I used to think the idea to not love yourself seemed impossible. I mean, you’ve only got one you. You should be embracing all your little flaws and quirks. Who cares what other people think? Right?
Well that’s what I thought anyways.
Until two years ago.
I walked into class one day, sat with my group of close friends, and we caught up about the weekend. When it was my turn, I hesitated.
Then I uttered a sentence that I didn’t even realize I had said until after I said it. (I hope that makes sense.)
“Guys, can I tell you something really important? This weekend I realized I don’t love myself.”
I think that realizing it, is something that is unfortunately more of a luxury. I was just lucky enough to had that thought cross my mind at that time, for me to confront how I was feeling.
The once confident Alex had been replaced by someone who had let other peoples’ opinions affect him so much, that he began to believe it.
I had stopped loving myself because I felt like I didn’t deserve it.
I would overthink everything and realize that at the end of the day, I didn’t deserve good things happening to me because I have accepted myself as a bad person.
What followed was a series of ups and downs, of obstacles and hurdles. Until finally I had enough.
After a little argument with a friend, I had realized what I was doing.
Ironically, somehow life had become too good for a while. Better than I could have imagined.
And I couldn’t take it.
Something had to go wrong.
It was either going to happen naturally, or I had to somehow make it happen.
Because nothing going wrong was too uncomfortable.
Self-sabotage
I stopped myself and started writing. It was a letter to myself. A letter reflecting on this situation, reflecting on the repeating of this situation. Because I realized it was something I did regularly.
Somehow, I’ve developed a tendency to self-sabotage whenever life seemed too good to be true. I had been accustomed to rejection. Accustomed to perceived judgement and doubt from others.
But something about that day felt different.
I didn’t want that anymore.
I was sick of it.
Sick of always judging and criticizing myself for every little mistake. I was sick of feeling like I wasn’t enough. Most importantly, I was sick of pushing people away.
And I loved my friends too much to push them away.
For the first time in my life, I felt the adult in me take control of a situation like this. I decided it was time to start loving myself more and appreciating all the good qualities I see in myself.
But life doesn’t work like that. It’s not magic. Just like how you can’t suddenly love someone, you can’t suddenly love yourself. I realized I had to be very objective about myself and be thick-skinned enough to handle my own criticism.
I mean everybody has flaws. We’re all humans.
So, once I realized some things that I really didn’t like about myself, I accepted it because it also came with a bunch of stuff I think I’m absolutely awesome at.
This kickstarted the journey of self-love for me and really allowed me to start embracing who I was again after years of low perceived self-worth.
So how does self-acceptance lead to loving yourself?
Accepting who you are is an analysis of your strengths and weaknesses that requires complete honesty with yourself.
Once you truly accept yourself for who you are, then you can start loving yourself more and improving your self-worth.
Now if we accept the love we think we deserve, then we have to understand what it is we’re accepting. What are the good things? What about the bad things?
So often, we think that self-love is just something to do. It’s something that will suddenly increase our self-esteem and help us find better people to love. But it’s more than that.
It’s realization, appreciate and finally genuine love for yourself. Self-love is not being defined by anyone else except yourself. It’s honesty, trust and belonging with yourself. It’s acceptance with yourself.
If you want to love yourself, the most important step is self-acceptance.
Here are some amazing things about self-acceptance that leads to self-love:
Self-criticism becomes…. less critical
Of course, this doesn’t mean that you just stop having standards for yourself.
It means you cut yourself some slack for the unimportant things.
With an honest approach to who you are, you won’t be as shocked when you suck at things you’re not good at, and you can double down and appreciate yourself for what you are good at.
By appreciating yourself for what you are good at, you start criticizing yourself less.
And by criticizing yourself less, you have more brain space to focus on more important things.
It’s actually a positive cycle now that I think about it.
You stop letting others approval affect you
It’s hard to focus on loving yourself when you’re always thinking about what other people think.
Soon enough, you’re only going to care about what other people think and not have time to love yourself.
That’s the beauty of self-acceptance.
When you accept who you are, other people’s opinions don’t seem to matter as much as they used to. What other people say about you becomes less insulting and you don’t think about it as long.
When you accept who you are, you’re confident about your strengths, and you stop seeking validation and approval from others. You already know you’re good at it and don’t need anyone to tell you.
You get to see the real you and you don’t settle
So many people live their entire lives having to be somebody else. A lot of times it’s not by choice.
We live in a world where opinions are everywhere and even when they’re not, we believe they are.
I once read that true self-acceptance is the key to overcoming self-esteem and body image issues. With more capacity to accept yourself, you begin to appreciate being in your own skin.
When you accept who you are, you stop settling for what you’re not.
It’s definitely a work-in-progress, but I think one of the best things about self-acceptance and loving yourself is you realize how much you deserve and you don’t settle for anything less.
In conclusion
I remember that night after I had told my friends that I didn’t love myself.
I was in my room, terribly upset and frantically doing Google searches.
My searches were “how do you love yourself?” over and over again, hoping for a different result.
Instead, I found a series of activities to do, that seemed to be helpful, but it didn’t apply to my situation.
That’s the thing.
Since everybody is different, there is no one-size-fits-all.
I never did find the answer for myself of “how do you love yourself?”.
What I did eventually find, was an appreciation for who I was. A true realization that the we can be capable and deserving of love, if that’s how we feel about ourselves.
I’d love to know one good and one bad thing about you that you’ve accepted as part of your self-acceptance journey.
If you’d like, you can check out my article on self-acceptance on P.S. I Love You.
You can also read my previous post on how High School Musical teaches us love.
Thank you so much for reading.
Love always,
Alex
[…] You can also read my previous post on self-acceptance. […]