Learning To Love Yourself: 5 Recommendations

Learning to love yourself is of the utmost importance to our emotional health. If being positive with others has a number of important advantages, being positive with yourself is essential. Ultimately, we are the person we are going to stay with for the rest of our lives.

Loving oneself, valuing oneself, that is, practicing self-love is something like exercising a healthy selfishness, from which to  prioritize ourselves and treat ourselves well. Hence, it arises from the recognition of who we are and the acceptance of our strengths and weaknesses.

Furthermore, only when we learn to love and nurture ourselves as if we were our own children, can we give love to others. If we underestimate ourselves we can never develop the feeling of self-confidence and our self-esteem will be on the ground. Loving us is a priority.

Many people think that they do not love themselves. This, in part, is not true. We love each other because it is impossible not to love each other, since the receiver and sender of that desire is the same person. However, there are people who continue to think that they do not love each other. Well, actually what they mean by that is that there are certain parts of your person or personality that you don’t like.

We can also feel that we do not love each other when we are sorry or ashamed of having done, said or thought something. It is normal for this to happen to us, we are not perfect. People have imperfections and we have to learn to deal with them. But not for this, we must stop loving and valuing ourselves. 

Characteristics of people with low self-esteem

Low self-esteem gets a very bad press. It has been stated that numerous psychological problems originate from it. In fact, it is associated with dependency problems, an excessive need for approval, and disorders such as anxiety and depression.

People with low self-esteem, in addition to treating themselves badly, tend to degrade and denigrate others.  That is, they project their own feelings onto them. In addition, they also have other characteristics:

• Constantly seeking approval from others.
• Wanting to control others.
• Being exploited by partners, colleagues or friends.
• Create dependency relationships with people, institutions, causes or substances.
• Have distorted thoughts.
• Having feelings of self-satisfaction, self-hatred, self-disgust, and contempt.

As we see, low self-esteem implies a series of added problems such as having interpersonal, work or other problems.

Low self-esteem can be the origin of some psychological disorders

Learning to love yourself is a protective factor against mental illness. In fact, low self-esteem acts as a facilitating factor for depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and body image disorders.

In older people, low self-esteem has been associated with worse health, greater disability, greater anxiety, depression, somatization and pain. Likewise, low self-esteem can also be a risk factor for suicide. However, in each case it is one of many factors that interact with others. That is, low self-esteem, by itself, is not responsible, for example, for an eating disorder.

5 recommendations to learn to love yourself

Learning to love yourself is closely linked to the concept of self-esteem. To improve it we can use a series of strategies. They are as follows:

Speak positively

The way we speak to each other has consequences. If we continually criticize and blame ourselves, we will feel bad. Now, if we treat each other with respect and take care of our language, we will avoid discomfort.

Being rigid judges of ourselves prevents us from growing and moving forward. It is important to  learn to perceive our positive aspects and be happy for them, as well as accept our shortcomings. Pretending to change them and become perfect is the same as pretending not to be human. In fact, the change is only possible if we accept them.

Take care of the body and soul

The body-soul binomial cannot be separated. What is good for one is good for the other. This means that if we care about taking care of ourselves both physically and spiritually, we are betting on ourselves. 

A balanced diet, a good night’s sleep, exercising every week, listening to pleasant music, walking around enjoying a landscape or having dinner by candlelight while talking to someone important to us are some of the possible ways that we can help us feel better. . Activities and habits that involve caring for the body-soul binomial.

Learn from mistakes, instead of punishing ourselves

Once we have made a mistake there is no use punishing ourselves for it. We all make mistakes and we have to accept them as part of our lives. It’s okay not to commit them, but pretending not to commit any is impossible.

Behind every mistake there is a learning process, an opportunity to learn to do things differently.  We better focus on it, rather than whip ourselves.

Forget mixed messages

A contradictory double message is self-fulfilling and critical at the same time. It is very common in people with low self-esteem. For example, a contradictory message could be “How well you did the job, but of course, with what it took …”.

Let’s discard these double messages, change them to gratitude self-fulfilling, and put criticism aside.  For example, “How happy I am for the work I have done.”

Bet on places, relationships and nutritional activities

The nourishing places are those in which one recovers the serenity and the pleasure of living. It can be the mountain, the sea, a park … Now, if we stay at home, let’s surround ourselves only with what is useful and pleasant for us. Even if we need it, we can also reorder our house, somehow this will help us reorder our lives.

Nurturing people are those whose presence and company give us peace and vigor. Let’s socialize with people we are comfortable with and avoid toxic relationships.

On the other hand, nutritional activities are pleasant activities that provide us with the necessary strength to cope with the stresses of everyday life. Reading a good book, watching a movie, playing sports or simply resting are examples of this.

As we can see, learning to love yourself is essential. Now, like all skills, it requires dedication. Betting on us, taking care of ourselves and valuing ourselves is essential to take care of our emotional health, in addition to constituting the spring to build a happy life, surrounded by well-being.