We tirelessly search for love in other people, true love, a healthy and happy relationship, and we never finish finding it. Where this error? It may be bad luck in love or we may not have taken the first and fundamental step: loving ourselves. Love yourself and you will be able to love, it is the first thing you must accept of love.
Why you should love yourself
- We are talking about love in general, but also about more specific love, that love of a couple that does not always come or that does so in the form of toxic relationships, unrequited love or romantic disappointments. Generally, you attribute this inability to find true love to bad luck in love or you directly think that something is wrong with you. And so it is.
- You have done something wrong and that is that you have skipped the first step to be able to love, which is to love yourself. Here self-esteem plays a fundamental role, but also the sociocultural context that has instilled in us that we will not be happy without a partner by our side. And who can with that pressure?
- You can’t truly love someone if you don’t love yourself. And what is more important, you cannot receive true love if you do not love yourself. The dangers are more than evident and the reality is there in that sentimental history riddled with heartbreak. And if you try to find love in yourself and then we’ll see? At least you will get to know yourself, accept yourself, forgive you, love you, respect yourself and… be happy.
How to love yourself
It’s worth a try, right? But I’m sure you’re wondering how you get to love yourself when you haven’t really been prepared for such an exercise. It’s time to learn as you go by listening to your heart and your intuition.
Know yourself
The first step is to know who you are and what you are like. Stand in front of the mirror and look at that person in front of you. Pay more attention to the internal details than to the exterior and write down your strengths and weaknesses on a piece of paper. If there’s something you don’t like about what you’ve written down, you always have time to change it. The rest, recognize it and accept it as if you had a treasure inside you.
Accept yourself
Accepting yourself is a vitally important step so that you can love yourself. You recognize yourself as a wonderful person with a large number of virtues, abilities and abilities. And the negative… you’ll take care of that. Now think about the positive you have, which is a lot and admirable. If necessary, use positive affirmations each day to remind yourself of all the good things you have.
Be yourself
Now that you know who you are and have accepted yourself, it’s time for the hard part. Dare to be yourself is complicated in a world where we have been taught to meet the expectations of others and follow a certain pattern of life. Dare to be yourself is the greatest act of love you will do in your life, but do it, dare to live without masks, without impostures and without appearances. You will feel the love grow within you.
Develop your potential
Vital frustration is a very powerful enemy of self-love and the love of others. And the truth is that it is difficult to keep that frustration away when in most cases we are chained to a job that we do not like but with which we pay the bills. Loving yourself does not mean that you have to give up everything and start a new life, but use your time to do those things that you like and that enhance your skills and abilities.
Lives
All these exercises will have placed your self-esteem at the point where it should be. Now is the time to live, dare to do different things, do not stagnate in your daily routine, treat yourself to special moments and unique experiences. If you do it alone for a while, better, because that way you will discover that living and being happy is something you can do for yourself. They call it independence.
And when you have achieved that independence and you feel like a person worth loving, that is when you are ready to love someone else.