Three Steps To Loving Yourself
“Love is Joy. Love is Pain. Love is Selfish. Love is Sacrifice. Love is confusing”….. If you have been paying attention those words are written at the top of this page and yes that is my hand up there. That phrase and the contradictions of the sentences explains the theme of this blog. Seriously love doesn’t always make sense. Sometimes you care deeply for someone and honestly don’t even know the reason. You just do.
However do you want to know what makes sense? It’s something called Self Love. You need not to question why you love yourself. Yes, I shouldn’t even have to sell you on loving yourself, it ought to simply be natural. You should just wake up out of the bed, look in the mirror, give yourself a wink, smile and ask yourself. “What could I do today to improve my life and boost my happiness”…….If only it was that easy right?
This probably should have been my first post, I mean how can you love anyone else if you don’t love yourself? I often hear that love is wanting more for someone than you want for yourself. Which is true….to an extent. But I believe for someone to live in happiness, self-love should be greater than anything. People sometimes confuse that to being selfish but there is a difference between loving yourself and being narcissistic. Just like there is a difference between confidence and cockiness. There is nothing wrong with wanting the absolute best for one’s self. There is nothing wrong with knowing one’s self worth. I’ve seen people in relationships love so hard that over a course of a long relationship they forget how to love themselves and when the relationship is over they look lost. I know that feeling personally to be honest. Now without further ado here’s three steps to loving yourself.
Figure out who you are
You can’t love someone you don’t know, right? And no celebrities don’t count! Point is though a lot of people don’t know who they really are and that is why they struggle with being able to love themselves. Over the course of time people may lose or change their identities and sometimes aren’t even aware of it.
Even myself, after I broke up with the same person I have been messing around with for three good years, I honestly didn’t know who I was. I had put so much time and effort into loving her that I wasn’t too worried about myself. I did things for her that I wouldn’t even do for myself and don’t get me wrong this isn’t me making her the bad guy.
She was cool, I did those things because I wanted to do them. I wanted to make her happy but however I wasn’t thinking about making my own happiness. I thought by making her happy I would be happy in return and maybe I was. But after we broke up and I could no longer make her happy.
Where was I getting my source of happiness from? I didn’t know who Xavier was anymore. I didn’t know what made him happy. I didn’t know what he wanted. I was lost but once I started to get to know myself and start answering those questions I was able to start slowly loving myself again. Doing things to make me happy and doing things to improve my life.
There’s also a lot of people who think they know who they are but they really don’t. Sometimes you wonder why there are people who do harm to themselves. With drugs or always in self-harming situations they can probably get out of themselves. Over time they lost sight of themselves and it happened so gradually that they weren’t even aware of it. It’s like growing up with someone and seeing them everyday do you notice them change maybe not. But if you had seen them when they were young and see them some years later you notice a huge physical and mental difference.
Also I feel as though in my generation it’s so cool to be a follower. To be someone else. Everybody wants to be the guy next to them and that guy wants to be you. People pop pills because the guy next to him is doing it and with Facebook and other social media it’s actually pushed on us to follow the next person, share this and share that. If you don’t have your own identity how can you love yourself? While happiness is in self-love. The first step to loving yourself is to know who “yourself” actually is.
Accept Yourself
Sometimes people can know exactly who they are and guess what? They still don’t know how to love themselves for that exact reason. They can’t accept themselves. Maybe a women isn’t looking how society wants her to look. She’s not a size zero and wasn’t blessed with “assets” and looks at magazines all day designed to kill her self-esteem.
Maybe that guy isn’t 6’5 ripped to shreds with a perfect smile. Watching the football game wishing he could switch places. You have to be comfortable in your own skin and of course there’s plastic surgery, steroids and other enhancements but that’s a conversation for a different day. You have to embrace your “flaws” or imperfections. If you don’t like what you see in the mirror then you will assume no one does.
The problem is affecting lot of people, instead of accepting themselves they look for others to accept them. They look for validation in others. Someone to tell them how beautiful they are. How cool they are. How funny they are. Someone to tell them “I love you.” Because deep down they don’t believe in self-love. Instead of loving and have happiness in themselves they keep seeking someone else to do it for them. To love the things about them that they are insecure about. That’s why people with low self-esteem usually have problem in loving themselves.
They end up in relationships where their happiness is all dependent on the other person’s affection. And if they are with the wrong person, the person may easily take advantage of them, even people who seem like they have all of it with each other could be doing this. Such as the super model you seeing, Miss America. Or the 6’5 football player I referenced in the last paragraph. Sometimes the most beautiful people have the hardest time with accepting themselves. It’s not always an easy thing to do, especially if those things you’re insecure about can’t be change. But how can you expect anyone to love you unconditionally if you don’t love and accept yourself. It’s something to think about.
Make yourself happy and improve your life.
After you’ve figured out who you are and accept it. Now the easy part in self love and happiness is to go out there and make yourself happy. Try to improve yourself, though I’m not going tell you EXACTLY how to do that. Everyone’s visions of happiness and their goals are different. Sorry I can’t give you all the answers.
Actually I’m not asking you to go out there and do something crazy, Like spending your life savings on a Ferrari or blowing your check on a Gucci bag because now you figured out somehow that those things make you happy. No, think of it as “dating yourself.” Go places you like, do things you like, hang around people you like, read things you like. *Like this blog. ;)* If you don’t know what you like then guess what? This is the perfect chance for you to find out! Experiment, try different things. Experience different things. You will be surprised with the outcome.
If you love yourself you would also like to improve yourself, am I right? Good. But this can’t be all fun and games. You always want to be a better person then you were before. Just because you embrace your “flaws” doesn’t mean you can’t improve on them. You can make a list of daily, short term and long term goals and work on them. You might want to be more financially secure, you may actually want that body of girl in that magazine.
In my case you might want your blog to blow up. This is my point! You shouldn’t want these things just because someone else has it. Or for validation from someone else. You are going to want to improve your life because YOU yourself wants to and when you are doing things that’s right for you…..it usually get done and bring happiness.
This is a process though, it doesn’t happen overnight. It’s not easy. You aren’t going wake up and have all the answers. It takes time to find yourself. By sticking to the theme of relationship I honestly think it’s good when you start this process in between relationship. That way, whenever you enter into your next one, you would be clear on exactly who you want and what you want out of the relationship.
If you truly love yourself loving someone else becomes so much easier. However, with self-love you will expect a little more from your partner, because you know your worth. Once you know your worth no one can ever low ball you or undersell you unless you let them. Also don’t forget that everyday is a chance to improve yourself. These are my thoughts tonight hopefully it resonates with people and maybe help influence them to change positively.
That first step is always the hardest step to make. Like, Share and Subscribe and remember “Love is confusing but we’ll figure this out together.”