Loving Yourself Creates Loving Connection With Others

As humans, we are hard-wired to want to connect with each other. Until 10,000 years ago, all people lived in tribes where families stayed together through the generations, and tribes stayed together, deeply connected with each other and with the planet.

Then, 10,000 years ago, our civilization started what is currently called the agricultural revolution, but which Daniel Quinn, in "Ishmael," calls "Totalitarian Agriculture." What changed dramatically at that time is that, as agriculture spread and absorbed the tribes, food was no longer free. Until then, people hunted, gathered and sometimes grew crops, but everyone had access to free food. Once our civilization spread, food became owned by the people who owned the land, and now people had to work for food. What this did was split up the tribes (there are still some left, but not many), and this started a cycle of family and tribal disconnection.

The industrial revolution brought about even more disconnection. People moved out of small rural communities and into cities to work. Whereas, originally, people didn't have to earn money for food, now people had to work to earn money to survive. In tribal societies, people had a lot of time to get together with each other to connect and to be creative. They were naturally loving themselves. In modern times, most people are very stressed with earning money and don't have enough time to be with their family and friends – not enough time to love themselves.

Now, not only do we have to work hard and long to survive, but with social media we are more disconnected than ever. Connection over the Internet isn't at all the same as spending in-person heart-to-heart connection with each other.

What this has created is loneliness, anxiety and a sense of emptiness. In order to survive this, we have also disconnected from ourselves – our own feelings. We've had to learn to disconnect within in order to manage the pain of our current culture.

In addition, our culture of processed foods and drugs has lowered our frequency and fostered disconnection from ourselves, from each other and from our higher spiritual guidance. It's hard to connect when we are working too hard, not having enough time, and when our bodies are working hard to manage the processed and factory-farm foods that most people eat.

Life loses its aliveness when we lack connection with ourselves, with our spiritual guidance and with each other.

It's Time To Learn To Love Yourself and Reconnect

There is nothing more wonderful than heart-to-heart connection. But in order to have this with family and friends, you need to start by learning to connect with yourself. We deeply connect with others from our heart, not our head, so if you've learned to stay focused in your mind to avoid your painful feelings, you won't be able to experience loving heart-to-heart connection with others.

Learning to love yourself means learning to move your focus away from your mind and into your body – into your feelings. Just as children don't feel loved when you ignore their feelings, your inner child feels unloved and abandoned when you ignore your feelings by staying focused in your head to avoid your feelings, or when you abandon your feelings with self-judgments, turning to addictions to numb your feelings, and making others responsible for your feelings.

It's time to stop avoiding feeling your painful feelings, which means learning to love yourself by opening to the incredible information all of your feelings have for you. You cannot begin to imagine how much better life gets when you learn to love yourself and lovingly attend to your feelings, rather than abandon them. This is what reconnects you within, and with your higher self, which then leads to being able to experience loving heart-to-heart connection with others – and this is what life is all about!

The one thing that dying people regret the most is not having connected more with loved ones. Don't wait until it's too late to make loving connection with others a very high priority in your life.

Join Dr. Margaret Paul for her 30-Day at-home Course: "Love Yourself: An Inner Bonding Experience to Heal Anxiety, Depression, Shame, Addictions and Relationships."

Join IBVillage to connect with others and receive compassionate help and support for learning to love yourself.