It’s no secret that loving ourselves is a form of self-preservation
Initially published by me on newsbreak and Medium
It’s no secret that loving ourselves is a form of self-preservation. That’s because the more we love ourselves, the easier it is to find other people that can appreciate us. And when we don’t feel accepted by others, they help us learn to love ourselves even more.
If you take care of yourself with respect and kindness, you’re already acknowledging your worth and value as a person.
You know Our Family and Relationships Are an Our Mirror.
As the saying goes: “The family that prays together stays together” the same can be said for family, friends, and lovers. We pick up what we see in other people all of the time, absorbing other people’s habits and behaviors into ours automatically. Self-love is how you treat yourself and how you treat the people closest to you.
The kind of love that you give to others in your family and relationships is a reflection of the love that’s being given to you.
When we are kind, honest, and affectionate with others, the world gets better. So if we want to see peace and happiness on earth, we all need to be kind in our relationships.
You Cannot Protect Yourself From Those Who Hurt You…
But you can protect yourself from letting them hurt you. And that is where self-love starts: in your heart. Loving yourself is unconditional love. That means it has nothing to do with what you do, what you should have done differently, or where your relationship fails.
If someone you love hurts you or lets you down, sometimes our first reaction is to blame them for being cruel and thoughtless. But if we give space for anger and frustration to fester in our hearts, we’re only hurting ourselves even more.
If you love yourself, you’ll realize that it is not the other person’s fault. It’s not about them or how to get your feelings back. It’s about what you want and how much you trust yourself to handle the situation without blaming or hating.
And we should Stop Trying to Control our Fears…
When events in our lives victimize us, we start looking for answers to who did it and why. But there is nothing helpful in thinking this way. It is only hurting you. The more we try to figure out why it “happened to me” and how to control the situation, the less power we have over our own lives.
Self-love starts with realizing that you have a choice at this moment. You can choose to be angry, or you can choose to accept that the situation happened the way it did and move forward with new knowledge.
And Let Them Guide You.
The people who love you won’t hurt you intentionally, but they may not always get it right. If you love yourself, then you’ll be able to let the other person know how you think and feel without them thinking that they’ve done anything wrong. Yes, we want to be honest, but at the same time, we don’t want to create a situation that’s impossible for our loved ones to fix.
“Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love. “ — Lao Tzu
To Understand Why We Need to Love Ourselves, We Have to Go Back to the Beginning…
The truth is that we were born innocent beings, pure as can be and connected with a universal energy that created us. But as we grew up, our natural connection to the universe was diverted and twisted. We became fixated on the material world and all its goods.
As children, we have no choice but to trust what people around us tell us. If someone tells us that who we are isn’t good enough, then we believe them because we have no other perspective to judge what they say. And so, a pattern of self-doubt is created and, over time, reinforced in every relationship that you ever have in your life.
If we want to break the cycle, we have to stop thinking that it’s natural to feel bad about ourselves. We should Start Loving ourselves.
The first step toward self-love is to remove yourself from this childhood pattern of self-doubt and negativity. To prove that you can love yourself and be accepted by others, you have first to understand that the only person who can judge you is yourself.
To do this, we have to look at our past relationships and take out what didn’t work. Every relationship that has failed has left an imprint on your heart. But instead of letting it stand as a bitter reminder of all the things that went wrong, we need to learn from our mistakes and realize why it wasn’t meant to work.
We have to erase all negative feelings and replace them with gratitude. To do this, we have to practice self-love by allowing ourselves to feel all the emotions that we’ve been repressing for so long.
