Loving yourself means accepting your flaws, your tantrums, your true self as you are, and being confident even if someone else doesn't value it, without any condition.
How would you trust your partner if you are insecure?
If you love and respect yourself, you will never let anyone or anything else bring that down. Right?
Now let's think about abusive relationships. If you don't value yourself, and don't respect yourself. You would eventually let a person or a "partner" treat you less than what you deserve. You would always have the need to get assurance from your partner, be it the way you look, the way you dress or even their love for you. Right?
You wouldn't know when to walk away, or you may feel that you're unworthy. Why? All because you don't love yourself and value yourself enough. You are vulnerable when you don't love yourself enough.
Now, when you love yourself, you will love another person the same way. As well as, you would know when to step back and leave the person as they try to bring you down or hurt your self-respect. Moreover, you would treat your partner much better.
You will not accept someone treating you like you are unworthy. Because you "value" and "love" yourself to walk out of their lives. You know your worth since you LOVE YOURSELF.
You will also accept their flaws, their tantrums, their "true" self, without any judgements or condition.
Therefore, to love someone else, you need to learn to love yourself first.
So the next time you see someone else putting you down. Walk away and rebuild your self-love and self-reliance.
A few tips to work on loving yourself.
- Simply writing down 20 things that you love about yourself on a paper, and reading it out loud works wonders!
- Any time you feel low, go back to that paper and re-read the 20 things you love about yourself.
- Learn a new skill. A skill that you would be the best at. This not only increases your self-reliance but it works wonders for your self-esteem.
- Be conscious of your fitness, diet, and your thoughts. Yes thoughts too. It affects our overall confidence and "vibes". What you say to yourself on a daily basis, reflects on the outside too.
Not everyone can meditate, and that's okay. However, you can spend at-least 20 minutes in nature. Just focusing on greenery, birds, those people that workout in the park, or even that kid that just fell off the slide! Just watch your surroundings. Look around you, and breathe!