Today is Day 19 of my 31 Days of Self-Love posts to celebrate Self-Love Month with suggestions for jump-starting your own self-love and joining The Self-Love Movement™.

A very loving act is to spread your love to other people. Almost everyone feels good receiving hugs, kisses, kind words, thoughtful deeds, notes, caring gestures, etc. They may not tell you or act like they do. But receiving love feels good to everyone. I have a friend who had a rough childhood and grew up without much love. That set her up to not know how to receive it and she doesn’t love herself. I’m a huggy kind of girl and always give friends hugs. But whenever I’d hug Jasmine, she stiffened and instead of hugging back, her fingers lightly tapped my back.

After that happened a bunch of times, I felt uncomfortable hugging someone who didn’t seem to want hugs. So the next time I saw her, I just said goodbye and didn’t reach out to her. I was surprised when she asked what happened to her hug. I explained I thought she didn’t like hugs. Jasmine said I was wrong and she does. So I gave her a big one. This time I paid attention to her face and saw she was smiling broadly. Since then she still doesn’t get warm and huggy back, but I just focus on her face.

Mother Theresa?? said,“The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.” Giving love feels good to the giver too. That doesn’t mean you should hug and kiss everyone. But being loving to others also says “I love me!”
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Join The Self-Love Movement™! Take the 31 Days of Self-Love Commitment and get my book, How Do I Love Me? Let Me Count the Ways for free at http://howdoiloveme.com. Read my 2012 31 Days of Self-Love Posts HERE.

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