Can Self-love Be Taught?

“I am learning to love myself and it is the hardest thing that I’ve ever done.” — Unknown

“Be nice to everyone and always be humble, love your neighbor as you love yourself, and respect your elders,” are some of the basic sentences that groomed us from young age well into our teenage about ways to carry ourselves so we can become well-behaved adults. And they did work. Learning is a never-ending process and if you are wondering whether self-love can be taught for us to become self-loving adults, then read on to find out.

Where love is concerned, the focus is always on others not on each person as an individual. From a young age, girls are groomed to become good wives and mothers to take good care of their husbands, children, and their families. While men are taught to work hard and accumulate riches to become good providers and caretakers. This is perpetuated everywhere, at home, school, in societies, and in media. How then can self-love be taught and why is it important for people to learn about self-love?

Teach Children to Love Themselves

The majority of the time kids are groomed to be good people so that they can become good citizens or people elite enough to be accepted in society. Less focus is put on future adults’ happiness.

In addition to teaching children about brotherly love, they must also be taught how to love themselves. How? Every day teach your children to loudly say, “I love you……….” The dash is the child’s name. For example, if your child’s name is Mpho, she must loudly, boldly, and proudly shout, “I love you Mpho.”

Watch their reaction as they recite these words because they must be moved emotionally through the process, either by smiling or laughing through the process; after all, when the person you love the most declares their undying love to you, you show emotions whatever they may be. This lesson applies to adults as well. The first time I murmured those words to myself I cried. Now I smile or giggle through the process because hearing those words from myself gives me joy.

Show your children love

I’m sure you are wondering what kind of a parent doesn’t show their children love? Well, where I come from parents hardly ever hug their children or tell their children they love them. Shocking right? Therefore, it is important for parents to be affectionate to their children, tell them how much you love them, how proud of them you are, and how amazing they look, and hug them as well.

If they learn love from their parents, it is much easier for them to love themselves and to recognize real love when they see it from someone else. Furthermore, when you show your children how much you love them, you set a solid foundation of self-love and self-appreciation. I got so used to people leaving me and pushed those who wanted to stay willingly because I thought I was a person who deserved to have people walk out of her life because even my own father left me. So why would anybody that I’m not related to want to stick around?

Encourage them to spend time alone

Chronic dependence on people can be toxic if left untreated. It’s okay for children to have friends but they must also be taught how to be content with being alone. Aloneness is something that is frowned upon by our society that a lot of people shun away from. I have heard these statements so many times “so you like to be alone? Your life must be boring, miserable, and lonely.”

Learning aloneness from a young age will teach children independence and protect them from needing fulfillment from other people. This will in turn lead to adults that are emotionally sufficient and independent and who also engage in healthy relationships instead of co-dependent relationships.

It is important to recognize that the lessons in this article apply to everyone because we can all benefit from self-love and it doesn’t mean if you didn’t learn from a young age, then there is no hope for you. You can learn to love yourself at any age if you are committed.

Why is it important to learn about self-love?

We have learned ways to love ourselves in the above section but why are we doing all the work, and is it necessary? In recent years education about self-love has been on the rise and almost everywhere. From social media to online media such as online magazines there has been a buzz about self-love. There wouldn’t be so much stir regarding this topic if it wasn’t important right? Here are a few benefits of self-love:

You cannot necessarily give what you don’t have.

This is simple, to give something freely and without reservation, you need to have that thing in excess or abundance. While we are taught to love others, and we try to the best of our abilities do to so, in most cases we fall short because we don’t have the love ourselves and we don’t even know how to love.

So, whatever love we give others isn’t anywhere near what real love is because first of all we are pouring from empty cups and we lack sufficient knowledge of what giving unconditional love looks like. The love we give lacks depth; it’s just superficial. Learning self-love isn’t only beneficial to each person as an individual, it is also good for others as well. Before learning to love myself, I knew how to love but my relationship with my loved ones got better once I learned to love myself.

Your life gets better.

For me this is the best part about self-love; all the areas of your life improve positively from your financial situation, your personal and professional relationships, your health, and generally how you conduct yourself. Everything changes because once you learn to love yourself, your relationship with yourself also gets better and this infiltrates all the areas of your life. It all starts with loving yourself and everything follows.

I battled with depression well throughout my 20s and later in my 30’s I also had debilitating anxiety and it was self-love that helped me fight these illnesses. There would be voices in my head telling me all sorts of bad and negative stuff about me; how I am not good enough, how nobody likes me, how my life would amount to nothing.

I wasn’t put on medication because I was not the worse case at that stage; instead, I was told to find ways to manage my illnesses and all I could do was sleep. I was anxious to the point where I would start shaking and I needed a big pillow because it felt as if my heart would jump out of my chest or as if it was beating in my throat and I’d spit it out. Through these hard times, I would speak kindly and gently to myself, I tried by all means not to feed or believe the mean voices that I heard in my head. I’d tell myself to take it one day at a time and that it was okay to feel what I felt no matter how painful it was. I would meditate and go for walks even though I was tired but I’d push myself to do minor exercises and it helped a lot.

I never took medication for depression or anxiety and I am not healed from the illnesses but I did learn to control them. Now when I feel either depression or anxiety creeping in, I practice self-kindness and compassion.

We can all benefit from self-love and we can learn self-love regardless of age or status. Everything stems from having a good loving relationship with yourself. Once this area is taken care of, the possibilities are endless. It really does begin with each individual.