What’s your relationship with yourself like? Do you listen to your inner voice? Are you honest with yourself? Do you take care of yourself? Do you believe in yourself no matter what? Are you aware of your potentials?

When we were infants, we used to take care of ourselves simply by demanding what we needed. It is a natural progression to think about ourselves first and then others. However, many people are told, while young, that putting ourselves first is wrong – it is being selfish. So rather than being allowed to trust yourself to care first about yourself and then to go on to care about others, you are told to do the reverse. Just imagine that you are a horse and the other people are the cart. What would you get by putting the cart first? You're right, a great deal of frustration!

The perfect prescription to start to take better care of yourself, is to start by getting to know yourself better. You may think that you already do. You know your name, age, hobbies, occupation – in other words, you are familiar with your "cover". But are you in touch with your "contents", what you are feeling? Are you tuned in to yourself or are you primarily tuned in to other people?

One way to start to tune in to yourself is to take time for yourself. This means to stop everything and spend a few minutes with yourself. This technique has been described as self-observation. For in this quiet time, you can begin to see what you are really doing or thinking. You can assess your thought processes, your decisions, your behaviour and determine the possibilities for real growth. When you do this, you have begun to take better care of yourself.

Within each of us there is a part that knows what's best for us. Unfortunately, today many of us are caught up in the modern madness of our society, racing against time. It goes so fast that you race right past yourself, ignoring all the warning signs that tell you that you are off the track. It's only when you take the time to stop and observe yourself that you can discover what is best for you at this present time. So for a start, take a few minutes for yourself on a daily basis. As you start to do this on a regular basis you will be surprised what a difference using this technique will make in your life.

As you start to take better care of yourself, you will find that you are getting along with other people better. This is because the way that you treat others is the way you treat yourself. For instance, if you are critical of yourself you are critical of others. So it follows that taking care of yourself, becoming less critical and more tolerant of yourself, you will treat other people likewise.

Start to nurture and take care of yourself as soon as possible. It may cross your mind that thinking about yourself is selfish. If you're really truthful though, you will realise that people are going to eventually do what they want to do anyway. If you want to do what another person wants against your own best interests, sooner or later you are going to become resentful. Then it is only a matter of time before you consciously or unconsciously find a way to "get back" at the other person. This may be hard to swallow but it's the truth. If you bury your own self-interest in favour of someone else's, the situation will usually get worse.

What many people don't realise is that you really can't have a wonderful relationship with someone else until you have one with yourself. If you want to have great relationships with others, you need to have a great relationship with yourself first.

How then can you have a great relationship with yourself?

Well, you can start by accepting who you are, respecting yourself and trusting yourself. Next, be curious about your potentials and possibilities and take care of yourself physically as well as mentally. Most importantly, be comfortable with being who you are and love yourself.

When you have a great relationship with yourself – when you know how to love yourself, I believe you will know how to love others as well, because what you do when you love others is what you do to yourself when you love yourself.

Remember, if you don’t know how to love yourself, you’ll have a hard time loving other people. Are you afraid of loving or being loved? If you are, start taking care of yourself. That could change the way you relate to others.

Change the way you relate to yourself from today. Start loving yourself from this moment.