I have adapted this meditation from the classic Buddhist meditation “Loving Kindness” to specifically increase a persons feelings of love towards themselves to improve self worth.
It is normally practiced with a view to generating feelings of compassion towards yourself and others and usually involves 4 stages i.e. generating feelings of compassion towards self, then a good friend, followed by a stranger and then finally someone we are having difficulty with.
However, in this practice we start with a friend because it’s usually easier to connect with loving feelings towards someone else. This then provides a “neural blueprint” which we can use to extend feelings of love, acceptance and good will to ourselves.
Also, only two stages are included because the meditation is designed to increase self worth and often time is short! Feelings of compassion towards self are shown to increase feelings of compassion towards others anyway but you also might like to complete all the stages if you have time or you feel you have done enough work on own self worth.
If you are struggling with low self worth I recommend you practice this once a day for about 5-10 mins for about 3-4 weeks (this is enough time for new neural pathways to develop). It may take a while to get the hang of, particularly if you experience deep shame or self loathing and accepting yourself is very hard.
If generating loving feelings towards yourself just feels too hard, then it might be more useful to try “self compassionate exercises” which are more focused on being helpful to ourselves in order to alleviate suffering.
Meditation for Self Worth
- Find a quite place and try to facilitate a calm state of mind i.e. deep breathing or a brief body scan.
- Imagine someone you have strong feelings of unconditional love and acceptance for. This could be a child, a good friend or a family member. If you have nobody close like that at the moment then maybe a famous person a pet.
- Bring this person to mind by really imagine what they look and act like. Think about how you feel about them, focusing particularly on feelings of love and acceptance, and say to yourself something like “may they be well, may they be happy, may they be free of suffering”.
- As you do this, notice how your body feels and where you can sense these feelings physically. You might feel a warmth in the chest area or feel relaxed and tingly. If you become aware of these physical feelings try to make them more prominent in your experience. Do this for about 3-5 mins.
- Whilst staying connected to the physical feelings of love in the body, bring yourself to mind instead. Visualise yourself in your minds eye being relaxed, happy and feeling loved just the way you are.
- As you hold this image of yourself stay connected to the feelings of love in the body. Concentrate on physical sensations, particularly around the heart area and imagine you are both the giver and receiver of them
- As you do the above say to yourself “May I be well, May I be happy, May I be free of suffering” or another phrase with meaning to you which represents love, acceptance and care. Go can go wild with this and say anything that comes to mind that makes you feel love towards yourself. Even telling yourself you love you and you are fantastic just the way you are!!
- Remember this is your daily opportunity to give yourself unconditional love and acceptance because nobody else can do this for you and having strong self worth will make a huge difference to your life.