How to Love Yourself

 

Learning How to Love Yourself Takes Work!

Yes, it comes more naturally for some, and at times, it’s easier to do than when things aren’t going well. 

During hard times, it’s more important than ever to learn how to love yourself. Whether you’re facing trouble at work, with your family, or in romantic relationships, forgetting to love yourself can mean you’ll sacrifice your health and emotional well-being for others’.

By the end of this blog, you will learn what I have taught hundreds of others on how to love yourself. 

What does loving yourself mean? It certainly doesn’t mean that everything’s going great and you’re close to perfection. In fact, it’s the opposite. When you love yourself, you open yourself up to self-compassion. You stop holding yourself up to some imaginary standard that’s impossible to meet.

Self-compassion and love create a space where you can get to know yourself intimately. You can finally let go of real or perceived expectations, find out who you are, and what you need to thrive. When that happens, your newfound confidence will ripple around you and influence your career, your family, and the ones you love.

 

Embracing the Me First Mentality

Strangely, so many of us struggle to put ourselves before others. Maybe it’s because there’s so much cultural pressure to avoid anything that looks selfish, prideful, or self-obsessed.

Treating others well is a great principle, as long as you’re treating yourself well first. Too many of us focus emotion or time and effort on others from a place of weakness. We’re worried someone might not like us, or we are guilted into something we’d rather not do.

 

We’ve all felt that feeling of being manipulated emotionally. It’s never fun and ultimately leads to disappointment. We spend too much time stuck in disappointing relationships or doing favors for others when we don’t want to because we don’t love ourselves enough.

Deep down, we all know we should be spending more time on what makes us happy. Time spent focused on personal development positively impacts everyone we’re around. When we grow as individuals, we’re less reliant on external sources of affirmation. Then, acts of kindness, love, and service are sincere and not done out of hopes for a desired reaction.

 

I Instead of We

When you love yourself, you’re also more capable of navigating difficult times in relationships. Instead of avoiding blame at all costs and shying away from feedback, you seek it out. You’re more inclined to take ownership of your actions.

This has a tremendous effect on interpersonal relationships, especially romantic relationships. It’s easy to play the blame game in a budding romance or with a spouse or partner. Most often this takes the form of disguised criticism or negativity towards a partner with the cover of “we”.

“We need to work out more. We need to drink less. Maybe we should spend less money.” In any romantic relationship, these may be valid points. However, using “we” here is a form of passive-aggressive critique that doesn’t bode well for a healthy intimate relationship.

If you love yourself, you should be able to own statements and offer advice and feedback openly and honestly. “I think you should drink less.”, is a more direct, but honest way of communicating how you feel. You know what you need to be happy and you feel confident telling who you love how to make things work. Loving yourself also means being ok if things don’t work.

 

Staying Connected Through All the Mess

Loving yourself is so important because the hard times will come eventually. When they arrive, it gets harder and harder to suppress your ego for the good of your relationship. So many couples end prematurely because ego got in the way.

When you love yourself, who you are is defined less by how others treat you. You’re not popular because you get a million likes or comments. Your foundation is solid, so you can see that flash of anger, lack of patience, or uncertainty from your partner less as an attack on you, but as an opening for you to offer more love and affirmation.

 

Communicating Intimacy

Nowhere is self-love more important than in creating and sustaining intimacy. There’s a quote from the famous poet Oscar Wilde that says, “Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.” We spend so much time thinking about and pursuing sex, it’s possible to get lost in the power dynamics and find ourselves in a bad emotional place.

When you love yourself, intimacy comes more naturally. Sex is less complicated because we’re confident expressing ourselves and giving earnestly with clear motivations. You aren’t motivated by guilt, and you’re less likely to do something you’ll regret later. Loving yourself allows you to give honest physical and emotional love. That’s great news because it helps make sure choices about sex between partners is more consensual and will lead to greater sexual satisfaction.

 

The Gift of Choice

When confronted with adversity, loving yourself provides the gift of choice. You view challenges and opportunities through a lens of what will be the most helpful or beneficial rather than worrying about what others will think.

As you develop more self-compassion and establish a love for yourself, be aware, though, that other people are in different stages of development. They may not be ready to handle your decisions well. It may evoke negative emotional reactions.

In these instances, it can be helpful to work through decisions with a therapist. Their experience can help you gauge how your partner may react to an explanation or decision you’ve made. They can also help you recognize any factors you may be missing. It’s a great help when making impactful decisions about things like marriage, moving in together, splitting up, having kids, or overcoming serious disputes.

Talking with a therapist can also help you unpack whatever’s stopping you from establishing self-love. It may be that something in your past, whether it’s a trauma or bad habits that build up over time, an expert can help you get to the root of insecurities or whatever else is in the way.

You can get more free content on relationship and sex tips by checking out my Youtube Channel – The Sex Healer. 

If you know someone that would benefit from this information, feel free to share it. 

Life Coaching and Therapy (LCAT) is a relationship coaching and sex therapy practice that transforms our clients lives through our flexible, multi-technique approach and pleasure-skills training provided by systemically-trained and licensed therapists! 

Our team of compassionate, licensed therapists and certified sex therapists help Millennials and Baby Boomers alike who visit us for a variety of relationship, intimacy and sex problems. 

LCAT provides on-site appointments, as well as video chat and text therapy programs. For clients hoping to take their intimate lives to the next level through personalized coaching on YOUR terms, learn more about our Text Therapy Program.

Learn more about how LCAT can help improve your life at What We Do. 

 

Call or text us at 203-733-9600 or make an appointment.