Self-Love or Vanity?
It’s a distinct yet, fine line between self-care and self-destruction.
“Be your reason to smile.”
“Your self-worth depends on you.”
“Enjoy your own company and see how all your relationships become more beautiful.”
At 2 am, when our brains decide to play highlight reels of all our painful and regretful memories, such Instagram posts are reminders to love ourselves. I can quote many more such sparking words from the internet, which can be exciting momentarily.
In reality, how many of us summon up those wise words during periods of distress? At some point, most of us have hated ourselves for how we looked or behaved. We are often vulnerable to skepticism and negativity when the going gets tough.
Only a fortunate few can remain optimistic even as their ship is sinking. These people have figured out the formula for happiness in life.
Self-love!
Is it just me, or has self-love gained more popularity now?
I am the firstborn child in my South Asian family in the ’90s — A perfect cocktail to grow up with anxiety and self-doubt. It was a more discerning time. (At least for me, it was.)
Nowadays, I even hear my 13-year-old cousin telling me she is extremely comfortable in her own skin — inside and out.
So yes, I’m a little jealous. The present generation is born into a world that better perceives self-love as self-care. The GEN Z have already figured out what took me my entire existence to acknowledge.
So I decided to start ‘loving myself’ for who I was.
What is self-love?
A day of pampering at the spa, buying a new pair of shoes, or ordering your favorite meal? Yes!
Is it just that, gathering earthy pleasures? No!
It is how you feel after the spa, wearing those shoes, or after that meal- that feeling of taking care of yourself mentally, physically, and emotionally. Self-love is an appreciation of one’s worth or virtue.
Although sometimes, the understanding of self-love is all wrong.
Some people just use it to justify bad behavior by saying, “ If you can’t handle me at my worst, you don’t deserve me at my best.”
It made me recognize something called toxic self-love, a.k.a VANITY!
3 traits of ‘toxic self-love’ :
- Hurting others:
“Regard your happiness and well-being over others.”
As a brown kid, conformity is part and parcel of our culture. You must have stumbled upon the Japanese saying, “ The nail that sticks out gets hammered down.” Disappointment is very easy to achieve. All you have to do is score poorly on a class test. Pleasing everyone in every aspect of your life is exhausting.
Even so, I believe that self-love can be exercised when it seems like the right choice, and nobody is indefinitely hurt in the process of doing so.
You know your journey to self-love is tainted when you’re selfishly hurting people on the way. It cannot be used as an excuse to treat people poorly.
Always remember that if your self-love constantly makes someone feel small, insignificant, and inferior, it is toxic.
2. No room for self-growth:
“Accept yourselves in all your glory as nothing short of perfect.”
Considering yourself perfect is the opposite of self-love. That is just delusional. The whole concept of self-love is to love yourself despite your imperfections and accept your flaws.
It is about promising yourself to become a better version of yourself daily. Considering one as perfect limits one’s ability to introspect and improve oneself.
This form of toxic self-love can create unrealistic goals and expectations. Instead, it results in shame when these expectations are not met, because in reality, nobody is perfect.
3. Avoiding conflict:
“Distance yourself from negativity.”
Although this quote can be true sometimes, it can become toxic when you run away from difficult situations that are affecting you directly. Avoiding being vulnerable, having difficult conversations, or being heedless of another person’s boundaries and feelings is unhealthy.
Humans make mistakes and these mistakes create conflicts. These conflicts must not be pushed away because they give you ‘negative vibes.’
Sometimes, you have to get through the storm to see the rainbow. You must deal with your can of worms instead of covering it up with fake positivity.
Real self- love:
Contrary to the popular belief, self-love is not just selfish pampering and positivity. It is being mindful of your behavior, thoughts and actions to improve your own life. It is about self-compassion and learning to have a better relationship with you — inside and out — by setting good boundaries, and protecting your energy.
The first step in self-love is self-forgiveness. Accepting one’s past, mistakes, flaws, and imperfections as a part of being a human can be very liberating. It might help to have a healthy competition with yourself, where there is no room for unrealistic expectations and failure.
It is always best to introspect than ruminate over the past to be able to grow individually. Rumination can only result in regret, downward spiraling, and feeling bad about yourself. Introspection, on the other hand, helps you learn from your experiences. This presents an opportunity for self-improvement and development.
In order to introspect, it is imperative that your are honest with yourself and give yourself space to make more mistakes without feeling awful. Only then can one look deep within and explore oneself.
From the dawn of time, humans have been social beings, and the social relationships and interactions are important for emotional and physical well-being. Hence, you must be aware of how your actions affect the people in your inner circle.
Psychologists advise journaling and writing self-affirmations to look back at personal growth. It gives us a chance to evaluate if you are actually investing time, money and energy into bettering yourself, or is it just an empty, egoistical path to destruction.
Define what self-love means to you
Sometimes, we fall victim to the bandwagon effect and post our breakfast or buy branded stuff just because ‘it’s cool.’ If you get happiness from doing that, please, by all means, go for it!
But if you are like me, and prefer celebrating the little joys of life, don’t feel the need to fake it by calling it self-love.
Be aware of the moments that make you happy, and actively try to incorporate more such moments in your life. It could be a hobby, practicing yoga to the rising sun, or simply by spending quality time with close ones. That is how I started writing on this platform. (Read about it here)
I started my journey to self-love by determining where to spend my energy. I implemented this simple but powerful Venn diagram to list things that mattered and were under my control.
I used to be very insecure about my teeth. As a dentist, the best tool is an attractive smile, which I didn’t have. I used this technique to determine what I must do about it.
Did it matter? Yes! It affected my self-confidence in more ways than I can describe.
Could I control it? Yes! An orthodontist can. Duh!
Despite a lot of disinterest from family and friends, I got it corrected. It is the best thing I have done for myself so far. (Read about it here.)
Proper nourishment with a well-balanced diet, and staying healthy and hydrated can also be vital in your journey of self revamping. Eating clean has scientifically shown to have a positive correlation with how we feel.
I want to share an interesting piece of advice given by actor Will Smith in an interview:
“The keys to life are running and reading. When you’re running, there’s a little person that talks to you and says, “Oh I’m tired. My lung’s about to pop. I’m so hurt. There’s no way I can possibly continue.” You want to quit. If you learn how to defeat that person when you’re running, you will know to not quit when things get hard in your life.
For reading: there have been gazillions of people that have lived before all of us. There’s no new problem you could have–with your parents, with school, with a bully. There’s no new problem that someone hasn’t already had and written about it in a book.”
The next time you catch yourself being toxic in the name of self-love, take note of it and work on it. It is always better to be self-aware and imperfect than be unapologetically selfish.
Always remember to approach it with a lot of kindness and patience. Treat yourself like how you would treat your best friend who is getting over their terrible ex — with lots of empathy, support and compassion.
And if you ever come across a vain person calling it self-love, run away as far as you can and protect your own energy.
