Love yourself. Forgive yourself. Be true to yourself. How you treat yourself sets the standard for how others will treat you.
Steve Maraboli
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
A lot of people complain about not finding love or being unlovable; if you’re one of these people, then you’re in luck because, by the end of this article, you would have found out how to love yourself.
How do you love yourself? Well, the answer to this seemly simple question is both simple and complicated, which is why I have broken it down into four steps to help you the reader understand where you’re going wrong.
Table of Contents
Step 1: Forgive Yourself
Believe it or not, the first step to self-love is self-forgiveness. If you’re reading this, then it means you’re old and intelligent enough to understand written words and sentences. Which means you’re at least 12 years old, but you could be younger.
Let’s assume you’re at least 12 years of age; at this age, you would have done things that you’re probably not proud of and, you will still make more bad decisions as you get older, so, it’s important that you understand the importance of self-forgiveness and it’s relation to self-love or loving yourself.
If you have a cat or dog, then you know that that they do things that annoy or upset you but no matter what they do, you still forgive them simply because you love them, but strangely enough, we can’t seem to afford ourself this ‘unconditional love‘ we shower on our pets.
Now is the time for you to understand and grasp it within your consciousness that you will always err and it’s your job to forgive yourself and another body else’s who partook in making you err.
When people open up to you, you will be surprised to discover that most of them have guilt that they are carrying around with them. These guilt(s) weight them down, disturbs their peace and blocks out all the love around them, including the love coming from the Universe.
Forgive yourself, forgive those that made you err in your ways, and move on in the knowledge that, to err is human and to forgive is divine.
The Bible commented on this subject in Isaiah 43:21 NIV – Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.
What’s has happen has happened, forgive yourself and move on with your life.
Step 2: Respect Yourself
How much respect do you have for yourself? If you’re struggling to answer this question, maybe it’s because you don’t know what it entails for one to respect him or herself.
To respect yourself means you value your time and energy, and as such, you’re selective about who and what you spend it one. Wherever you find a man or woman of great respect and admiration, there also you’ll find someone who values there time and energy.
All the people you respect for there accomplishment, bravery, discipline, determination, drive or vision, have one thing in common, and that’s, they respect themselves and, because they respect themselves, their time is valuable to them.
Let’s take an Army General for example. An Army General won’t be found in a bar drunk naked or making a clown of himself. This will never happen because an Army General has fully understood that before anyone can love and respect him, he must first love and respect himself.
Unfortunately, you can’t respect yourself properly without having a set of rules that govern your day to day life. This rule will definitely include:
- To value time
- To be genuine
- To be punctual
- To always act with integrity
- To continuously improve oneself
- To conduct all affairs in a fair manner
- To be honest in all dealings and interaction
- To only spend time on things that add value
- To listen more and talk less in all conversations
- To consider all facts before making a judgement or decision
A person that lives by these set of principles respects him or herself.
Step 3: Be Your Authentic Self
After you’re successful in forgiving and respecting yourself, then it becomes easy to live your authentic life without apologising for it. We live in a world that wants us to conform to the idealogy of the masses. This’s pure madness, simply because no two-person live in the same world.
Although they might be married, husband and wife don’t live in the same world. Even twins who were born minutes apart don’t live in the same world. This is because your perception of reality comes from your mind and there are no two minds alike. So, why would you follow the masses?
You have a unique mind which is not in existence anywhere else. It’s from this mind of your that you view, process and understands this world. This uniqueness MUST be expressed without apology.
You must be bold enough to express yourself in this world that’s addicted to conformity. Never, ever conform. Search for your own truth, live your authentic life without worrying about who you might get offended.
Step 4: Treat Yourself Right
If you’re successful in living your authentic life, then it becomes really easy to arrive at the last step of How to Love Yourself. This step is about treating yourself right.
Am aware some people have equated or confused buying things for themselves as treating themselves right. Buying things for yourself is simply buying things for yourself.
The only time that buying things for yourself is the same as treating yourself right is when the desire for that purchase originated from the core of your being.
For example, let’s assume you’ve always wanted your own house, a place you can call your home – somewhere you can do whatever you like without worrying about disturbing or offending someone. Then something happened and you find yourself in the position to buy a house. Yes, buying a house you like in this scenario would be treating yourself right because your whole being has been desiring a good house for a long time.
Let’s now assume that you already have a house or you even have houses but somehow you came across a large sum of money, so you decided to purchase a few houses. Although this might be a smart business decision it’s not the same type of treating yourself right am talking about here.
There are two sides to treating yourself right. The first part means to cater to both your spiritual and physical needs. This could be going to the gym, going for a walk in the wood, watching a program you love, taking regular showers and baths, doing your manicure and pedicure, doing a breathing exercise, doing meditation or changing your wardrobe.
The second part of treating yourself right involves putting your needs first. When people ask you for something that affects your schedule negatively, you politely tell them you can’t be of help because you’ve got other needs to attend to.
Am not saying you shouldn’t help people but don’t scatter your plans or worse, drop your plans just to accommodate someone’s else request. If you helping them doesn’t affect your plans adversely, then proceed but if it will affect your plans, politely tell the person asking for your help that you’re busy.
This is treating yourself right because you put your needs first. If you don’t put your needs first, no one will.
Conclusion
Until you fully understand how to love yourself, no one else will love you the way you want them to love you because they simply have nothing to work with.
People will always reflect back to you how you treat yourself. If you treat yourself like garbage, people will also treat you like garbage. That’s how this life works.
The late Eleanor Roosevelt (Former First Lady of The United States of America) put it perfectly when she said: No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. You’re always calling the short, no one else is.
You want people to love you? Then you must first love yourself. This article has laid down a process that if followed by anyone will lead to proper self-love and respect.
When you become successful in loving yourself, this love will be reflected back to you by others. If you want people to respect you, you must first respect yourself and if you want people to love you, you must first love yourself.
Thanks for reading and please share this article on your social media pages and accounts. Someone might find it useful.
Have a blessed day.
Mr Benjamin