we just experimented with to spread through you, enveloping you completely, moving through your veins, arteries, organs, bones.  Now extend that feeling of love to the issue or problem and see how the love transmutes the hate for the problem. 

You may get a flash of an action you can take, or you may simply feel as though the problem, now downgraded to an issue, is subsiding.  Notice what you see and what you feel.

Please share your experiences in the comments.

Stay tuned for next week’s blog post on more easy steps for creating change!

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Want to learn more ways of improving your life with positive change? Then check out the other More of Me to Love tips and blogs this week.

Golda is a certified holistic health counselor and founder of Body Love Wellness. She counsels women and men throughout the country on how to get off the dieting roller coaster, give their bodies what they really crave, and love their bodies and themselves. Golda's counseling and activism work have been featured on CBS's The Early Show, ABC's Nightline and Time Out New York. For more support with healing your relationship with food and your body, get your free copy of Golda's Top Ten Tips For Divine Dining by clicking here.