The Art Of Loving Yourself
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Do you love yourself? Do you love your life? Do you love your habits? Do you love your physical nature? Do you love your personality traits? Do you love how you deal with conflict? Do you love the people closest to you? Do you truly love yourself?
Loving yourself is definitely an art that many of us have not mastered. Even for those that have “mastered” it, self-love is a continuous work in progress.
I love that song. I love that movie. I love that car. I love that shirt. I love those shoes. I love that place. I love that house. I love that book. I love him. I love her. I love you.
How easy love rolls off the tongue in regards to everything and anyone else, but how often do we say that we love ourselves?
Confidence (or lack thereof)
From as early as I can remember, self-confidence was never my strength. A large part of this was my physical appearance. It’s not that I was ever a bad looking guy, it was more so that I could not see past my flaws. No one is perfect, but growing up I had a bad habit of focusing on what I wanted to change, rather than what I liked about myself.
I sucked my thumb for the first 10 years of my life, so my teeth were jacked up. My two front teeth stuck out to the point where I could not close my mouth. I would try my best to hide them, but I also smiled all the time, so they were usually on display. The idea that when people met me all they were seeing were my teeth haunted my psyche. My mind could not get past it.
After getting braces I felt better about my appearance, but still had the same mindset. My confidence was low simply for the fact that it was what I was used to, and it was especially low around women. This made me super nervous to approach women, and as we all know, a woman can sniff out a man that is not confident.
My lack of confidence affected my willingness to try new things, it kept me from giving any endeavor my absolute best, and most importantly (at least at the time) it kept me from getting laid.
