Why is self love so important? Is it important to love yourself?
Self-love is so popular, but there may be those who doubt how important it is. The phenomenon of loving yourself is often a slippery balance.
Too much of it becomes toxic, too little of it is equally toxic. You consciously have to be in a state of balance. Why then is something so tasking even necessary?
why is self love so important
Loving yourself is healthy
The WHO defines health as a “complete state of physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of diseases or infirmity”.
This simply means that a person is only completely healthy when their mind is at ease, they have a healthy social life, and not just physical fitness.
Therefore, it goes without saying that for you to need to learn to love yourself to achieve a semblance of peak health. You need to care consciously for your mind to develop healthy physically and socially. For instance, if you love yourself, you’ll have the conviction to eat healthily. Simply because your body needs healthy thoughtful nutrients to perform its important functions
Self-love encourages discipline
In my opinion and personal experience, self-love is important to practice discipline. When you begin the everlasting journey of self-love, never think it’s a journey of roses and flowers, candles and crystals.
Self-love means changing continuously and being conscious of your strengths and flaws. Confronting your challenges and always striving to be better. Learning to love yourself entails being in control of your actions. It means being responsible for yourself.
You know what’s good and what’s bad. The determination to always do what’s good for you. The self-control to turn away from “wrong” things. Loving yourself makes you want to strive to be better
Self-love helps you know and build your true self
Self-love is an inspiration to be a better version of yourself. Confronting your weaknesses while consistently working on shaping your strengths. One way to grow is by admitting that you’re a human with strengths and weaknesses. You can’t be perfect.
However, being aware of who you are; your strength, and your weakness helps you navigate better. You can maneuver unfavorable situations better and just enjoy your life when you know your “true self”.
Further, you can work towards building yourself to the best version you can be. Self-love inspires you to build your personality.
Learning to love yourself clarifies your boundaries
In self-love, truth is found. The truth of who you are and what you can or can’t do. Self-love is so important because it shows you your limits. With this, it’s possible to build more realistic and truly healthy boundaries for yourself.
Right before my first year in college, I swore to be a party monster. My whole life, the introvert was always bullied and uncool. Plus my parents were tight with the “no going out for anything”.
I felt like I needed to break free of my “stay inside” spirit. After all, my parents forced that on me. All I found in my experimental years of extroversion were heartbreaks, bad choices, wrong company, and regret. All-round dissatisfaction.
Thankfully, by the grace of God, I’m in a way better place and have 100 percent accepted myself as an introvert. I’m so much more satisfied and happy with my life. Accepting myself helped me set and communicate healthier boundaries.
Self-love improves your relationships with others
Self-love improves your relationship with other people. From your relationship with your husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend. To your relationships with members of your family, including the ones who caused you pain. As well as your social relationships.
Self-love, when done right helps you understand what love truly is.
From my personal experience, we are a product of our environment indeed. My upbringing is the polar opposite of my boyfriend’s. I genuinely get jealous of some of his fond childhood memories. It makes me sad at how better I could have been if I just had one person to shine so much love on me in my formative years.
Even to date, I still see myself doing things that annoy me, but self-love teaches me to be patient with myself. Also, being with my boyfriend has shown me that may have never understood what love looks like. But it also helps me learn to love myself and how to love in general. And for this, I’m grateful.
Self-love also leaks into social interactions. You exude a different aura of confidence when you are content with yourself and managing your fort. You’re more likely to be honest with your relationships because you understand the essence of peace and transparency. And it helps you dispel negative feelings like jealousy or comparison.
Self-love gives you confidence.
Confidence comes from believing in one’s strengths. Self-love encourages you to believe in yourself because know you’re equipped to deal with your area of specialization.
Growth comes when you realize that knowledge is the power that gives you confidence. It is an inspiration to keep learning and getting better. To keep improving your skills and getting learning new things.
Living is about learning, and continually dealing with the constant changes that come with life. You can learn so many things, including how to change your life.
You accept reality much faster.
When you love yourself, it’s easy to let go of negativity. Self-love is important because it teaches you to accept that life comes with negative circumstances.
Spending quality alone time and practicing positive words of affirmation could help you in these circumstances. When faced with hardship, loving yourself encourages and reminds you of humanity. It encourages acceptance of reality.
Indeed, regrets are natural but you shouldn’t dwell on them, mistakes (however regrettable they are) are human.
Seek the help you need and let life be life.
Importantly, self-love builds emotional resilience. This is the ability to quickly recover from emotional setbacks and difficulties. It doesn’t mean you’re immune to setbacks and heartbreak. Loving yourself makes it easier for you to move on from setbacks. Life is short, spend less time on failures or bad experiences
Acceptance and freedom
There’s freedom in accepting your limits and strengths. There’s peace in accepting yourself. It is the first step in becoming a better person. In Christianity, this is the first step of “repentance”. Admitting that you’re a “sinner”. Without acceptance, there can be no freedom.
Accepting that you have a problem is the first step in solving it. I’ve battled with my temper from my early teens to maybe my late teens. I must say, being self-aware of, and accepting that I have an anger management challenge has helped me manage my anger better.
Instead of blaming it on the cause of the anger, I took responsibility for my emotions. This meant putting out the fire before it started and walking away from problems that can explore my weaknesses. Learn to let things go, being happy is more important sometimes.
Boost productivity
Loving yourself is important to boost productivity. Being productive means being able to create more units of output. Loving yourself encourages you to out your best.
Do your best, instead of complaining and storing negative emotions. Just deal with your immediate life, the world is too large and too controversial. We need to be accountable to ourselves first before trying to hold others accountable.
Being productive as an individual means putting an effort to create more and more efficiency in ourselves. This can be done by learning a skill, getting an education formal or informal, house cleaning, cooking, finishing a task, etc. profitable and kind services to yourself.
conclusion
Why is self love so important
The self-love phenomenon is very delicate. It is one of those things that severely impacts the human mind and body. It could be negative or positive.
Self-love is not the solution for all mental health problems. It is necessary to understand that there is no ultimate solution to mental health problems. This is where toxic positivity arises, a negative number on the scale of self-love.
Expressing love to oneself may not be the ultimate solution to one’s mental health problems. Also, it doesn’t make you invincible to failure or setbacks. Doesn’t mean you are above difficulties. It’s just one of many options available to manage your journey of growth and personal development.