“To fall in love with yourself is the first secret of happiness”
-Robert Morley
This quote magnifies the importance of loving, trusting and nourishing ourselves. So the question arises that what does self love actually mean?
Self love is a mental condition when a person loves themself and recognizes their value and importance.Self love is not only a basic necessity but it also helps in all round development and growth of human beings. Self love is a subjective issue it can refer from one person to another because we all have different ways of loving and treating ourselves. Self love has various components some of them are mentioned below:-
1.Believing in yourself
2.Prioritizing yourself over others
3.Not being harsh on yourself
4.Being ruthlessly and completely honest to yourself
There can be various other ways of loving oneself.To talk about the history of self love, it was first promoted by the Beat generation of the 1950 and in the early years of the Hippie era of the 1960. As and when human Civilization grew the emergence and importance of self love was witnessed by people all around the globe.
In today’s modern and complex world where everyone is always trying to be better than others,the significance of self love gets ignored. People make excuses that they are too busy to take out time for themselves and to love themselves but it is very important to give yourself a break and tell yourself that you are very proud of yourself. We can’t accomplish anything if we don’t recognize our importance and efforts. And so is the case with self love, a person madly in love themself is in a mentally better position than a person who doesn’t recognize their value. People are mostly trying to be perfect version of theirselves but according to me perfectionism in itself Is a flawed ideology, there is nothing that is totally perfect. Being perfect is just a futile concept created by people to satisfy themselves. Trying to be perfect can turn into your worst nightmare,in the process you might become hostile,unsympathetic,toxic and mentally unstable. Slowly and gradually these mental Illnesses will start affecting your physical as well as spiritual health. You might inherit eating disorders etc.self love makes you a happy and well adjusted person, it makes you more comfortable with others as it removes the element of jealousy. It helps in reducing stress be in academic, professional or personal. In our day to day lives there are various stressful moments, it has become almost impossible to be completely stress free but when we love ourselves then we can comfort and manage ourselves in a much better way. In a health psychology meta-analysis of 15 studies, researchers found that when people accept themselves as they are they are motivated towards making positive changes in their lives.So basically self love motivates and pushes is to make healthy choices and decisions. It also improves emotional and mental strength. In tough and dark times,it is easy to give up hope, but then self love converts the negative things into positive ones. It helps you in critically communicating with yourself thus helping you to come out of tough times quickly and easily.
There is a saying that you cannot love and unless you love yourself thus loving yourself also strengthens your relationships. It helps you in creating healthy boundaries and protect you from going into toxic and emotional stressful relationships. Self love makes you a more confident person.You believe in you abilities and you know how capable you are. It makes you realise you strengths,worth and value and this way it make you a more confident person. Self love helps you enhance and develop all the qualities that are required for being successful.It helps you in inspiring others and having an optimistic outlook in life.
Easy as it may seem it is not exactly simple to love yourself. Most people find it quite difficult to love themselves. Accept the way you are,don’t try be totally perfect because it is not possible. It’s completely alright to take breaks when you feel like because you definitely deserve breaks considering all the hard work you do.most importantly don’t compare yourself with others rather try competing with yourself,this kind of competition is considered to be healthy. Loving yourself might take time initially but it is totally worth it and you before anyone else deserve all your love and affection.
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