This is a tough concept for many people. We tend to be very critical and negative towards ourselves. The important thing is, if you don’t love yourself, how can you fully love others.
I believe there are some things that create our lack of self-love. One being, we allow others to dictate how we think and feel about ourselves. He/She doesn’t like me, so I must be an awful person?, or he/she doesn’t think I am attractive, so I must be ugly? We must remember that what others think of us is a reflection of them, not you.
Another thing to remember is not everyone will like you, or think you are beautiful, because those things are subjective. Just like you will not like everyone, and think everyone is attractive. This is something people don’t comprehend, which causes distress and self-hatred. This is why you can’t look to others to discover self-love. You must look from within yourself. You may ask, how do I do that, how do I love myself?
It starts with accepting your flaws, and weaknesses. We all try and want to be perfect, but perfection doesn’t exist. We also want to try to find a perfect partner, and that is a mistake as well. That will only leave you disappointed. No one is perfect. What we can do is learn to accept our flaws, and instead of over-blowing our flaws and seeing them as negative traits. We can see them as flaws that help us grow and evolve.
Life is a learning experience. You can’t learn from perfection. You can’t evolve from perfection. I think perfection is overrated. Yes it is easier just to have good qualities, but nothing will change, and isn’t that boring? I also think that we should learn to focus on our good qualities. We overrate our bad qualities, and underrate our good qualities. That is also the problem.
What are your good qualities? Lets put that to the forefront. Be proud of those qualities, embrace them. Then look at your weaknesses, embrace them as well, and find ways to learn from them as well. You can always get better with practice, but if you don’t accept them. You can’t learn from them. You’ll just let those bad qualities define you, and destroy your self-worth.
Self-love is so important, and honestly the concept should be taught in schools, because so many lack self-love, and this lack of self-love can destroy relationships and families. It also cultivates hatred, jealousy, envy, violence and many other negative concepts.
Self-love cultivates compassion, love and happiness. Who doesn’t want that? All you got to do is accept yourself fully-the good and the bad. We are all beautiful in our own way. Find that way.
Psychology of Mindfulness 