Self-Love: What does it take?

You may have heard people saying, "You can't expect to be loved until you love yourself", or, "Love yourself first, and everything falls in line." While these statements are somewhat true, they make room for a lot of misunderstandings and misinterpretations about what self-love actually is.

Bubble baths and affirmations, although helpful, are not the right way to achieve a stable state of self-love. Self-love isn't just skincare routines, manicures, pedicures, affirmative wallpapers, and other surface-level things. Self-love also isn't being on the high horse 24/7, feeling extremely proud of yourself all the time, looking down on people who haven't achieved the same things that you have, and putting your needs and interests on the superior levels while being so self-absorbed that you see nothing else besides me, myself, and I. That's narcissism. We'll discuss more of that later.

Quite obviously, self-love means loving yourself. But it isn't as easy as it sounds, is it? For those of us who've been through tough, mentally challenging situations and phases, childhood trauma, and mental or physical disorders, loving ourselves might be a challenging thing to do.

It's not about if you take care of your outer self or not, it's about if you take care of your inner self. Loving yourself means loving the entirety of yourself, not just how you appear to the people around you. That's where the tough tasks come in. Self-love takes more than what people generally think it does. Now, you may think to love yourself, you need to be successful, rich, wealthy, and at the peak of your happiness. That's not true. It is about striving to become a better person because you love yourself.

Self-love is a positive trait. It means having a clear understanding of what you are, and what you want to be, and loving, and accepting yourself for who you are, who you were, and who you are going to be. It is very closely related to terms like self-compassion and self-esteem. All that being said, what does self-love really take?

It takes some compassion, some understanding, some acceptance, some nurturing, some hard work, some validation, some esteem, and some respect, from yourself to yourself. Self-love means treating yourself as if you are someone you admire highly. If you love someone very dearly, you would want all that's best for them. Now, referring to the things we discussed above about bubble baths, affirmations, and skin-care routines, if you love someone and you suggest they just do skincare routines, manicures, and pedicures, you might wanna ask yourself if you love them or if you are their make-up artist. Loving someone is wanting them to be better at everything they do, and wanting them to take care of themselves and thrive in their environment. Self-love is the same thing. You are the lover, and you, are the lover.

You might be from a royal family with everything you need for a lifetime, at your doorstep, and still hate yourself. You might be a great success in a particular field and still hate yourself. You might be a great personality for some and still hate yourself. You can't link self-love with success, always. It's not about what you are to the world, it's about what you are to yourself. It's about what you think of yourself and what you want from yourself. It isn't about if society accepts you as you are, it is about if you accept yourself as you are. It isn't about acceptance, it is about self-acceptance. If not where you are right now, you will be accepted and loved someplace else. But even in that other place, will you be able to love yourself? Will you be accepting yourself, for who you are, deep inside?