Love Yourself First

Relationships with other people are great and they can teach you many things. Relationships can teach you what you want in future relationships and what you do not want. However, establishing a relationship with yourself first can be beneficial. Loving yourself and practicing self-love first before entering any relationship can be important.

Self-esteem is a huge part of self-love. In order to improve self-esteem you must do esteem-able things. We need to be aware of our discrepancies in our values and actions. That way we can become mindful of how unbalanced the two might be. In other words, you can believe in honesty, but lie to your parents. Our insides and outsides need to align.

Acknowledge feelings and emotions can be difficult. Even when we want to hide some emotions, we should shed light on them. Emotions are real and we have the right to feel all of them. Things are not always puppy dogs and rainbows, hard times are inevitable and so are the feelings and emotions that come with it.

Sometimes we can be very negative towards ourselves. What if we changed our internal narrative? Our views of ourselves could change. As cheesy as it may sound, practicing reading affirmations could change the way you view yourself and difficult situations.

Acknowledging when we are resentful, selfish, dishonest, or afraid is great and it can be easy. However, focusing on the negatives all the time can be dangerous. Instead try identify what you did well throughout the day. We often focus on the times when we fell short instead of our victories. May be a good way to start is by making a mental or physical inventory of wins and strengths before bed, as well on things you would like to improve.

Self -love involves surrounding yourself with people who are positive influences and feed your soul. Cutting out negative influences can be tough, especially if it is someone close to you. However, acknowledging that they are a negative influence is the first step. Try cutting back the time you spend with them. Instead of hanging out frequently try once a month. Sometimes, those negative influences fade naturally.

Practicing gratitude is also a part of loving yourself. Acknowledging the people in your life who support you is a good start. Or try something simple, being grateful for the roof over your head, or that you have food to eat.

Being compassionate to others is usually easy. However, we need to be compassionate towards ourselves. Humans aren't prefect, we fall short, and we make mistakes. We needed to practicing cultivating non-judgmental awareness inwardly and forgiving ourselves.

Along with self-compassion, we need to try and incorporate humor into our daily lives. We should try to laugh at our humanness. Striving for perfection is unrealistic. People connect through imperfections, also known as humanity.

The psychology field has made me believe that I always have something to offer and that I can always make a difference. Most human services have ingrained this mindset in us. However, we have to be careful not to slip so deep into the mindset that we can save everyone. If we do, we set ourselves up for failure and then take blame when we cannot save them. We can only control our actions and reactions. However, we can still show up, be a light, instill hope, and be helpful.

Loving yourself is important, but not always easy. It can be much easier to love others. However, how deep is that love towards that person if you do not love yourself?