Self Love: The Importance of Learning to Love Yourself

How many times have you heard people talking about the importance of loving yourself? Has the concept of self-love become like hearing background chatter? Maybe you no longer hear the words or maybe you do not let the words sink in. For some, it is like hearing your mom say, “Eat your vegetables” when you were a child. It goes in one ear and out the other.

The reality is that learning to love yourself is important. When I work with people struggling with the concept of self-love and taking care of themselves I like to use this analogy: When you are on a plane before take-off, the flight attendant talks about securing your own oxygen mask first before helping anybody else.

The reason they say this is because if you are not getting oxygen yourself then you are not going to be conscious so that you can secure anybody else’s mask. This applies when learning to love yourself. If you are not able to give yourself the love that you so truly deserve and need how are you going to give it to another?

Many people were not loved like they should have been during childhood and even adulthood. How would you know how to love yourself then? Most of the time, learning to love yourself is not easy and cannot always be self-taught if you were never given the love you needed during your formative years

Sometimes allowing others to love you until you learn what it is like to love yourself works. Allowing God to love you and opening your heart to that love is critical.

Brene Brown is one of my favorite authors and talks a lot about vulnerability and self-love. Loving ourselves is more than just a feeling you have about yourself. Brene Brown talks about setting boundaries as a way of showing love to ourselves.

She states, “Daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves, even when we risk disappointing others.”  Having strong boundaries is one way to show self-love. I have worked with countless people who struggle with “people pleasing” and setting boundaries and in all honesty I have struggled with that myself.

Holding ourselves to what we know is right and wrong is a way of loving ourselves. I can think of countless times I have allowed things and people in my life that were not good for me. This was not showing myself love. Having boundaries and sticking to what I believe to be right for myself and not allowing anything less is me loving myself today.

Learning to love yourself

Learning to love yourself – body, mind, soul – is difficult. For many people, learning to love your body is a challenge. We live in a time when having the perfect body and “look” is idealized. Billions of dollars are spent advertising what we should look like and if people do not fit into that mold we, as a society, get into trouble. I see the things on TV telling me that I should not have wrinkles, I need a youthful face, a certain body type, not to have fat, that I need makeup to look a certain way and the list goes on.

Have you found yourself indulging in negative self-talk about what you look like? I think most of us can answer, yes to that. I know I can find myself comparing my body and how I look to this idea of what I “need” to look like.

Learning to shut off the chatter of the outside world and love yourself for who you are today is what’s important. The fact is that there is no perfect. Everybody has been created differently and most importantly in God’s image. Start a new message in your head that you are beautiful and perfect no matter what you look like and what kind of body you have. This will not be easy but starting a positive dialogue with yourself is the first step to getting rid of self-judgment.

Self-love quotes to inspire you

Self-love quotes can inspire me to make some changes in my life and resonate in my heart. Have you ever heard a quote and your heart just says, “Yes”? I keep a folder on my phone of inspirational quotes for myself and send them to friends when they are struggling or might just need a reminder that they are loved and to love themselves too.

Here are some quotes I have picked up along my journey:

Love yourself so much that when somebody treats you wrong, you recognize it. – Rena Rose

It’s not your job to like me. It’s mine. – Unknown

Loving myself will work miracles in my life. – Unknown

Love yourself enough to set boundaries. Your time and energy are precious. You get to choose how you use it. You teach people how to treat you by deciding what you will and won’t accept. – Anna Taylor

Stop hating yourself for everything you aren’t and start loving yourself for everything you already are. – Unknown

The greatest sorrow and burden you can lay on the Father, the greatest unkindness you can do to him is not to believe that he loves you. – John Owen

As I began to love myself I freed myself of anything that is no good for my health – food, people, things, situations, and everything that drew me down and away from myself. At first, I called this attitude a healthy egoism. Today I know it is, “LOVE OF ONESELF.” – Charlie Chaplin

It is not a thing contrary to Christianity that a man should love himself; or what is the same thing, that he should love his own happiness. Christianity does not tend to destroy a man’s love to his own happiness; it would therein tend to destroy the humanity. Christianity is not destructive of humanity. – Jonathan Edwards

I have decided to stop saying yes to people and situations that don’t support my well-being. Instead, I will say yes to my happiness, and yes to my growth, and yes to all the people and things that inspire me to be authentic and whole, while at the same time accepting me just the way I am. My yes, from here on out, is my pledge to live honestly, my commitment to love myself fiercely, and my cry to create my best life possible. Yes. – Scott Stabile

Make your desire to be alive, make your desire for happiness the measure of your desire for other people’s happiness.” You talk about radical; you talk about life-changing, heart-exploding, impossible demands. Love your neighbor as you love yourself. – John Piper 

God wants you to love yourself, too

Having a successful faith life is going to start with you having love for yourself. This does not mean we are worshiping ourselves or being narcissistic. God does not want us to go through our lives filled with hate, disappointment, or insecurities about ourselves.

God created humanity in His image. In this day and age, it is difficult not to compare ourselves to others or the idea of what we should look like. God designed you and made you perfectly the way you are, and He loves you just that way.

Here are some Bible verses telling us this:

For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. – Psalm 139:13-15, ESV

For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church. – Ephesians 5:29, ESV

Whoever gets sense loves his own soul; he who keeps understanding will discover good. – Proverbs 19:8, ESV

Something to try at home

This may seem like a silly exercise, but it is more challenging than you think. Sometime when you are alone, take a moment to look in the mirror. Take a really good look – do not look away for thirty seconds – and say aloud, “[Your name], I love you” several times. Now ask yourself, was that uncomfortable?

What feelings came up for you? Were you able to look into the mirror the entire time or did your eyes glance in another direction? I know that for some, it is much easier to tell other people that they love them but to say that to themself seems foreign. Try to tell yourself every day that you love yourself while looking in the mirror if you can. You matter too and your life is important and precious. Give yourself the love that you freely give to others.

Next steps for growing in self-love

Learning to love yourself is not an easy task to take on but it is a vital one. It is something you will have to practice your whole life, but it will get easier the more you work toward loving yourself. Sometimes we need help getting to a point of self-love and maybe the reasons are deeply rooted in the past and need to be worked through.

Reaching out to a counselor might be a good idea. We did not learn these thoughts and patterns overnight. Working through the issues that have caused you not to love yourself will not be easy work but it will be worth it. Imagine living a life within the scope of what God wants for you and not the shades of self-hatred. Loving yourself matters because you matter.