Why Is Loving Yourself So Important?
Lessons I’ve learned about loving yourself
Loving yourself wasn’t a foreign concept to me. It was the term used to describe self-love that I didn’t have an idea of when I was younger. I knew I had to take care of myself, do the things I liked, and enjoy being with my own company.
I led a carefree life and didn’t have a care in the world of what others think of me.
However, as I got older, I realized I started to place my sense of worth based upon other people’s opinions of me.
I often compared myself to others and feel hurt in the process when I realize that they are better than me in many ways.
Instead of comforting myself for making mistakes that I had no control over, I beat myself up by overthinking and over-analyzing at how I should have done this, done that, or that I’m not good enough.
What I failed to realize was how I was always enough…
Every one of us is born unique, and in this harsh cruel world; the last thing we would want to do is to criticize ourselves for not being good enough.
Eventually, it came to a point where I stopped caring about what others had thought of me and started to treat myself with love and respect. I started to prioritize myself and my own happiness again. I did more things for myself, I forgave myself more and I became more compassionate to myself.
Although I started to love myself more, there were definitely times where I did fall back into my old patterns but despite those times, I still managed to pick myself back up.
Throughout these years, I’ve learnt that loving yourself is the most important thing you can and should do for yourself. It doesn’t matter what kind of environment you grew up in but what does matter is the way you decide to treat yourself.
That said, in this article, I will be describing my experiences, the lessons I’ve learnt over the years about loving one’s self, and the importance of it.
Forgiving yourself
As important as it is to forgive another person, we must also learn to forgive ourselves.
Over the years, I’ve learnt that forgiving yourself is just as important as forgiving others.
I struggled a lot with forgiving myself when I was younger and honestly it’s still a learning process for me even up till today.
I tend to get affected a lot by other people’s opinion of me and I would have negative chain patterns of thoughts that comes from overthinking. They were thoughts like: I could have done this, I shouldn’t have said this, what if I had done this instead, I can’t believe I just embarrassed myself…
As simple as it sounds, forgiving yourself may not be the easiest thing to do when you’re so caught up in your emotions. It is sometimes tough accepting something that we feel could have a different outcome and it may feel as though we were incapable of control.
However, I’ve realized that we don’t deserve to treat ourselves badly when we didn’t perform up to our own expectations.
It is okay to not be perfect and it’s okay to make mistakes.
As much as we tell others to forgive one another, we should also learn to forgive ourselves.
Only when we start accepting the past can we then move forward into the future.
Taking care of yourself
I genuinely believe in the notion that one should be able to take care of themselves first before taking care of others.
When I was younger, I spent lots of time with my own company, doing the things that I liked, enjoying small walks alone or with my dog, and even eating alone on a couple of occasions at my nearby coffee shop. It wasn’t because I had no friends but it was the peace that I got from being with myself that really made me enjoy doing it so much.
But as I got older, I started having different priorities in life as well as responsibilities, that I neglected the need to take care of myself.
During my Polytechnic days, there were multiple times I became burnt out from balancing my commitment as a leader in my Taekwondo club and school, that I found myself feeling extremely drained and mentally exhausted at times.
That made me realize that the reason I felt this way was probably because I didn’t balance out time for myself.
I eventually found ways in which I could balance out the time spent for myself through different outlets; some of them include: running, watching motivational videos, talking to people, and meditating (once in a while…)
When we start taking care of ourselves physically, mentally, and spiritually, we start to feel more energized and positive. We then create space for more love and radiance from entering our lives.
As written in a blog post, “Good self-care is the key to improved mood and reduced anxiety. It’s also key to a good relationship with oneself and others.” — by Licensed Counselling Psychologist, Raphailia Michael.
As much as we take care of others and treat them well. We should also learn to treat ourselves with love and kindness. There are many ways in which we can go about it; one of which can be doing your favorite activity or eating healthily, making sure you hydrate well enough throughout your day and even taking time within the day to meditate.
Meditation is often the most common form of bringing our awareness back to the present moment. It reduces stress, unhappy feelings, alleviate anxieties and it is a very good form of self-care as stated by one research conducted by the Journal of Happiness Studies.
Therefore, taking care of yourself also means that you prioritize yourself and learn to say no when you really have to.
Making your happiness a priority
This means not letting anyone or anything be a factor in taking away happiness from you.
We have the power to choose happiness and make it our priority.
During my teenage years, I struggled a lot with being accepted by the people around me. I get affected a lot about other people’s opinions and I find myself unconsciously seeking validation from my circle of friends.
As time went on, I stopped caring and I started to prioritize what makes me feel good about myself, not taking into account other people’s judgment and opinions of me.
Happiness indeed comes from within and no matter how much we place our source of happiness on materialistic objects or people; it tends to never bring us true happiness; one that is everlasting and pure.
According to the ABCNews, this is a phenomenon known as hedonic adaptation. When we seek validation and acceptance from others, we tend to feel happy for some time but the emotions wear off after a year or so, we then search for the next thing that gives us a similar effect.
True happiness comes when we actively choose to be optimistic even though the situation we’re in may not be in our favor. I’m not saying it is the easiest thing to do, but we can definitely get there with practice.
There are ways in which we can prioritize our happiness and one of which is practicing gratitude.
Personally ever since I started practicing gratitude daily, I realized I increasingly became more positive about my day, to myself, and to the people around me. I found myself to be more productive as well and generally so much more patient in dealing with whatever situation that I am put in.
When we express gratitude to the people or even the experiences we have in our life, it, in turn, creates this sense of fulfillment to ourselves. It makes us more appreciative of the things we have and that induces happy feelings.
As stated in one published journal that “Experiencing gratitude, thankfulness, and appreciation tends to foster positive feelings, which in turn, contribute to one’s overall sense of well being.”
When we prioritize our happiness, we take extra notice of the kind of thoughts we feed our minds and we only focus on the ones that bring us just that.
Self-worth
“Because one believes in oneself, one doesn’t try to convince others. Because one is content with oneself, one doesn’t need others’ approval. Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts him or her.” — Lao Tzu
I didn't understood the meaning of self worth not until I was a little older in my teens. I figured that I shouldn’t let other people determine whether I was good enough but instead love myself enough to determine my own worth to others.
When we love ourselves, we provide a sense of security to our own being.
We know that we are good enough and we don’t need others to tell us that.
It makes us secure and only then can we can then attract the right sorts of people into our lives.
I remembered telling myself how amazing of a person I am and that I may not be perfect but I’m definitely worthy as a person. Telling myself that usually serves as a reassurance that I was good enough and it also helps me calm down from the anxious feelings that I may get from overthinking.
Through the years of self-reflecting and experience, I’ve learnt that loving ourselves allows us to value ourselves and know our own sense of worth.
When we start to value ourselves, people start respecting that, and that in turn makes them value us as well.
People who value themselves are often happier and that’s because they understand their importance in this world.
We influence others to love themselves too
When we love and accept ourselves for who we are, others around us will be impacted by our energy.
They can sense that energy and that motivates them to do the same for themselves.
Lisa Nichols, a famous motivational speaker once said that we need to fill our own cup up and we need it to overflow because we can’t love someone when our cup is empty.
Loving ourselves creates an overflowing effect of love and it makes us love with a big heart. It makes us compassionate and it allows us to give others love as well.
“Loving yourself starts with liking yourself, which starts with respecting yourself, which starts with thinking of yourself in positive ways.” — Jerry Corsten
Therefore, loving ourselves is the best thing we can do for ourselves in the harsh reality we live in.
If we do not love ourselves first who else would?
If you find this article useful, you may like what I’ve written here:
I’m also a mental health advocate and I’ve recently posted an article about OCD:
