How To Love Yourself Introduction

We all deserve love. Sometimes, we might not have people around us to show us that we deserve to feel love or be loved, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t deserve to treat ourselves with kindness. If we show ourselves the kind of care we wish the rest of the world would give us, not only will it help attract good energy and reject bad vibes, but it will also give ourselves the sort of lift we wouldn’t be able to get anywhere else.

And, even if we do get that love in places, sometimes in order to take care of those around us, we need to take care of ourselves first. That allows us to open our hearts up to better be able to love and treat those around us with kindness. If we teach ourselves self care, then when we need to show those around us love, whether when it’s in a fight or a kerfuffle or after losing someone, we’ll be that much kinder to them because we’ve learned to be kind to ourselves.

I’m not a therapist, nor am I a doctor, but I’ve been in therapy ever since I was twelve years old. My parents had a hard marriage, and no matter how much I knew they loved me, sometimes, to my young, childhood self, it felt to me that I was completely unloved. No matter how untrue that was, learning to love myself allowed me to heal.

The first part of healing is acceptance. The next part? Allowing yourself to feel all of the crappy emotions. The third part, and one of the hardest parts? Learning to love yourself, and learning that you deserve love.

Many of us forget that last part.

Many of us don’t believe we deserve love, and that happens a lot of the time when we feel like we’re either at the bottom of a barrel, or when we’ve fallen flat on our faces and can’t get up. Losing everything can make you want to give up, and if you don’t have people around you to help you, sometimes hitting rock bottom can be six feet deep.

If we learn to love ourselves, then no matter how deep we get, we’ll be able to pick ourselves up. That’s a part of evolution. It’s a part of natural selection. If we want to become the winners we see on television, then we need to learn how to fight for ourselves, our dreams, and our beliefs. Every single person on this planet is different, but there’s one thing that we don’t know we’re doing, no matter that we do it every second of every day.

Every single person is either evolving or devolving. Evolution can go either way. We either continue to grow, or our growth collapses. It’s why we have babies. It’s why we go to school. It’s why we learn. It’s why we continue the cycle of life.

If we learn to love ourselves, we will continue the growth that people on this planet are meant to do, both personally and generationally. Each person affects those around them while each person also affects generations, and how each generation evolves.

The articles under the segment, How To Love Yourself, all reflect bits and pieces of advice I’ve gathered from years in therapy, my bouts in the hospital, and ways I’ve found and learned from the people around me that help my mental state, and my well-being. They’re ways that help alleviate anxiety, and acts of self care I’ve learned to do to help me feel loved, no matter how good my days are going. 

Not every single one will work for you. In fact, none of them may work for you. However, I hope you explore what there is so that you can try them, but only if you want to.