Self-love

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Self-love is not as bad as it sounds. No matter how good we are, no matter how talented we are at certain times in life we will mess up. Thus when we mess up it makes us hate ourselves.

One of the biggest things we humans do is to hate ourselves. Hating ourselves can put us in danger, it can lead to eating disorders like anorexia or bulimia. It can make us turn to Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and can also lead to suicide.

How many times a day do you say the words “I love you?“ How many times a day do you say these words to your parents, your partner or your children, many I am sure.

But how often do you say I love myself? How often do you say I appreciate who I am? I am sure not many, if ever. So how do you learn to have self-love?

Spread love and kindness

Receive self-love

The first step to self-love is spreading love and kindness. Spreading love and kindness to yourself not just to others. You cannot truly love or be kind to others if you cannot love or be kind to yourself.

Sadly, many of us have to learn how to be kind and how to achieve self-love. This is not always natural for most people and there are many reasons why it is not.

Sometimes you only learn self-love because of a traumatic effect or a huge loss. Sometimes you only learn self-love after you have spoken bad words to someone and you have seen the impact of these words. Maybe you even turned to violence and it made you see another way to deal with your anger. Sometimes it just takes something out of the norm to trigger you enough to want to change. This is when you will try to achieve self-love.

How do I stop hating myself?

How do I achieve self-love?

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To stop hating yourself you have to learn how to stop hating yourself. You have to change your thought patterns to learn how to love yourself. This is not always easy and can take a lot of practice.

Stop hating yourself and start appreciating and loving your life now.

1 – Do not believe in labels

We have labels put on us the moment we are born. The first label put on us is our name. That name became your personality, it became who you are. As everyone called you by that name. We also carry on life by putting labels on ourselves.

We love to label ourselves with our imperfections, our mistakes and our incapability. The more we label ourselves with these incapability’s the more we are making ourselves dislike ourselves.

These labels can be I am an angry person all the time, I am a lazy person, I am a weak person, I do not have friends, and I cannot be friends with these people as they do not like me. The more you label yourself the more you are making your personality, not what others see.

This is why you should not label yourself, as they are just your thought patterns. These labels you have created can always be changed and you can always improve. This is why you should not label yourself.

2 – Learn to accept mistakes

Mistakes are proof that we are trying in life and we are not willing to give up on ourselves. Every great person in this world has made mistakes. This is how they have evolved and this is how they have achieved their dreams and greatness.

Mistakes never define your character unless you define your character by your mistakes.

Do not let your mistakes define your character.  You always have the chance to improve and move on and make yourself a good person. You just have to believe you can.

3 – Stop criticism

Stop criticising yourself and stop criticising others. I am not talking constructive chrism. This can be helpful if said correctly.  I am talking about negative criticism.

Criticising others makes you put yourself down. We give our mind a message and that message is we are better than them. We are more perfect than them. We then set standards, standards we cannot always live up to.

What happens when we cannot live up to our standards? We hate ourselves.

Thus criticism steals self-love and self-value.

4 – Believe imperfection is beautiful

Take a deep breath and look outside at nature. Nature has imperfections. From the small plant to the giant mountain, everything has imperfections. There are no symmetrical plants in this world unless they have been genetically modified. Which then takes us back to you are what you eat.

There is no perfectly symmetrical mountain in this world. There is no perfectly symmetrical anything in nature.

As humans, we are also imperfect. Which gives us the chance to evolve, and be more successful. Becoming successful is not a destination or a perfection. It is a journey. One we have to keep improving and working on.

No matter how good we are, how talented we are, how great we are there will always be imperfections in life. Once we accept that is life we can adapt to it and focus on loving ourselves.

Takeaway

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Every day wake up sit on the bed and think no matter how imperfect I am or what mistakes I have made in life I am not going to give up on myself. I can improve myself, I can keep making myself a good person and I will never let go of myself.

To do this is not selfish. Selfish is expecting unrealistic things from yourself and when you are not good enough you start to hate yourself. When you truly love yourself and truly love who you are you have the chance to improve and evolve.

You have to keep this in mind. So keep practising these things and learn to accept yourself.

Learn to love yourself, as many others love you.