"Loving yourself isn't vanity. It's sanity." - Katrina Mayer
When you look in the mirror, you should be looking at the person who you express the most love to. We can still reserve love for our family, friends and everyone else we interact with, but we are around ourselves 100% of the time. There is no shortage of love to give, whether we are giving it to others or ourselves. There may be past trauma or experiences that make it more challenging for some people to love themselves, but it is possible, and perhaps even more important, for them to practice self-love. Everyone deserves to love themselves.
There is a wide spectrum of self-love traits, and not all of them are healthy, so it is important to beware of self-love traps that may turn into selfishness or narcissism. For the purposes of this post, I am focusing on people who live on the other end of the spectrum and may struggle with self-love. For whatever reason it may be, it can be tough to practice self-love. Not liking who we see in the mirror at times (and not just our physical traits) can be tough too. This is when it is important to do a self-love check-in with ourselves.
Photo by Eneko Uruñuelaon on Unsplash
Ask yourself this: "What do I love about myself?" Write a list. Consider it your personal humble brag. Remind yourself often. Now write down a list of what you do not love about yourself. Cross off anything you cannot change. Now look at what is left. Those are the things you can change about yourself. You can move those items over to the list of things you love about yourself since you have the ability to do something about it. Learning to accept the things you cannot change about yourself that you do not love is when true self-love can really settle in.
Self-love does not need to be complicated. It may not be easy at times, but it is important if we intend to live a high quality of life with limitless wellbeing. We have complete control over self-love. We have the ability to treat ourselves with the dignity and respect we deserve. If you do not feel you deserve self-love, I encourage you to reach out for help. Foe everyone else, keep on taking care of you. Keep on loving you. When we consistently practice self-love with ourselves, we also make it easier to spread that unlimited love around to everyone else too.
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