All of us have heard about the importance of loving ourselves. We are well aware that self-love is the key to success, harmony, and abundant living. Until we learn how to love ourselves we can’t spiritually develop.
Theoretically, it would seem that everything is so clear and simple. But when it comes to practice, we all face difficulties.
So what is self-love?
The first thing we learn from any master class or book on positive thinking is that we have to love, respect and accept ourselves. Without this, we can’t develop. But when it comes to practice, the big question arises: “What does it mean to love yourself?»
Self-love is the foundation on which our whole life is built. If this foundation is not strong enough or does not exist at all, then our whole life is very shaky and unreliable. It can collapse at any time. In order to avoid this, we need to learn to love ourselves.
Unfortunately, many people are convinced that loving yourself means being selfish or narcissistic. However, it is not like that at all. Self-love and selfishness or narcissism are completely opposite concepts. To love yourself means to accept yourself and to realize your divine nature. To be selfish or a narcissist means to put your ego on display.
Moreover, if we can’t love ourselves, we can’t love anyone. If we can’t love the closest and dearest person in the world – ourselves – how can we love someone else? It can be passion, affection, but not love. Love always comes from the inside, and only when it overflows us, it pours out to the outside.
5 Steps Towards Self-Love
Step 1: Acceptance
Accept yourself as you are! Whatever mistakes you made in your life, accept them and don’t judge yourself. Everything happened the way it was supposed to happen. And you did what you had to do. Respect the choices that you have made in the past and that you are making now.
Accept what you don’t like about yourself. Realize that what you call “imperfections” are actually your unique qualities that fall out of the scope of the “standard.” We have been taught since our childhood to be like everyone else. And everything that distinguished us from others was condemned. But it shouldn’t be that way! We must learn to be ourselves without any limitations. We need to learn to perceive our “imperfections” as unique manifestations of ourselves.
Step 2: Self-Sufficiency
Realize that no one or nothing can make you whole. You’re already self-sufficient! You need to learn to love yourself regardless of whether someone else loves you or not. Your happiness cannot be dependent on your relationships.
Besides that, many people believe that certain achievements in life will help them love themselves more. But this is far from reality! Neither a career, nor an expensive car, nor a luxurious mansion on the beach, nor designer clothes, will make you love yourself. All this luxury can only enhance your ego, but self-love will never depend on such things. And it is very important to understand this!
You don’t need a reason to love yourself. True love is always born for no reason. We start to love ourselves just like that, here and now, just the way we are.
Step 3-Destruction Of The Pedestals
Stop putting people on the pedestal. Stop thinking that someone might be better than you are or worse. Learn not to compare yourself to other people. If you accept and love your uniqueness (which, as I have already said, consists of those qualities that society calls “imperfections”), then you realize that any comparison is inappropriate! You are who you are. No one is better or worse than you. Destroy all the pedestals that you have created. And understand that all people are equal. Don’t idealize anyone. We’re all just humans – nobody is perfect! Besides that the ideal is always dead, there is no movement, there is no need for development. So throw away all those thoughts about reaching this illusional ideal level of yourself. Stop this race to perfection! It doesn’t make any sense!
Step 4-Self-Respect
Self-love can’t exist without self-respect. Learn to respect yourself, your time and space!
Free your space from negative people, as well as from those people with who you are uncomfortable with or who are not interesting for you to communicate with. Free yourself from those people who steal your energy. Stop talking to people who only talk about themselves, but are never interested in you. Change your environment! As soon as you free yourself from people you don’t resonate with, you will attract a new environment into your life. From now on surround yourself only with people you enjoy interacting with.
Sometimes we can’t explain to ourselves why we don’t resonate with someone. I would advise not even try to find out the reasons why, but just keep a person you don’t resonate with at a distance. You should trust your intuition. If you don’t want to interact with someone without any particular reason, it means that you subconsciously (intuitively) feel that this person can bring nothing but problems into your life!
Step 5 – Alignment
Live in alignment with yourself. Don’t do things you don’t want to. I am not talking about everyday duties that cannot be avoided. I am talking about things that don’t resonate with our beliefs and contradict our worldview. For example, when we go to dinner though we don’t want to. And we doing it only because we don’t want to offend someone who invited us. Or, when the seller starts to impose on us some product that we do not need at all, but we buy it because we don’t want to upset the seller. These kinds of acts destroy our self-respect and our authority in our own eyes!
Remember that every time you step over yourself in order to not offend someone, you show a deep disrespect for yourself and the absence of self-love.
The Bottom Line
It is impossible to teach self-love in one minute. This process can take months or even years. Just understand that self-love is your path, your daily practice, but not the final destination. Self-love is made up of simple things you do every day. Only by learning to love yourself can you learn to truly love others. Not only family or friends, but also every living creature that you meet on your way!