Loving yourself first, before you can love someone else.

We often hear the phrase ‘you have to learn to love yourself in order to love someone else’.

From a young age, I always wondered what this meant. I was so naïve growing up, that I would question things like, ‘why wouldn’t you love yourself though?’

It was not until I had my first heartbreak that I fully understood what this meant. I started to blame myself for everything and somehow convinced myself that I was not worthy of love. I realised the importance of loving yourself because you simply cannot offer someone else love if you have not loved yourself first. Eventually I came to the realisation that, if you, yourself does not believe that you are worthy of love. Then maybe you’re not, because no one will love someone who thinks that they cannot be loved. It is quite simple if you think of it in that sense.

Loving yourself goes beyond simply ‘treating yourself’ through pampering and materialistic wants, instead, it is how you decide to treat yourself mentally and physically. Mentally, I had to remind myself that there are 7 billion people in this world and not everyone is going to love you, which is reality. But, the least you can do is simply love yourself, because you are unique, because you are different, because you have a heart that has not given up on you and so why should you give up on loving yourself? There are literally so many reasons as to why you should love yourself, yet, why do people forget this?
Physically, i had to realise that my health is in my own hands and that i owe myself a healthy and active lifestyle because the only reason that i am able to breathe and walk everyday is because my body loves me and believes that i am worthy of feeling alive. Hence, it is little things like getting up each morning, eating a healthy breakfast, going for a jog and smiling everyday that makes the biggest difference. That is what i call loving yourself, because you realised that you are worthy of smiling and that you are worthy of living. Eventually, you will realise that you have an abundance of love in your life that was there all along.

In this life, we are only given this one body and this one heart with this one mind. If we choose to hate ourselves, then that’s a life full of hate. But, if we choose to love ourselves, then that’s a life full of love. Then why choose to hate? Why choose to be upset if we can choose to be happy?

In this life, lets all be a little selfish and choose to be happy and love ourselves unconditionally… because that’s definitely my plan.