Observe the Love You Give Your Pets So Freely

Listen to yourself as you come home from work. You greet your dog, or your cat, or your parrot, or your gerbil, or the iguana, or whatever you have - those of you who do have pets - and you let loose a stream of love.

You may use baby words, or you may murmur sounds, or you may express joy and happiness.

But however you express it, your pet has not a doubt in his mind that you love him deeply.

Fast forward. You are now greeting yourself, if I can put it that way, in the morning as you wake up. Or you are speaking to yourself after you managed to hit the ball into the bunker for the third time. And the words you are speaking are anything but loving. Or you are speaking to yourself for being late in the morning as you drive to work. There is no love there at all.

Admittedly, you may not speak as lovingly as I depicted above, to your dog, if he has just eaten the steak you left out on the counter, or to your cat if she has just chased a fly through the house and broke a lamp and a vase in the process. But - and this is a very big but - because you generally speak so lovingly to your pet, and because you are so tender in your behaviour with your pet, he/she is not in doubt about your love for him/her.

But you - who speak so cruelly, or disparagingly, or unfeelingly, or with such lack of empathy - to yourself, must always be in doubt of your own worthiness. How can you believe in your own value, how can you respect yourself if you use such unkind language so frequently with yourself?

Why not take a lesson from your own behavior with your pet? Be as loving to yourself as you are to the pet, and begin to notice the difference in every aspect of your life.