How Does One Love Oneself?

Mark wrote a great post about feeling unworthy and I was inspired then to write this post.

How does one love oneself when it seems that no one else does? How does one love oneself when they think that they are worthless or unworthy of love or unworthy of sharing their life with a great partner or having a great job or being happy?

How does one move on and love oneself? Several things come to mind. However, lets start with the basics. The very first thing one needs to do to love oneself is to in fact love oneself. Love is an action word and so when I say love I mean actively love yourself. This means making better decisions for yourself and doing nice things for yourself. This means not allowing yourself to hurt yourself or make decisions that would hurt you. To really love oneself one has to practice and practice and practice. It does get easier with time though I can assure you!

Another crucial part to loving yourself is giving yourself a reason to love you, keeping it honest and having integrity all play a role in your view of yourself. You will feel unworthy if you lie or hurt others. You will feel unworthy if you do things that you know are wrong. Part of feeling good about yourself is in fact being good. This doesn’t mean you don’t mess up. Believe me we all mess up! It does mean doing your best and trying really hard to be a person you would be proud to have for a friend.

One other key item is to forgive yourself for not being all that you wanted yourself to be. Forgiving yourself for all of your past misdeeds toward yourself and toward others. Letting it all go and vowing to do the best you can from this day forward and understanding that your past as bad as it may be led you to where you are at this moment in time and so it bears forgiveness.

And finally be true to yourself. Listen to yourself and give yourself what you really want! Be who you are and then you will shine! This is how we love ourselves!

Don’t confuse love with spoiling yourself though. Sometimes you have to give yourself a good swift kick in the butt to get yourself doing what you need to do and sometimes you have to deprive yourself of things to meet your goals. Loving yourself isn’t about over indulgence or giving into your every whim. No, loving yourself means striking a balance between what you desire and what you need. The beauty of it all is that once you start loving yourself you’ll soon discover just how lovable you really are!