Self-love: The Importance of Self-love and ways to practice it.

Self-love means you learn to love yourself “first” without being selfish knowing that you have flaws and can make mistake yet you accept yourself the way you are despite your imperfections. Loving yourself is an important way to show yourself that you appreciate your worth or values regardless of your shape, color, height or nationality. It doesn’t matter what anyone say or think about you, the important thing is that you value yourself more than what anyone can give or say to you. Loving yourself might not be easy especially when you keep comparing yourself with others, but understand that loving yourself is the foundation of all other forms of love. If you don’t love yourself, how can you love others sincerely, putting yourself first before others might seem selfish but that is what you really need to understand how valued you are to yourself without the opinions of others. Self-love can mean something different for some people, because people take care of themselves in different ways. It is important you understand what self-love means to you, so you can learn to appreciate yourself more.

What happens when you don’t love yourself?

When you don’t love yourself, you will begin to act the following way;

• You feel inadequate
• Angry/ depressed
• You try to prove yourself to others
• You become a shame of yourself
• You always feel guilty
• You always feel rejected
• You react badly by the negative things others think or say about you
• You keep comparing yourself with others
• You feel you owe everyone an explanation
• When people don’t tell you, you look good, you feel you are not good enough
• You always say negative thing about yourself.

Benefits of self-love

• Makes you Determined and stronger
• Helps you discover your values and purpose
• Helps you liberate yourself from comparison
• Helps you accept yourself in a better way
• Improve your mental health
• Helps you think and say positive things about yourself
• Helps to increase your self-awareness
• Reduce anxiety
• Helps you sleep better
• Helps you set boundaries
• Helps you achieve your goals
• Makes you more motivated
• Improve your self-esteem
• Helps improve your relationship with others.

Difference between self-love and narcissist

 Self-love is not about putting yourself on a level that you are above others. Narcissist believe they’re better than others and won’t acknowledge or take responsibility for their mistakes and flaws. They also seek to get some extreme amount of external validation and recognition. A narcissist lacks empathy for others and they feel they are always right. While self-love isn’t about showing off how great you are. People who love themselves in a healthy way know that they have flaws sand make mistakes, and they accept and care about themselves despite their imperfections. Self-love doesn’t prevent you from caring about others; it simply means you can give yourself the same kindness that you give

Ways to practice self-love

1. Laugh more: Learn to laugh away your pains by doing things that makes you laugh, associate with people that makes you laugh. Spend your day feeling grateful and joyful, don’t let anyone or anything control your day or affect your mood
2. Find a place that makes you happy: Find a particular place that makes you feel at peace, happy and optimistic. Especially when you are going through tough times in life, visit the location or visualize yourself in that place. Make it a habit to envision yourself in that happy place that you want to be even though you are not there.
3. Avoid other people approval: You don’t need to rely on other people’s approval to love yourself. Giving up the need for other people approval will help you let go of past traumas and hurt. Sometimes our want for approval is attached to the events of the past.
4. Learn to celebrate your achievement: It doesn’t matter how big or small your achievement is, make sure you celebrate it. Be happy and proud of your accomplishment, this helps you love and be pleased with yourself. If you maintain the habit of celebrating yourself, it will make you motivated to do more.
5. Stop being too hard on yourself: Don’t be hard on yourself because of critics that want to keep you insecure, that can keep you from living a complete life. Avoid being hard on yourself even when you make a mistake get over it and move on. Don’t be afraid of criticism they only come for you to learn and improve yourself to become stronger.
6. Remove the idea that you must be perfect: Nobody is perfect not even the “miss or mister” universe. Remove the idea of you wanting to be perfect so that you can love yourself more. The idea of perfection is false, especially on social media that hide the serious mental health issues.
7. Practice self-care: Don’t wait for anyone to love or show you love, show yourself some love. You can get away for a relaxing vacation if you feel overworked. Learn to stand up for yourself when others put you down. Take kind action towards yourself this will help for the real you the more.
8. Learn to be grateful on a daily basis: Daily habit of feeling grateful is one key to happiness and self-love. Take at least 3 minutes everyday to be “thankful and grateful” for your health, life, friends, family, food, clothes, house and many more.

Bottomline

Self-love simply means you  just accepting yourself the way you are at every moment. It means you don’t need any other person’s approval to feel loved or to love yourself.