We are all capable of loving others and want to be loved back by those that we show love to. We love our families, children and our possessions but no one ever says that they love themselves because that will be considered as vanity.
There seems to be a big misconception that loving oneself is selfish but when you love yourself, you create positive thoughts about yourself which in turn creates a good ripple effect to how you are perceived by other people.
Self-love is about taking care of yourself, your emotions and pursuing the goals that you want to achieve or fulfilling the dreams that you have for yourself. It is about caring for your own happiness, health and well-being.
It comes naturally to us to be sympathetic and compassionate to someone else’s problems or shortcomings, but when we make mistakes or get rejected, we tend to be hard on ourselves. We need to practise the same compassion on ourselves.
When we compare ourselves to other people, we are destroying our self-love. We usually take our biggest flaws and compare them to someone’s success which leaves us feeling bad about ourselves and that leads to self-loathing.
Instead of beating yourself up, learn to spend your time and energy doing things that enable you to create healthier habits, not just physically but emotionally and mentally.
We are responsible for the way that we feel, and we need to realise that no matter how well we know someone we can never really know how they are feeling, what they are going through, what is going on in their lives or how they have achieved what you are comparing yourself with and if they are even happy where they are.
We do not need to love everything about ourselves to develop self-love, but we need to start by being aware of our strengths and weaknesses and being able to accept our capabilities and our deficiencies despite our past behaviours and choices.
It is acceptable to find the good in yourself because when you love yourself, you accept all your flaws and it will become easier to love and accept other people for who they are.
You will also realise that you do not need to change yourself to fit in with certain people because you will be drawn to the people that accept and are confident of themselves as you are.
Love yourself first and you will have enough love to go around, but if you try to love others and put their needs before yours, you will feel rejected and used when those people do not return your favours.
