To Love Oneself In Order To Love Others
It is impossible to offer others what we lack ourselves. Think about it. If we are not able to feel love for ourselves, it will be difficult for us to have a healthy relationship with others. Loving yourself is the first step towards developing trust and stability with another person.
To love yourself is to give yourself the chance to discover the great potential and greatness that is within you. It is to be honest with yourself and indulge in your well-being. To love oneself is also to be aware of one’s own needs. It is to respect, accept and love yourself for who you are.
When we stop judging, criticizing, and comparing ourselves to others, when we stop forcing ourselves to be someone we are not, we disassemble the preconceived notions we have about ourselves. Ideas that establish our lives and prevent us from meeting an important and valuable part of our being.
To be happy with ourselves, we must stop demanding more than we actually are. Aiming to be better in life and as human beings is an indisputable project that we should all embark on. However, it should not lead us to a state of constant anxiety where we end up hating our own essence.
It is a must to learn to let go of false beliefs that affect ours now. Only in the present can we act and live fully. And even though we may not have everything we dreamed of, we have the power to change it by living according to who we are. Fantasizing about what the past once was or what the future may be will only take us further away from reality. A reality that will never be like the one we dream of, but which is at least real.
Learning to love oneself is an endless journey that will present itself to us in many forms. But a healthy evaluation is the first step towards self-awareness. We must learn to think in a more adjusted way and leave excessive criticism and unattainable perfection behind.
The attributes we attribute to ourselves affect our self-esteem. We attribute all the achievements we have succeeded in to external factors, such as luck or chance. If we attribute all our failures to our inner traits, our self-esteem will suffer. Because of these unjust attributions, we will make it harder for us to love ourselves.
True love is not physical or erotic, but wanting someone’s best and putting oneself in their shoes. Sometimes feelings of intense desire, admiration, and emotional investment in another person can prevent us from understanding love. Most of us have at some point confused what it is to love another person with owning or wanting to change him.
To love someone else properly, we must act based on altruistic ideas and behaviors. Love for someone else makes us want to contribute to their development and skills, not the ones we wish the person had.
To seek our happiness and be happy with ourselves is not to be selfish. It is one of the most vital and important conditions for establishing positive relationships with others. Over time, we have realized that we cannot blame others for not being who we want them to be. This is where the journey towards loving someone properly begins.
