How to love myself by It

"It's not easy to just "snap out of" not loving yourself. You need to -really- understand it first."

How I did it: I've always heard that you should just tell yourself "I love you" in the mirror. That didn't work for me. Different methods will work for different people, but I can't just directly state something and start living it if I don't believe it first.


Therein lies the problem: I didn't think that I deserved my own love if I didn't live up to my expectations. I wanted to earn it. I wanted to know that I had a real reason to love myself. It's actually a very prideful way of thinking. The inverse is that accepting love, even if you think you're not worth it, is a very humbling process. 

I started working on this goal by wanting to understand why I didn't love myself, and how I could learn to do so.

I found an example in God: He has had a LOT of crap thrown his way. We break his commandments, hate on other people, do exactly everything that he wishes that we wouldn't do. But does he hold back his love even if we repeatedly disobey him? No. He doesn't withhold love as a punishment. It's unconditional. Jesus loved even the tax collectors, the robbers, the prostitutes, the scourges of society. It's not the best of us that need to be loved; it's the worst of us that desperately need it most.

It should be the same with the rest of us and the way we treat ourselves and other people. We can't hold back love from ourselves as a punishment; we can't wait until we live up to ours or others' expectations to give ourselves that love. We need to love ourselves precisely because we are the ones who need it.

Lessons & tips: It's tough to summon up that self-confidence to love yourself if you know that you don't have others' approval of you, or especially if you know that you don't have approval of your own self. But you can't rely on what other people think or say; you also can't rely on what you think or say. You might be saying things that aren't true. 


For example, I thought that I wasn't the smartest, the prettiest, the "-est" anything. Therefore, I concluded, I didn't deserve approval, because not until I was the very best would I merit praise and that feeling of self-accomplishment. But why? I might not be the smartest or best-looking or greatest person in the world, but that doesn't mean I'm not any of those things even a little bit. 

It's relative to say that you're smart or pretty or handsome or great. Let's say that suddenly, everyone else disappears from the world, and you don't have anybody to compare yourself to anymore. How can you say that you're better than someone else, then? All those other people, in this hypothetical situation, don't exist! And that's the way we should look at ourselves. We should realize that we have our own merit and approval, in our own world. The opinions of the outside world should not be more important than our own.

It's not a comparison to say that we love something - just because we love something doesn't mean that we love it because it's the best thing in the world. It's not because it's the only thing that exists that's worthy of our love. The problem is that we believe that love is something expendable - something that we can only use once, so we had better use it in the right place! That's not true at all. Use it everywhere, and as much as possible, especially on yourself.

Resources: Some of these thoughts I came up with on my own after thinking about it through and through. Others I've found after reading and after talking things through with other people. 


The books on love that I found to be particularly relevant are C.S. Lewis's The Four Loves, in which I learned most clearly about God's love, which isn't dependent on whether or not we possess any lovable qualities; and Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz, a convincing narrative of his own growth in Christianity.

No, I'm not trying to force my method on anyone, I'm trying to state that this is how I managed to complete this goal, in the hopes that someone else will find itn relevant. I also understand that some people will not find my words helpful at all, in which case, best of luck on your journey and I hope that someone else's words will someday help you too.


9 people found this helpful
 

Feb 07, 2009, 10:58PM PST | 3 comments | 20 cheers


Comments:

RuthG lives.

Dear "It,"

You are such a thoughtful person. Thanks for writing all this out.

Feb 21, 2009, 12:12PM PST | Respond to this 1 cheer

wbmsic

Working on your patterns

You might find the blog www.thefluentself.com useful :)

May 02, 2009, 04:41AM PDT | Respond to this

(This comment was deleted.)

May 26, 2011, 08:41PM PDT


It has gotten 20 cheers on this entry.

 

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