Ring in the New Year with Love

If we did less judging and more loving the world would be a holier place. And if we want to be less judgmental and more loving of everyone, we need to begin by being kinder to ourselves.

Today is the last day of 2014. Let’s take a few moments and look back over the year. How well did we love ourselves and others? Did we do a good job of choosing to be kind as opposed to being critical? Did we listen with compassion and express understanding when people needed validation? Did we place ourselves into the hearts and minds of others in order to empathize with them, even when they were difficult or even ugly with us? Or did we immediately go on the defensive, take things personally and go into attack mode? Did we make love our priority?

The answers to all of these questions depend on how we treated ourselves. If we made loving ourselves a priority in 2014 then we most likely did a better job of loving others as well. The choice to love ourselves better enabled us to be less judgmental and critical of ourselves, and this allowed us to be less judgmental and less critical of others.

If we didn’t make loving ourselves better a priority for 2014, then here’s the good news: 2015 is just around the corner and now’s your chance! Forget the New Year’s resolutions. Set priorities instead and allow the first one to be LOVE.

Let’s dedicate 2015 to being the year that we truly learn to love ourselves, and thus others, better. We can start by having empathy enough to listen to ourselves and by taking the time to care about how we feel and to validate our own feelings and worth in this world. We all want empathy and love and we need to start by being the first to love and empathize with ourselves. Once we decide we are worth it, we can allow God or our Higher Power into our hearts to help us. Then we can begin to allow trusted people in to help us as well.

The more we listen to ourselves, empathize with ourselves and treat ourselves with kindness, the better prepared we will be to offer the same consideration to others. No one wants to be criticized or judged. We all want to be understood, loved and accepted for who we are. And we can make this our priority for 2015. We can consciously choose throughout every day of the New Year to be kind, empathetic, understanding and loving. We can trade-in our judgments and self-righteousness for insightful awareness and love.

Have a happy, love-filled 2015!