Let's let June be the Month of Love -- and it starts with loving and accepting yourself!

For David Lobenberg

Self portrait
Acrylic on canvas
12 x 12 inches
Barbara Muir © 2009
(I did this portrait for David Lobenberg's

June Paint Off in 2009)

I was talking to a friend the other day who was feeling down about the
tragic news coming into his news feed every day, and we talked about
how to get back to happy.  This year I imagined a technique called

the Love list in my dreams one night. How does that work? Create a
simple list in your mind of 20 things you love about your current life.

I list things like my morning coffee made by my husband, the beautiful
flowers from my neighbours in the kitchen, a phone call with a friend
in The Netherlands, a note from a friend in France, the view out the window.

In the spirit of trying to be happy with one's life, I found this great
blog about self portraits, and loving yourself, and thought I'd share it
tonight. 

"You can read about David Lobenberg's contest here. A fact of a
portrait artist's life is that if there is no one else available to paint,
you always have you, so of course I've painted and drawn myself
 many times. Some of these images stick and make me happy.  

When I taught Positive Psych one of the first things we said

to students was that if you don't know yourself, you won't love 

yourself, and if you don't love yourself you can't love anyone else,

and you won't be happy.

This was totally not acceptable when I was growing up -- loving 

yourself smacked of narcissism.  But in fact nothing could be 

further from the truth. If we love and accept ourselves, the world 

is less about us, and more about the people we love.  It's when we 

don't love ourselves that we go around hurting other people, don't end up

doing what we love, and generally don't enjoy our lives.

I credit Louise Hay, excellent therapy and Frank Daley, who

was my boss, and wrote the book Who are you and what are you
doing here? for helping me get that concept.  It is an excellent 
idea.  When you love yourself, you love others."

Have a loving your life day.