Here's an honest question for you: Do you love yourself? Take a moment to reflect on that. For many, the answer might be an almost instantaneous "No!" Unfortunately, you're not alone. Many people struggle to find reasons to love themselves. To be completely honest, I struggle with it too. So, join me on this journey as we explore how to cultivate self-love and enhance our well-being.

Why Loving Yourself Is So Hard

For many of us who have tried, loving yourself is one of the hardest things to do. Imagine looking at your reflection in a mirror for a second. Would you love the person staring back at you?

Nowadays, we mostly understand love based on the romantic model of love we've seen so much of in books and rom-com movies, and that is precisely why it is so difficult to love ourselves. Think about this for a moment: what makes you romantically attracted to someone else? It's the novelty, the mystery, the excitement from all the possibilities opening up with this new person. Esther Perel says, "Eroticism [Desire] resides in the ambiguous spaces between anxiety and fascination."

But this is the dilemma: how do you love someone you know better than anyone else - yourself? The simple answer is, you can't! At least not with the romantic model of love.

Look at yourself in that mirror again. There's nothing novel, mysterious, or exciting about you—you know everything you've done with your life up until this point. Sometimes you're afraid that if people found out who you really are, they'll hate you as much as you hate yourself. But that's all because you're looking at it all wrong.

Where To Begin

To begin your journey of self-love, you need to redefine the meaning of love. Loving yourself is an action, not a hormonal wave of feelings. To love yourself does not mean you have to like yourself. Perhaps there is not much to like about yourself, given the life you’ve led so far.

But you need to think of loving yourself as a conscious daily action. Love expert Matthew Hussey says, "Substitute the word 'loving' for 'taking care of', 'investing in,' 'encouraging,' 'nurturing' and 'standing up for' [yourself]."

Now the question is: how do you consciously show up for yourself after all the screw-ups in your life?

Think about a healthy relationship between a mother and her son. If you asked this mother why she loves her son, it's possible but rare that she would start listing all the good things her boy does for her. Most likely, she'd give you a look of exasperation and just say, "Because he's my son" - as if it's the most obvious thing in the world. It doesn't matter to her what his grades in school are or how talented he is; this mother's love for her son is predicated solely on the fact that "he is her son" - she owns him. It's a similar relationship with children and their toys. Sometimes you could buy a child a brand-new toy, but every so often you find them going back to their old, beat-up toy that they've had for years because it's theirs.

Self-love starts from the realization that we own ourselves. "Yes, I have made many mistakes in the past, but I own myself, so therefore, I must love myself." This kind of love does not lead to the abdication of responsibility for our actions but rather a sense of accountability to ourselves to be and do better.

From self-ownership comes the ability to show yourself empathy that starts with self-forgiveness. The crucial first step to showing yourself empathy and compassion is to realize that you did the best you could at the time. If you had known any better, you probably would have done better.

Life is a journey of learning and growth, and sometimes you can only learn by making mistakes and trying again. Blaming yourself will only lead to misery and self-loathing. Forgiving yourself gives you the power to learn from the past and grow into a better person from now on.

Where To Go From Here

As we've seen, self-love begins with self-ownership and self-forgiveness. But the task doesn't end there. As I also said earlier, self-love is a conscious, daily action. You still have the rest of your life ahead of you now.

You are a person deserving of respect, kindness, and compassion. As Simon Sinek would say, "Treat yourself with kindness rather than contempt." Loving yourself is more than just a feeling. It is showing up every day with a sense of duty and responsibility toward yourself.

Many of us think we know how to love other people even when we loathe ourselves. But in reality, you truly can't love others if you have no love for yourself—you can't give what you don't have.

One of Jesus's famous teachings in the gospel accounts is, "Love your neighbor as yourself." But I think he took for granted that most people of his time did in fact love themselves. Our modern society is faced with a slightly different challenge because many people rather despise themselves. We would never speak to others the way we speak to ourselves.

The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard saw this problem in his time, and he came up with a revised rule that I find fitting to close out this article. He said:

"If anyone, therefore, will not learn from Christianity to love himself in the right way, then neither can he love his neighbor.... To love one's self in the right way and to love one's neighbor are absolutely analogous concepts, are at the bottom one and the same.... Hence the law is: 'You shall love yourself as you love your neighbor when you love him as yourself."

Our journey to finding purpose begins with loving ourselves. And that love flows outward into self-giving love for others. That's what it means to be truly human.

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