WHY IT'S IMPORTANT YOU LOVE YOURSELF

“Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.” – Lucille Ball

Some people do feel guilty about learning to love themselves. They fear they may be tending towards a lifestyle of selfishness.

When you have known mostly self-sabotage almost all your life because of lack of love for yourself, you'd understand how important the practice of self-love is to your emotional and mental wellbeing.

Not everyone who loathes the self actually does so intentionally. For the majority in this category, it was a survival habit picked up from the environment that fought against their self image.

So the only way for them to escape the crude emotional brutality was to agree mentally with those who had treated them as not good enough for who they are.

When many adults finally realize how much damage they may have caused themselves in habits that showed they didn't love who they are, a lot of them break down emotionally, and in a hurry to make things right.

Unfortunately, in their hurry, they fail to get this one important thing right; learning more selfishness they would assume is the definition of self-love. The painful result of living a selfish lifestyle makes their self-love journey more tormenting than anticipated in the beginning.

It is important that we understand the difference between living a selfish lifestyle and loving yourself. Both are not mutually exclusive.

Selfishness can make you assume you're the only one that is important and therefore deserving of all the goodies while others may go to hell if they want to.

Self-love, on the other hand, is recognizing that you deserve goodness as much as anyone else does. It is also declaring that your life matters while not shutting other lives down.

With self-love, we all grow together in love and acceptance.

Self-love then should be an important part of anyone who truly wants to experience the best of themselves. Because what you nurture, and allow the space to be accepted for who it is, flourishes. That's what self-love does to our personal growth in all dimensions. We flourish by loving ourselves!

Having been a victim of some kind of self loathing, I can attest to how much of a greater feeling, and experience life becomes when we embrace ourselves in self-love, regardless of how undeserving we had been told we were of this acceptance and love.

I'm an advocate for everyone taking the intentional step of practicing habits that is loving and showing acceptance of self. I believe we all must learn to love ourselves in ways that we truly deserve to be loved.

Because when you love yourself, you have better chances of making decisions that would empower you than that which will erode your dignity.

Self love have a way of protecting us from many self-harm and toxic people. Because, we are conscious of not being involved in situations that won't serve us well enough.

Loving yourself is actually serenading your life with care, protection, kindness and self compassion in full acceptance, not because you're perfect, rather, that you deserve the necessary affection to grow to who you're becoming. These traits add to your happiness to make your life less emotional dramatic and draining.

Even more, self-love can help boosts our self esteem and confidence levels because it increases our chances of believing in our own abilities.

Truth is, we never do wrong loving ourselves.

Self-love has a way of showing others how to treat you like the real deal that you are.

Ultimately, we're the one to show others how we want to be loved. And it is part of this reason we must practice first of all loving ourselves to enable others observe how we deserve to be loved.

In most individuals I've worked their self love journey with, one thing was always a constant when I met them: the fear of how people would accept them.

At the root of that fear are habits that does the opposite of what they most wanted: to gain acceptance generously, without too much efforts at pleasing those who will show that acceptance to them.

Unfortunately, their lack of personal self acceptance always made even the very acceptance they desire from others a hard nut to crack.

True change always starts within then without.

It's easier for another to be accepting of you when you have accepted yourself. This will show in the way you carry and treat yourself in their presence.

When you have accepted yourself, little effort is needed on your part for validation and approval from others. As a matter of fact, no effort may be required thereafter on your part in seeking that validation!

Because people are naturally drawn more in respect towards anyone who by the way they treat themselves acceptably, shows how less important they consider another's approval or lack of it. As such, more effort is shown from others to also join you in the acceptance you have shown yourself.

Despite the many reasons we must make loving ourselves a priority in our personal development journey, millions of people still fail woefully at this very important practice. For some in this category, it is due to the misguided beliefs that had been taught them about what self-love is. A lot of people still have the notion that self-love is promoting a selfish lifestyle. So for morality sake, this false information pushes them away from learning to love and embrace themselves without seeking permission from the opinions of others.

This is why I began this write-up defining the clear difference between selfishness and self love. They are not the same.

However, it would also require some level of selfishness before you can make up your mind to begin loving yourself, especially if you have been used to always being the one at the losing end of partnerships and relationships because of your own continued self sabotage.

Don't worry about that though. Start anyway. Like most things about growth, you'll master the art with time, and separate the difference as you mature in the acts of self-love.

The most important step is to decide you deserve to be loved, heard and seen. And knowing you are the first person to give yourself a chance at all of these is a big deal.

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To your healing, love and fulfillment.

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Joy ISEKI