“Self-Love” versus “Self-Critical”
by Kelvin Chin
Life After Life Expert
They are not mutually exclusive.
If you are not self-critical, you do not learn. You whitewash your misdeeds. You forget and you never learn how to be better. You do not change.
If you think self-love simply means “loving all the great things about yourself,” then you may be naively embracing a very limited way of thinking of “love.”
True, honest, candid “self-love” must by definition include accepting — and therefore “loving” — all the not-so-great things about ourselves as well. That is, assuming our definition of “love” is “acceptance.” And not the childish view of love as “what we really like a lot.”
By accepting all of who we are, we can then compare and contrast the different parts of ourselves — the good and the bad — and learn from them. What of them make us happy and contented? And what of them makes us sad and insecure?
In seeing those differences and by contrasting them against each other, we can then make better choices. Choices that will make us happier. Decisions that will encourage more inner peace within. More inner peace because we will have removed the inner “fight,” the inner conflict within ourselves that arises when those differences are ignored.
This concept of being “self-critical” as a necessary component of personal growth also applies to nations. I think many nations, including the United States, could do a better job at applying this principle in looking at their respective histories.
Food for thought.
Kelvin H. Chin is a Meditation Teacher, Life After Life Expert, and Author of “Overcoming the Fear of Death,” “Marcus Aurelius Updated: 21st Century Meditations On Living Life” and “After the Afterlife: Memories of My Past Lives.” He learned to meditate at age 19, and has been teaching Turning Within Meditation and coaching others in their self-growth for 50 years. He helps people understand their life challenges through their individual belief systems, and helps them find their own solutions. His past life memories reach back many centuries, and he accesses those memories in his teaching and his coaching in the same way all coaches draw on their own available experiences for perspective and effective analogies. He can be reached at www.TurningWithin.org.