Self-Love

Part 1: Self-love Defined

Why is it that we end up making the most simplest of things the most complicated? One of these has to be the simple, yet complex, task of allowing ourselves to love and care for ourselves. In other words having self-love, which I define as having warm, caring and compassionate feelings towards yourself. When you examine what’s involved in the actual process of self-love you can see that it makes perfect sense from all angles to have self-love, yet, despite its obvious appeal and benefits, its feeling and experience is, for many of us, elusive and out of reach. Habit and our conditioning override the sheer practical sense of loving yourself.

What self-love is and what it isn’t…

To truly grasp the need and benefit of self-love you first have to distinguish it from ego infatuation, vanity and narcissism which have nothing to with self-love. Self-love is a feeling and an action based on the intrinsic knowing and awareness that you have value and worth in the universe. It is like that warm care and appreciation that you have for your best friend but in this case it is for yourself. It’s the feeling that you count, not above or below anyone else, but just in your own right. It is the sense that you are deserving of good things and good people because you yourself are good-natured. Self-love is also humble and unpretentious as, when we truly love yourself, all those insecurities that drive you to prove yourself, dominate, control and assert start to go. These insecurities arise from a feeling that you need to do things “out there” in order to feel better inside. When you love yourself you enjoy other people’s success without fear of how you look because your value is not based on what you have done or achieved but purely by the fact that you are alive. Self-love allows you to accept your faults and failures and at the same time be open to improving and growing. The care that you feel towards yourself compels you to want to change out of self-love rather than blame and a hypercritical inner voice. Blame and criticism will never give us the change we trying to make. We can’t “hate ourselves” into changing.

Self-love is the least selfish thing in the world…

Another misperception is that self-love is selfish; that loving yourself is about always choosing what you want above what other people want. Genuine self-love puts us in touch with, not only our own needs, but quite often the needs of others as well. When we examine selfish action and we look at what drives us to be inconsiderate, rude, self-centred and the like, it’s usually a very limited and fear-based view of ourselves and the universe. “I will do what I want when I want and damn whoever has a problem with that” is not self-love. To be loving towards myself means I consider my actions and how they affect other people. Wanting others to be happy is good for me and the greatest way I can contribute to their happiness is of course to be happy myself. When I am content, at peace and good humoured (all feelings that come from self-love) and I am not wrapped up the insular world of me and all my issues, I am then better able to handle life and be there for the people around me. So, to really love yourself is the greatest gift and way to be of service to others; it is in fact the least selfish thing you can do.