How to Love Yourself
Do you love yourself? To some it might seem like a trick question. The answer is, “Yes, of course!”, because why wouldn’t we love ourselves? We do our best each day to make decisions that will benefit our lives and allow us to live comfortably. We feed ourselves, we bathe ourselves, and we go to work or school to provide for ourselves. Everything we do is to contribute to our overall well-being. But there’s more to love than just saying, “Yes, I love myself”.
In today’s society, it seems that the majority of marketing is focused on caring for our external bodies. There are a myriad of companies and influencers that show us the new ways to lose weight, a revolutionary diet, or how to look ten years younger. Then we have clothing and cosmetic companies constantly telling us that we need their latest and greatest products to help us stay in style and fit in.
Every company wants to sell us products that will make us look or feel better, thus becoming dependent on it -and them. It then becomes a cycle of needing that product in order to feel good about ourselves. This helps create the idea that we only need to care about what’s outside. It’s not that it’s bad to focus on the physical aspects. We do need to be happy, healthy, and feel comfortable in our skin. But it needs to be balanced with learning to care for our internal selves.
Feeling good about who we are inside is just as important -if not more so- as how we feel on the outside. Both are necessary components of who we are. Thus if we neglect one part of us, we’ll never feel complete. But we can’t be fulfilled on the inside if we don’t know what’s there in the first place.
This is why it’s so essential that we know who we are -flaws and all- so that we can begin to forgive and learn to love the parts of us we don’t like. We shouldn’t beat ourselves up or put blame on our flaws. They’re still a part of us and who we are. But it is beneficial to know our shortcomings so that we can better identify and handle them when they do appear.
So instead of fearing our flaws, let’s face them head on and learn to love them! For our weaknesses are there to make us stronger. It’s only after we’ve understood and accepted ourselves fully that we can begin the process of truly loving ourselves unconditionally. Then we’ll realize that when we love ourselves completely, no strings attached, no one has the power to take that away.
“How much you love yourself and how you feel about yourself are directly proportionate to the quality and integrity of your word.” — The Four Agreements
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