We often hear people say, "you have to love yourself before someone else can love you" or "it's so important to love ourselves" and this term of "self love" floats around us in what seems like an unpoppable, unattainable bubble.
What is this self love they speak of? I used to ask myself this all of the time and I would also ask myself "what am I doing to not love myself?" Well, the latter was easier to answer, and that is how I was able to being my quest to attain self love. Let me walk you through my process:
- I used to compare myself to others, constantly. I remember being so insecure and so unhappy and uncomfortable in my own skin. I used to look at other girls with envy and sometimes even distaste because they had something I did not and could not have. I was being so unfair to myself and to them. Eventually, I was better able to appreciate what made me stand out and replace my jealousy with admiration (I certainly thing becoming so into photography helped a ton, I see and love beauty everywhere). I was able to acknowledge that comparing myself to others means that I was not appreciating what maybe others were jealous of me for. I was choosing to ignore my positive qualities and traits because it did not fit this ideal that I imposed on myself. I then chose to change my ideal to what I had and find women I share traits with whom I admired in order to feel even better about them. I also allowed myself to relish in my interests and my hobbies, dress up whenever I felt like it and expressed myself in ways that felt true to me. This is when my journey began.
- I was unkind to myself. It did not help that many were unkind to me as I was growing up. However, where that went wrong was a. I allowed them to be unkind to me, and b. I believed what they would say about me. I began to label myself as things such as "ugly", "stupid", "a space cadet", "incapable", and "a waste of skin." As I used these labels, they formed into a terrible identity for myself. I would say this came before I began comparing myself to others. This is the genesis to my self-loathing I had to fight. Clinically, "labeling" ourselves is a cognitive distortion. What that means when we label or judge ourselves is that we are having an unfair thought about ourselves in that moment. When we label ourselves we are not just unkind to ourselves but unfair and unrealistic.
- I let others decide my worth. I find this is very common. It is so ingrained in us to find validation through others, and by doing so, allow others to decide if we are enough. The truth is, you already are. I found it really empowering to sit and think about what I really did like about myself, outside of what others told me they liked about me. It was difficult at first! My mind kept going back to "well, this person likes this..." and I had to stop myself and ask if I liked it too, because MY opinion of myself matters more anyway. Do I like everything about myself? No, of course not. But with this came a new appreciation for the things I can change about myself and work on; as well as the acceptance of parts of me that I can't change and loving them anyway, as traits that makes me unique. As far as seeking relationships, it was helpful to look for others who loved the same things I loved about myself. This one brought so much clarity to me as a person and I found it being the most helpful to loving myself.
This is a journey. I am only at the beginning, but it has made a world of a difference already. I still have much more to learn, but I assure you, it's a path worth walking down. You deserve to love yourself and have other love you for that as well.
