Importance of Self love cannot be denied.
Self-love is something that is cultivated as one experiences themselves in reference to others. The experience of self-love is often tied to our experience of worthiness.
The idea of worthiness, that we are(or are not) capable of and deserving of success, is actually taught to us socially, at a very young age. We learn to hold beliefs about our worthiness as true in our childhood, and this is then reinforced by our bias. Affirming our realities is human. But sometimes we affirm realities without bothering to question whether they’re correct or serving us, and this can make us feel like victims when they are not.
We learn to hold perspectives around what each moment in our lives means. If you are not questioning the meaning of an experience, you likely have already formed a belief around it, and your bias is at work affirming that belief.
Feeling worthy as a human being has a direct effect on our ability to manifest the reality that we want to live in. When we believe we deserve to suffer, we continue to engage in behavior that reinforces that belief. When we believe we deserve happiness, we engage in behavior that moves us towards that experience.
Here are list of 5 reasons to start practicing self-love to increase our sense of worthiness:
1. You might learn how not to take things personally.
When you develop the ability to love yourself, it’s much harder to take truly take things personally. With self-love comes the ability to validate the self. If you lack the ability to validate yourself, when someone says something that conflicts with your worldview, it’s not an invitation to examine your beliefs, but an occasion to defend them.
Excessive force not required.
You don’t have the luxury of feeling secure in your value/correctness/etc. and so you have to re-establish security and perhaps even dominance by invalidating what the offending party has said.
If you’ve ever watched two ignorant people argue about something neither of them has a proper understanding of, you’ll know what I mean.
In line with not taking things personally, you’ll also develop the ability to not make things personal. People who love themselves rarely get off on taking gold at the trauma olympics.
They may enjoy watching though
2. You can (re)learn the ability to validate yourself.
For many people, self-validation was achieved before it needed to consciously be considered. Some of us picked this skill up after being told to believe in ourselves by mentors or guardians. Some of us got this from fictional characters telling other fictional characters we related to that they were capable of anything.
For a lot of us, I’m pretty sure it was Hagrid.
Some of us didn’t get this at all.
And it shows.
Self-validation, I’ve discovered, is actually a direct byproduct of self-love. Though you can experience validation without love, it’s really hard to truly experience love without an experience of validation. Since many of our ways of being are created in our youth, understanding that you are loved by your parents gives you the sense that you do not need to seek validation from others, though you may enjoy experiencing it. For most of us, strong awareness of self love generally guides us away from engaging with relationships where others might attempt to manipulate us through our feelings of worthiness.
3. You can learn to create boundaries.
Boundaries are important people.
Love often looks like people respecting your boundaries, especially when they are actually reasonable, easy to respect boundaries.
I need to point this out, because sometimes people will let others violate their boundaries because it feels good to be liked.
Validation: It’s a hell of a drug.
“Well it’s not about being liked” you say?
Perhaps it’s more insidious and it actually feels scary to incur the wrath of the person who is not respecting your boundaries. Sometimes you just don’t want to be bitched out by your roommate, for not letting them complain to you about their very serious, not at all self-inflicted life problems. But sometimes it’s much more serious and if you’re in that situation seek help.*
As you grow in self love, you’ll likely find that you don’t allow people who won’t respect your boundaries into your life. You might even find it difficult or even impossible to create attachments to them regardless of your ability to connect with them.
People responding positively to you does not equate to them loving you. People spending time with you is not a validation of who you are as a person. Just because someone is speaking your love language, doesn’t mean they’re actually saying, “I love you.”
4. You might learn how to have more fulfilling relationships.
When you love yourself, you love others with more integrity.
Can we love other people without loving ourselves? Sure, but the quality of that love will be diminished.
Perhaps diminished isn’t the correct word... Personally though, I would say that if you don't love yourself but you're trying to love others, the quality of your love is going to be lacking consistency. It damages the integrity of your love for others when they experience the difference between what you preach and what you practice. People may see this as unawareness or obliviousness at best and hypocritical or perhaps even manipulative at worst. Beyond that, it's going to distort your ability to see love, because of what you believe about the practices of others, through the lens of yourself.
Whatever integrity you lack, you will likely expect others to lack as well. What you see in others is often a reflection of yourself consciously or not and the sources of those perceptions can be extremely complicated.
When you see the beauty of unconditional self love in yourself, you can perceive the beauty of that journey being taken in another. It might be intimidating but it won’t be threatening.
Something you’ll recognize sooner or later on this journey, is that all of the things you say to yourself and do to yourself, both great and awful, you are capable of doing to the people you love. If you can make excuses for being cruel to yourself, what’s stopping you from being awful to the people you love?
5. You’ll be able to find direction when you’re lost.
While the rest of the list items are invaluable, I think my favorite take away from self love is direction.
Finding self love allows you to look at yourself honestly and see if you’re really pushing yourself to grow or not. It gives you a willingness to learn the truth about it at the very least. You can see where your boundaries are. You can tell whether you’re growing and expanding into your potential and embracing greater joys.
Sparkly magic sword not included.
You can also see if you’re hiding from growth. Shrinking away from opportunities because you see them as threats rather than chances to test yourself and who you’re becoming. To see the difference between who you are now and who you’ve been before.
*I’m not blaming you for sticking around if the relationship you’re in has turned abusive, but this is actually pretty serious and you should likely go to someone for help:
There’s a link for all sorts of help when multiple kinds of relationships have turned abusive. There is no shame in seeking help. It is an act of courage.