Learn the practices that help you build strong foundations of love to create a more prosperous, fulfilled life.

The Foundations of Love refers to self-love, self-confidence and self-respect.

Growing up with strong foundations of love is imperative to creating a prosperous, fulfilled life. Unfortunately, those with weak foundations live a very different life filled with challenges, negativity, fear, and sadness.

All of us have a different journey in life and various lessons to learn, resultant of our upbringing, parents, education, friends, external environment, and our lifestyle. Our journey through life ensures that no one can escape continually working towards maintaining strong foundations of love.

The Foundations of Love

The Foundations of Love can be likened to the differences between an optimist and pessimist, or those with a fixed mindset versus a growth mindset. The differences are significant and by creating strong foundations of love for yourself and encouraging your children to do the same, you can literally change your life overnight.

Let’s now look at the practices that distinguish those who possess strong foundations of love versus those with weak foundations.

1. Dignity vs Lack Of Self-Worth

People with strong foundations are dignified which is due to the establishment of strong boundaries between family members, friends and colleagues.

When we have high levels of respect for ourselves, this is clearly demonstrated to others. It teaches others how to treat us and they reciprocate accordingly.

‘Self-respect is the cornerstone of all virtue’ – John Herschel

Those with a lack of self-worth struggle to implement boundaries and therefore others take advantage of that and frequently cross the line. In turn, this practice reiterates their feelings of low self-worth.

2. Meaningful Connections vs Unstable Relationships

Relationships are the key to a successful life both personally and professionally.

‘Self-confidence is the first prerequisite to great undertakings’ – Samuel Johnson

Being confident and loving who you are is the key to building deep, meaningful connections in life. To create fulfilling relationships one must be able to be authentic, vulnerable, and loving.

Those with weak foundations attract unstable relationships as they don’t love and respect themselves enough which leads to ‘victim’ mentality and being treated appallingly. They continually attract and put up with the ‘bad seeds’ as they believe they don’t deserve better.

3. Comfortable versus Needy

This is an interesting trait for those with weak foundations struggle to be on their own, they are needy. They constantly feel lonely, bored and dislike spending anytime on their own thereby developing a massive dependency on others to fulfill their needs.

However, this strategy does not work. As you forgo getting to know yourself more, it also prevents you from being able to process information, your own feelings and events.

Those with strong foundations equally love being with others and spending time on their own. Quite often, they actively seek time out during the week to have downtime to get to know themselves more and gain clarity about what is going on in their life at any given time.

4. Accelerate Career versus Few Career Prospects

Those who are mega confident in their abilities are able to attract countless career prospects and business opportunities. High levels of confidence and respect is insanely attractive to others.

Think about when you are networking and you walk into the room and there will be certain people that stand out from the crowd. They are the ones who are constantly surrounded by others; laughing, talking, entertaining and helping others.

Confidence is the number one key to success in life.

Conversely, those with weak foundations find themselves way behind in their career. They miss opportunities, promotions and stay in low level jobs with little growth, learning, earnings and opportunities. Their lack of confidence, love and respect for themselves is clearly evident to the rest of the world and this is what stops them from taking risks, dreaming big and taking action towards their career goals.

5. High Standards versus Low Standards

When you have high standards in life, there are certain events, people and circumstances that you will not tolerate. Your high standards set the scene and you attract a completely different set of circumstances and people in life.

Those with weak foundations have low standards for themselves and tolerate a lot in life which is why they continue to attract unsavory characters, and challenging circumstances.

In life, you need to be exceptionally clear about what you will and won’t tolerate. If you continue to accept low-paying jobs, unstable relationships, finance difficulties and disrespectful people that is what you will continue to attract into your life.

Change your life now by writing down all the things you will no longer tolerate and set new standards for yourself and your life. To attest this point, Oprah Winfrey explains:

‘As you become more clear about who you really are, you’ll be able to decide what is best for you the first time around’.

Create a more prosperous life for yourself and your children by implementing these five practices. These practices enable you to boost and maintain your levels of self-love, self-respect and self-confidence leading to a more fabulous, fulfilled life.

This article was originally published on Inc.com