When someone asks who your best friend is, and the immediate answer isn’t “ME,” then you’re missing out. The answer is ultimately the most important and worthy person in each of our universes—ourselves. So, why do we struggle with loving ourselves so much? The case with so many of us is that we don’t believe we’re deserving of love and we’re not happy with ourselves. The one person who deserves, and even needs, our unconditional love, honesty, and loyalty most, doesn’t always get it. We’re so inclined to beat ourselves up and fill our thoughts with frustration, sadness, and unkind words after a failure or when we make a mistake, instead of caring and love.
I think this is one of the hardest lessons we have to learn because we crave nothing more than to rely on someone else to fill us up, make us feel that we’re enough, and give us unconditional love. All our lives we’ve been shown through culture, social media, and television that there should be someone else who should be that best friend for you. But what happens when we spend half our lives trying to find that person? I struggled with this for so many years. I wanted that perfect best friend that would be there no matter what, do everything with me, and lift me up every single time I was down.
After working on myself in therapy, I realized that I didn’t love myself. And if we don’t have love for ourselves, how are we able to give our love to a significant other, friend, or anyone else? When we treat ourselves like nothing, it’s impossible to expect someone else to treat us like we’re worth it when we don’t even believe we are.
So how do we change this?
Every day from the time I was sixteen years old, I stood in front of my mirror and said three things that I loved about myself. It was the single most difficult task I ever had to do. I had to repeat those three words, “I love you,” to myself, and actually mean it. But through the years, I started to believe it and did achieve becoming my own best friend. I don’t do this tactic religiously anymore, but I can 100% say today that I am absolutely, unconditionally, and head over heels in love with myself. I am so much more confident, happy, and accepting. After this, I started to attract incredible, soulful, good people into my life who will do anything for me. It’s the balance between other people and yourself which is healthy and fills you up with even more love and support.
Being your own best friend is one of the most important life tips I could ever give someone because, what is a best friend? It’s someone who knows you well, loves you unconditionally, allows for a mutually respectful relationship which is filled with honesty, and someone who always brings out the best in you. It took me years, and I’m still trying to build this relationship with myself some days, but YOU need to always be there for yourself, YOU need to know yourself better than anyone, and love yourself unconditionally. It’s not always warm and fuzzy good times molding this relationship, but it’s so worthwhile in the end. Because the next time someone asks who your best friend is, you can confidently and happily say, “Me.”