We live in a society that loves to preach and manifest the importance of self-love in our lives. Much of this preaching is done on social media platforms, making our generation constantly exposed to these messages. While these messages have positive intent, the effects can be harmful. The reality is self-love is not easy and these constant messages create unattainable goals for many.
Self-love can be hard to achieve for many reasons, both on an individual and societal level. We are often our harshest critics and this is because we do not perceive ourselves the same way others do. Oftentimes, it is much easier to practice empathy and compassion towards others than towards ourselves. Outside of ourselves, society also loves to shine a spotlight on imperfections, especially when it comes to body image and comparison. With both these individual and societal factors working against self-love attainment, how can we be expected to one day wake up and truly believe that we love ourselves?
We have all heard the saying, “You can’t love someone else until you love yourself,” but the truth is, it is much easier to love others than it is to love ourselves. This is because we are the only one who sees every version of ourselves, including everything that we view as an imperfection. The best kind of love is an unconditional one, but as humans, we will always struggle with practicing this on ourselves.
Societal messages expect us to go from a place of hating our imperfections to a sudden feeling of unconditional self-love; this is not practical. Think about when you first start dating someone, you’re most likely not going to fall in love after the first date with this new person. Love takes time, and your love story with yourself is going to be the same way.
Therefore, try approaching a healthy relationship with yourself how you would approach a healthy romantic relationship. This starts with liking the person before jumping ahead to falling in love. With yourself, replace the concept of self-love with a much more attainable goal: self-like.
Self-like can look like many different practices: getting to know yourself beyond the surface, finding what you’re good at, appreciating and emphasizing little things that you already like about yourself, celebrating small victories, spending more quality time alone, etc. Getting into the self-like mindset doesn’t mean that your view of your imperfections will go away, it just means that you are working on minimizing those negative views of yourself by emphasizing the things you do like.
Ask yourself this, are you someone that you would be friends with? Our friends have imperfections too, but that does not change our overall view of them or affect how much we like to spend time with them. We like our friends for who they are, the good parts and the bad. Their imperfections are not their whole being, and neither are ours.
The road to finding self-love is not easy; there will be bumps, twists, and unexpected turns along the way, but the destination will always be worth it. Enjoy the journey, take your time and be patient with yourself. No journey is perfect and we will all make mistakes, but the key is to forgive yourself. When self-love seems daunting and out of reach, start with self-like and the rest will follow.