What is self love?

Recently the self development industry has been flooded with books and information teaching people how to love and accept themselves. Despite this over abundance of information, most people are still confused about the notion of loving yourself. In fact, most people don’t even know how to love themselves and what self love is.

Why is it so important to love yourself?

Loving yourself influences all areas of your life. It is so powerful. So many problems in life have deep connections to how much you love and accept yourself. A lot of abuse, broken relationships and addictions in life can be avoided if people would just learn to love themselves more.

The opposite of self love

Instead of loving themselves many people hate who they are. They may even tolerate someone who beats them up, humiliates them and treats them inhumanely. So many people allow this to happen because deep down they feel that they deserve such cruel treatment. Deep down they don’t feel worthy of love and respect and believe that they’re not good enough.

Expecting ourselves to be perfect

The more self love we have the less we will experience self abuse. Self abuse comes from self rejection. Self rejection comes from having an image of what it is to be perfect and never reaching up to that perfection. Our image of perfection is the reason why we hate ourselves, because we don’t accept ourselves the way we are.

Self love means accepting yourself

Loving yourself is learning how to accept yourself for who you are and not expecting yourself to be perfect. No one is perfect except God! However you don’t strictly have to accept all your imperfections though! This is because your subconscious mind will never accept an imperfection if it knows that it can be changed.

To be able to accept yourself you must accept what you can’t change but put your efforts to change what you can. For example, you can’t change the colour of your skin but you can change your body weight if you don’t accept it. Only by taking initiative to get up and change something that you dislike, will you be able to accept yourself more.

Self love means respecting yourself

You have to learn how to truly respect yourself if you want to increase your self love. No matter what has happened in your past and how many people mistreated you, you have to start expecting to be treated well by others. You also have to take the initiative to treat yourself with respect by nurturing yourself.

This includes taking care, treating and making time for yourself. It’s becoming your own best friend and treasuring the person God created you to be. The truth us that if God approves of you, then you should approve of yourself too!

If you don’t respect yourself then you can’t expect others too! One way to respect yourself is by stopping the abuse you give to yourself. This means stop talking down to yourself, treating yourself like a worthless, second class citizen and expecting people to treat you like dirt.

Love yourself they way God loves you- unconditionally. If people hurt you, then give yourself the self respect by walking away and not tolerating such abuse. This is exactly how you respect and love yourself.

Self love is learning how to comfort yourself

You have to learn the skill of looking to yourself for comfort instead of looking for others to do this for you. You shouldn’t exclusively search outside of yourself to get this; it can only come from within you. It is possible to comfort yourself. You can do this as God has placed in all of us the ability to love, and there is so much untapped love inside of us that we can give to ourselves.

Treat yourself the way you would treat someone you loved if they had a hard day. For example, you would probably give them an encouraging chat, a hug, pay for them to go and get a massage or make them a relaxing cup of tea. So next time you feel low, comfort yourself the way you would comfort a special person in your life. This is self love.

Self love is focusing on and appreciating your strengths

Focus on all that you have accomplished in life and give yourself credit for your good points. Focus on the aspects of yourself that you love and are grateful for. Also learn how to make the most of your strengths by developing them. You can do this by investing in yourself through personal development. By taking the time out to improve yourself you will learn how to love, respect and appreciate yourself more. You are a valuable commodity!

The benefits of self love

Loving yourself can change your whole life! You won’t be the type of person anymore that needs the approval of others. You won’t be the type of person anymore that tolerates abuse. If you love yourself you won’t stoop again and allow yourself to be abused by other people just to get their love and attention.

You will become emotionally stronger and feel less bad when you are rejected because you will learn not to rely on other people’s opinions of you. You will also know how to comfort yourself and you will be less likely to fall into addictions, broken relationships or depression.

In short, loving yourself can lead to your personal freedom, to experience happiness you never thought possible, to abundance and success in every area of your life and personal relationships.

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