Why Loving Yourself Is Important

I talk about self-love a LOT, mainly because I really want to normalize the concept. I truly do believe it’s the root of many of our problems. Unless you purposely make this a part of your normal thought process, no one asks if the reason why they feel stuck or sad or unmotivated in life is because they don’t love themselves enough. But this is exactly the question we should be asking.

When I was in elementary school, the first kid that told me I was a circus freak because I was the tallest girl in my class made me feel like different meant bad. It was when my journey of not liking myself really began. As an adult people look at height as something majestic, but as a kid being bullied over it made it feel like a curse. When people say negative things to you about anything you can’t change about yourself, it can become a part of how you see yourself. You start to believe it. I was too tall, too nice, too sensitive, etc. And then add in a mix of puberty, surviving a jerry curl, and 80’s fashion that included pants never quite long enough unless I wanted to wear men’s pants with the crotch hanging down to my knees…I wasn’t feeling so good about myself.

I could name a laundry list of poor choices made under the delusion that I wasn’t good enough, but I’m not trying to make this a day long read. Bottom line is this, I had to get serious about doing the work to undo the bullshit beliefs I had about myself. I had to embrace the fact that I was the type of person that would bend over backwards to help others…that I wasn’t a doormat as long as I didn’t give my power away. I had to forgive myself for the people I hurt because I didn’t love myself enough to stand up for myself and do the right thing before falsely believing that doing the wrong thing was the only way out.

Doing this inner work also allows me to look at other people and give them grace because I understand that poor choices are made and hurtful things are said when you believe things that aren’t true about yourself and others. Now I look at those who are hurting and bleeding their hurt onto others with compassion, because I know if they ever get sick of feeling that way, there’s a path to a better way through self-love. And it is THE most powerful thing we can do to help ourselves, to change our lives, to make our world a better place to live in. So why not start the journey of digging deep, healing, undoing false beliefs to loving yourself more? You’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain.