Summer is the time for romance and we’ve all heard of the summer fling. Two people get together in the spring and start a whirlwind romance full of passion and pleasure, only for things to fizzle out come September.
Many of us would love to find someone in the spring and have a summer fling. Despite being short-lived, it brings some much-needed energy and excitement into our lives. A burst of love does wonders for our happiness and self-esteem.
But spring is long past and summer is almost on its last legs. If your summer fling isn’t already underway, it’s probably not going to happen for you this year. But what if you tried something a bit different? What if you decided to have a summer fling with yourself? It’s not too late for that.
I’ve been doing a lot of research on what makes us happy and what makes life richer and more meaningful, and one important aspect of this is self-love. Have you asked yourself recently about the state of your self-love?
It’s easy to become infatuated with someone else, but when was the last time that you had loving feelings toward yourself?
Most of us spend our days comparing ourselves to others and feeling like we don’t measure up. We criticize ourselves and judge ourselves and constantly find fault. We feel inadequate, incompetent, stupid, foolish; useless. We feel full of guilt about what we should or shouldn’t be doing. None of this is conducive to self-love.
When somebody loves us, the world suddenly seems to be laid out in Technicolor. We’re floating along on a breeze of Oxytocin and endorphins – the bonding and pleasure chemicals in our brain. Feeling loved makes us more positive and optimistic; we stop sweating the small stuff. We feel generous and magnanimous. We’re kinder to strangers. Feeling loved brings out the best in us.
When we feel loved, the obstacles to our success seem to slip away. Hearing our new partner tell us how great we are makes us more confident and willing to take risks in our personal and professional life. We’re more altruistic, more positive and more productive and we get things done that we might have been procrastinating over, previously.
I’m not saying that you should give up on finding love out there in the world but in the meantime, while you still have a month left of summer, you can enjoy a summer fling – with yourself! And you can make it last all year long.
You can start to give yourself the same unconditional positive regard that a new romantic partner would give you. You can look at yourself through the eyes of love and acceptance, rather than through your typical critical, judging eyes. You can bring some newfound tolerance to your missteps and a sense of humor to your foibles in the same way as a new romantic partner would.
It’s easy to look to others to give you that elated feeling of being seen, loved and appreciated. For the same reason, it’s wonderful to spend the summer having a romantic fling. But what if there’s no-one on the horizon, right now? What if there’s nobody telling you how fantastic you are?
The great news is that you can still have that loving feeling. Right this minute, you can fall in love with yourself. And the even better news is that when you start a summer fling with yourself and you let it extend long past the season, you go into every situation feeling this amazing sense of self-love.
Other people will notice and they’ll find this new you extremely appealing. Those in your professional life will see you as super-confident and they’ll want to collaborate with you. Those in your personal life will find you more interesting. The reason is that people who love themselves are sending out a subtle message to everyone that say’s “I’m awesome! You should love me.”
Paradoxically, when we feel the most needy for love, our desperation is a turn-off and people tend to stay away. But when we love ourselves, we’re more attractive to everyone because they see us as strong, confident and self-sufficient, which makes us appear more desirable.
While there’s still a little bit of summer remaining, choose to have a summer fling with yourself. This newfound love affair within you may start to attract professional or personal success and either way, it’s certain to make you a much happier and more productive person moving into the cooler seasons ahead.
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