Last update: December 23, 2016
Lack of self-love is at the root of most feelings of malaise. It is also the source of endless conflicts and bad decisions in life. It is a deficiency that leads to putting into practice many wrong actions, such as always wanting to prove something to others and continually seek their approval or turn affections into battlefields.
Love is based on three fundamental pillars: respect, care and knowledge.
Respect implies acceptance and appreciation. If you respect someone or something, it means you don't need to spend all your time questioning, criticizing, or trying to change it. You simply accept it for what it is or tolerate it in a certain way. In other words, you reaffirm it.
As for the cure, it means that you relate to what you love in a way that favors its growth. Both respect and care are closely linked to knowledge: you cannot respect what you do not know and you cannot help it grow if you do not know where its evolution is headed.
When there is self-love, there is also self-respect, care, in the broadest sense of the term, and self-knowledge. When self-love is lacking, you navigate in the uncertainty of not knowing who you are or where you are going. We also doubt our thoughts, feelings and actions: even mistakes are questioned and we have the feeling of wanting to be different in order to live well. Basically it is like experiencing an inner storm that does not cease. In this case, it is good to nurture self-love. Below we give you 3 key tips to do this.
Learn to see yourself with goodness to fuel self-love
It is likely that at certain moments in your life you have become convinced that "there is something wrong" with you. Perhaps the education you received emphasized the errors a lot and emphasized them in an exaggerated way. It is therefore possible that you are used to looking at yourself through this filter: highlighting the mistakes and minimizing the efforts made and the goals achieved.
We reveal a secret: an unequivocal sign of the lack of self-love is precisely this need, not only to criticize oneself, but also to question and belittle others. So whoever is pointing the finger at you or has done so in the past is not comfortable with themselves.
Learn to overcome this conditioning. Break the chain of thoughts that keep you belittling yourself. This is the task: for every mistake or flaw you find, you also find two qualities or virtues. Try to look at yourself with goodness and so you will learn to love yourself.
Strive to be better people to increase self-love
We are all worthy of respect and consideration, just because we belong to the human race. Never forget that. Don't forget that either the healthiest way to value what you do is through conscious effort.
Stress is a powerful food for self-love. Without even realizing it, it gives you a feeling of dignity that translates into respect for who you are and for what you do. When you choose the easy way, the opposite happens imperceptibly: you belittle what you get and, consequently, who you are.
Striving does not mean going against your wishes or exhausting yourself to achieve a goal. It is more about the commitment that one freely puts into what he does to do it well and completely. It might mean putting your will on the line at some point, but the reward is a growing feeling of self-love.
Try to understand who belittles you
You can never be happy and comfortable with yourself if you feed your addiction to the opinion of others. It's not that someone wants to hurt you with their opinions (although it does happen sometimes), but hardly a judgment is elaborate enough to take into account.
Do you believe that others spend hours and hours reflecting on you before giving their opinion on you? You certainly don't think so. Many act mechanically and speak lightly. To be able to take into account a criticism, it must be very detailed and profound.
You may not be meeting this person's needs or opinions and for that reason they criticize you. In the end, the problem is more with this person than yours. Your task in life is not to adapt to what others want, but to build your own path yourself. This journey and this process are unique and often do not find the approval of others. It is good to know that this is completely normal and that it happens to everyone.
One of the consequences of self-love is to generate approval and appreciation from others. Those who love themselves arouse natural and spontaneous respect and consideration in people. Loving yourself is a task to undertake and will give you much more satisfaction than any other endeavor in life.
Images courtesy of Margarita Kareva and Art TreeLight.
