“This is a man in need. His fear is naked and obvious,
but he’s lost . . . somewhere in his darkness.
His eyes wide and bleak and tortured. I can soothe him.
Join him briefly in the darkness and bring him into the light.”
– E.L. James, Fifty Shades of Grey
There’s something truly unique about consistently successful magicians.
Yes, they have a need to entertain.
And they certainly have a need to get results.
And their need to impact the world around them is obvious.
They are really incomparable, however, in their ability to love themselves enough to play in the darkness, if needed, and bring themselves back into the light.
“But I don’t love myself,” you say. “It’s all about pleasing other people.” Or “I just wasn’t raised that way.” Or “I’m not selfish.”
When you say things back to me like that, I get a sense that what you’re really saying is that you simply don’t want to think about loving yourself because it has too many messy details for you to deal with. After all — who the hell are you to deserve so much of your own love?
Well, let me put it to you another way. You won’t routinely create and manifest your desires with certainty and faith and power unless you have a little self-love thrown into the mix. That’s right — a little pride in what you’re doing is needed. A small conceit. Even a slight vanity.
In other words, if you don’t care about yourself and your desires, then why should anyone else?
One of the best ways for you to recognize, acknowledge, and develop a HEALTHY SELF-LOVE of yourself is to write a self-love letter to yourself. I don’t mean the type of cavalier and obvious letter we wrote when we were kids as part of a school project. I’m talking about a real romantic — perhaps even erotic — letter to yourself explaining why you are such a fantastic addition to the Universe.
Don’t worry — this only takes 15 minutes! And if you don’t have 15 minutes to devote to changing the way you think about yourself, you’ve got bigger challenges to address. So . . . quit the excuses and the embarrassment and the self-censorship that is running rampant through your head right now, grab a piece of paper and a pen, and let’s get to it!
Here are some ground rules to help you —
1. You are the hero or heroine of the self-love letter. Not anyone else. Not anything else. You are the champion of your own life. You are the defender of your own honor. You are guardian of your own beliefs. You have special powers and special wants and special needs and you are here to save the world.
2. You aren’t perfect. No one is. Your self-love letter isn’t about an ideal or about excusing away flaws. This is about writing things down about yourself that you’ve uncovered as you continue to make your way through Life’s field of battle.
3. Understand why you’re writing this letter — to woo and have a love affair with yourself. There’s a reason behind everything you’ve said, done, and thought. The choices you’ve made have a lot to do with the way you talk to yourself — that programming that keeps running all the time in the background of your mind. In your self-love letter, you seek to be brutally honest about all those things you find beautiful, captivating, and enchanting about yourself.
4. When you get to the point where you say, “Maybe I shouldn’t write that down,” you’re actually on to something important. The thrust of a self-love letter is to tear down the firewall that normally keeps your passion from spreading to everything you do.
5. You want to fall in love with yourself. In deciding on what to put in your self-love letter, there is only one formula: Does what I’m writing make me hunger to have more of that? Don’t worry . . . you’ll feel it to the depths of your spirit when you write down the really revealing and significant and seductive stuff. Just write what you’d love to read if it was sent to you by a secret admirer.
6. Keep it real. This isn’t a self-love letter of fiction. Find those dimensions and deeds and desires of yourself that are genuinely positive and sincerely attractive.
7. Don’t say “I love you” to yourself until the very end. You already know that you love you. That’s why you’re writing the letter. But, like every good story, you want to show and not simply tell. And like every good love affair, you don’t want the end to come before the adventure runs its course.
Now, with these 7 guidelines in mind, start writing your self-love letter. Right now. Right here. No excuses.
Fill it with admiration. Note your reliability. Outline what your desires have allowed you to accomplish. Summarize how your joys and delights have permitted you to share, interact, make love with, and find time with others. Have you saved a life? Have you changed a life? Does it matter that you’ve lived at all?
Once you’re finished with your letter, notice how you feel. Then, put your self-love letter in an envelope and place it in a nice, safe place. Periodically, revisit your self-love letter and remind yourself why you’re worth loving! And be sure to keep writing new self-love letters. It’s a ritual you’ll thank yourself for many times over.
I would love to continue the conversation with you by you subscribing at http://thinkingmagically.com or you joining me on any of the major social media sites to take this discussion to an even deeper level.
SCOTT GROSSBERG thinkingmagically.com 
Pingback: Thinking Magically™ | The Best from 2015 | SCOTT GROSSBERG thinkingmagically.com