What do you think it means to be self-loving?
 

Hi everyone. I think that to be self-loving means you are always true to yourself even if others aren't always true to you.
I think that our relationships do reflect the relationship we have with ourselves. The sad part is our society puts so much emphasis on being what other people want you to be.
So what do you think it means to be self-loving?

To me, self loving means showing yourself the same loving compassion you would show your own children.

I would be horrified to see my children binge drinking alcohol. So I try to feel equally as horrified at the thought of doing that to myself.

My children would grow from expressing who they truly are, and have my support in doing this. So I shall express myself truly, and therefore continue growing myself.

I would not direct negative energy towards my children. I would therefore not do so towards myself.

Etc etc.

Imo self love is all important and should be applied to one's self before trying to love others.
Self-love?, be happy with yourself, praise your efforts, committ yourself 100% to a task by simply loving the process and outcome.

Love yourself at all times and never cease.

Something like that anyways.

utopiandreamchild

Imo self love is all important and should be applied to one's self before trying to love others.
Self-love?, be happy with yourself, praise your efforts, committ yourself 100% to a task by simply loving the process and outcome.

Love yourself at all times and never cease.

Something like that anyways.

utopiandreamchild

ReturningMoon - I believe to be self-loving is to strike a healthy balance between our personal needs and the needs of others. Doing so, however, means not compromising oneself. For example, if you're asked to do something for someone else and you don't want to do it, I say be honest with the other person and say you're not up for it. It may cause friction and it may cause growing pains too, but the flip side is if one always gives in to the needs of others first, resentment builds up and anger sets in. In other words, we lose ourselves. I'm not talking about the needs of our children when they are young. As a parent, I know all too well that I needed to constantly make sacrifices so that the needs of my child were taken care of first and foremost.

I think self acceptance and self care are two very strong components to being self loving. For if you take care of yourself everything around you will take care of itself. The hard part is that self love is a lifelong goal as experiences test us and cause us to experience triggers and blockages on the path to self love. The beauty of it all is that when you can exercise self love you can freely love others too without judgements or expectations. Having boundaries with others, being aware of your morals and what you value could also help too.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts :smile:

In my opinion self love does not mean narcissism. If you love yourself you will not abuse yourself, you will be gentle with yourself and not beat yourself up, you will learn from your mistakes, and try to bring out your fullest potential.

What we give to each other is ourselves and a person who does not love themselves gives that lack of self-love to others. In my opinion to truly love others you have got to love yourself. Self-love means self care, it also means healthy self-management.

Not accepting a loved one's bad behavior but also prefering action over reaction. At times I found myself in a situation like this, but I always chose to hold off so as to "not damage the relationship". Ever since I started working on myself, I still choose action over reaction however I'm not going to be shy about what I felt too, when someone's fear start making them act out. I wouldn't like to hurt my loved one just because I was triggered by their reaction to something, no one did anything wrong apart from being human. To me, being loving of self is preserving and nurturing but also try to think of when the feelings and triggers pass, "will you be happy with your reaction"? The best way I found to do that with myself is simply when I feel I may react to something I just pause and look at myself from a 3rd person view, it helps minimizing the impact.

Getting to know yourself is loving too, it helps you find little methods like the one I mentionned above to stay calm and avoid situations that you might have regrets about. Another one would be not treating others a way you wouldn't like to be yourself.

To sum it up, I would say being loving of self is actually giving yourself the means to be who you truly are and do the things you truly want to do in life, not in spite of anything, simply because you want to see yourself succeed. Accepting who you are and value the person you are.