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You Can't Give What You Don't Have

Guest post by: Michele DeVille

Article Overview: How can you truly love another if you have not learned to love yourself? How can you trust others if you cannot trust yourself? How can you value the things around you if you place no value in yourself? How can you forgive someone you love if you have not yet forgiven yourself? These are deep but profound questions that hold an important but simple truth. It is true that we can't give what we don't have and it is when we learn to give to ourselves first that we can ultimately give our best to the people we love most.

You Can't Give What You Don't Have

Ihave heard the sayingyou can’t give what you don’t havemany times over the years but in all honesty it took me years to truly embrace the concept and really understandwhat it meant. It is a natural tendency to automatically associategivingwith things such as a present or money, butgivinginvolves so much more than physical things.

There have been many times that I struggled to completely trust others and it was difficult to open up and love without feeling vulnerable. Forgiving was a challenge and it kept me stuck in the past for far too long. I kept trying to figure out why it was so hard to give the very things that were most important to me!

It was not until I recognized that I was not giving those things to myself that I was able to understand why it was a challenge to give those things to others. It hit me thatyou can’t give what you don’t have!How could I completely love another if I had not yet learned to love myself? How could I truly value anything around me if I did not value myself? How I trust others if I struggled with trusting myself? How could I forgive if I had not yet forgiven myself?

These were deep questions but ones that held a profound truth and I realized that there are so many people struggling with the same issue. We live in a world that is so busy and filled with daily demands and the pressure of doing, being, fixing and giving. We spread ourselves too thin and we become very good at helping everyone but ourselves. We try to love, nurture, repair, support and give to our kids, partners, co-workers, friends and parents and while this is an admirable trait it can wreak havoc on our own well-being and ultimately our relationships with the people we love most if we don’t learn this valuable lesson.

The principle of giving to yourself first is one of the key guides to finding inner peace and to creating successful relationships. It is true that you can’t give what you don’t have and this applies to love, trust, value, honor, belief and forgiveness. Self-care and the nurturing of self is at the foundation of living true to who we are and can cultivate the ability to give so much more.

Learning to give ourselves the gift of love, acceptance, value, honor, trust and forgiveness makes it so much easier to then give to those people we care about without hesitation and without feeling vulnerable. It is easy to forget to take care of ourselves first and can actually feel uncomfortable because we somehow come to believe it is selfish and self-serving. However, care of self is actually the opposite of selfish in my book.

I am a caretaker at heart and it is my natural tendency to give, share and nurture others but I have learned that it is a must for me to love and nurture me so that I can be at my best when giving to others. I can’t give my best to those I love if I myself am not taken care of. This was a difficult lesson but one that held a great deal of wisdom and has improved my quality of life and the quality of my relationships significantly.

Giving is important and I believe in giving 100% but the best gift you can give to those you love is to give to yourself first!

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Article Tags: forgive yourself, giving, improve relationships, love yourself, nurture yourself, selfcare



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