If one were to pick one psychological principle to live their life according to it, many specialists would point to this: love yourself as you love a close friend or a beloved family member. It may sound strange why such a principle is worth pointing out at all; for it is obvious that we all love ourselves; nevertheless, our problems never fade away.
But this principle is subtle. For, although we do seem to be loving ourselves, we do not act accordingly. In fact, sometimes we seem to be acting as if we hate ourselves. We constantly punish ourselves. We scold ourselves. We choose to harm ourselves for no good reason. How can this be an action of someone who loves oneself?
Think of a close friend of yours, someone you really like. Place them in a kind of situation you would typically take as a failure or disaster and think about how you would react to them when they fail. You wouldn’t shout at them angrily saying that they utterly disappointed you.
You wouldn’t scold them or try to punish them. Rather, what most people would do is to try to embrace them and empathize with them. You would try to understand their feelings and concerns. You would try to actively connect with them and give them relief from their distress. So, why don’t we do that with ourselves too? Don’t we love us?
A typical reaction people give here is denying the resemblance: no, but I am not my friend; I am responsible for myself, not them; I have to take serious measures to fix the disastrous situation. But guess what happens? It was never fixed in this way but only made worse!
Claiming responsibility and taking positive actions requires us to be caring for ourselves, and this necessitates some feelings of love for ourselves, just like those we have for our friends. If one hates oneself, why would one bother to fix anything or move anything? What actually happens is just the contrary: things get worse; because they try to punish themselves for some reason. They think of themselves as worthless and deserving of no good at all.
How can this bring to their lives anything but sorrow and misery instead of happiness and joy? But if we love ourselves, understand ourselves, appreciate our efforts, and embrace our goodness and badness, power and weakness, happiness and sadness, we would have a very good chance to be as good as we would wish ourselves to be.
If you are now convinced that you should love yourself, but you do not know how to do it, don’t panic; that is the easiest part. You can start slowly by training yourself on how to treat yourself. Always visualize a beloved one and put them on your foot when you find yourself falling into self-hatred and similar emotions. When you do something wrong, do not overact, do not exaggerate, or overly generalize; just be realistically caring for and concerned about you, as you would be caring for and concerned about that beloved one. Confront yourself; don’t lie or distort the facts, neither for yourself of against yourself. Be fair but also loving; wise but also merciful; vigilant but also easygoing.
If you do that, it is guaranteed by most mental health experts that your life will significantly change in ways you have never dreamed of just by giving love to yourself back. And remember: one who does not love oneself enough cannot genuinely and thoroughly love any other self either, for everything starts with the self. Connect to yourself and be your self’s first reliever.
Comments