Your relationship with your "self" is one of the most critical relationships you'll be in over the course of your life.

How you feel, and what you believe to be true about your self, your body, your mind and your spirit translates into your collective self image often called your self-esteem. Positive, loving beliefs appear to inspire loving actions and a loving relationship with your self.  Similarly, negative, mistaken beliefs often inspire an abusive and a mistrusting relationship with your self.

Because relationships with other people are created using our own frame of the world, how we feel about ourselves has a direct impact on our relationships. This isn't to say that people with poor self images can't have successful relationships, but they will battle with the incongruity between how they see themselves and how their partner sees them, and that can be a real challenge.

Consider this, your partner says, "you look beautiful" and you don't believe that to be true. In your mind you're having a bad hair day, your makeup's smeared, you're wearing the wrong clothes, which don't really fit anyway because you're "fat." Suddenly there are a lot of questions about the honesty, validity and trustworthiness of your partner. How can she not see the real you? Does he even know you at all? Read more...

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