I am not a healer. I do not heal anyone. I think of myself as a stepping stone on a pathway of self-discovery. I create a space where people can learn how incredibly wonderful they are by teaching them to love themselves. That’s all I do. I’m a person who supports people. I help people take charge of their lives. I help them discover their own power and inner wisdom and strengths. I help them get the blocks and the barriers out of the way, so they can love themselves no matter what circumstances they happen to be going through. This doesn’t mean that we will never have problems, but it is how we react to the problem that makes a tremendous difference.
After years of individual counseling with clients and conducting hundreds of workshops and intensive training programs across the country and around the world, I found that there is only one thing that heals every problem, and that is: to love yourself. When people start to love themselves more each day, it’s amazing how their lives get better. They feel better. They get the jobs they want. They have the money they need. Their relationships either improve, or the negative ones dissolve and new ones begin. It’s a very simple premise—loving yourself. I’ve been criticized for being too simplistic, and I have found that the simple things are usually the most profound.
Someone said to me recently, “You gave me the most wonderful gift—you gave me the gift of myself.” So many of us hide from ourselves and we don’t even know who we are. We don’t know what we feel, we don’t know what we want. Life is a voyage of self discovery. To me, to be enlightened is to go within and to know who and what we really are, and to know that we have the ability to change for the better by loving and taking care of ourselves. It’s not selfish to love ourselves. It clears us so that we can love ourselves enough to love other people. We can really help the planet when we come from a space of great love and joy on an individual basis.
The Power that created this incredible Universe has often been referred to as love. God is love. We have often heard the statement: Love makes the world go ‘round. It’s all true. Love is the binding agent that holds the whole Universe together.
To me, love is a deep appreciation. When I talk about loving ourselves, I mean having a deep appreciation for who we are. We accept all the different parts of ourselves—our little peculiarities, the embarrassments, the things we may not do so well, and all the wonderful qualities, too. We accept the whole package with love. Unconditionally.
Unfortunately, many of us will not love ourselves until we lose the weight, or get the job, or get the raise, or the boyfriend, or whatever. We often put conditions on our love. But we can change. We can love ourselves as we are right now!
There is also a lack of love on this planet as a whole. I believe our whole planet has a dis-ease called aids, and more and more people are dying every day. This physical challenge has given us the opportunity to overcome barriers and go beyond our morality standards and differences of religion and politics and to open our hearts. The more of us who can do it, the quicker we are going to find the answers.
We are in the midst of enormous individual and global change. I believe that all of us who are living at this time chose to be here to be a part of these changes, to bring about change, and to transform the world from the old way of life to a more loving and peaceful existence. In the Piscean Age we looked “out there” for our savior: “Save me. Save me. Please take care of me.” Now we are moving into the Aquarian Age, and we are learning to go within to find our savior. We are the power we have been seeking. We are in charge of our lives.
If you are not willing to love yourself today, then you are not going to love yourself tomorrow, because whatever excuse you have today, you’ll still have tomorrow. Maybe you’ll have the same excuse 20 years from now, and even leave this lifetime holding on to the same excuse. Today is the day you can love yourself totally with no expectations.
I want to help create a world where it is safe for us to love each other, where we can express who we are and be loved and accepted by the people around us without judgment, criticism, or prejudice. Loving begins at home. The bible says, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” Far too often we forget the last couple of words—as thyself. We really can’t love anyone out there unless the love starts inside us. Self-love is the most important gift we can give ourselves, because when we love who we are, we will not hurt ourselves, and we will not hurt anyone else. With inner peace, there would be no wars, no gangs, no terrorists, and no homeless. There would be no dis-ease, no aids, no cancer, no poverty, and no starvation. So this, to me, is a prescription for world peace: to have peace within ourselves. Peace, understanding, compassion, forgiveness, and most of all, love. We have the power within us to effect these changes.
Love is something we can choose, the same way we choose anger, or hate, or sadness. We can choose love. It’s always a choice within us. Let’s begin right now in this moment to choose love. It’s the most powerful healing force there is.
The information in this book, which has been a part of my lectures over the past five years, is yet another stepping stone on your pathway to self-discovery—an opportunity to know a little bit more about yourself and to understand the potential that is your birthright. You have an opportunity to love yourself more, so you can be a part of an incredible universe of love. Love begins in our hearts, and it begins with us. Let your love contribute to the healing of our planet.
Louise L. Hay