Have you ever thought about your relationship with yourself? How are you treating yourself? Can you tell that you really love yourself?
The love to yourself is not the same as narcissism or being self-centred. Loving yourself does not mean you find yourself perfect or even the best. It does not mean you do need to grow and develop. Yet, loving yourself means you have a healthy attitude to yourself which is absolutely necessary for your physical and mental help. There is not a single person other than you who will be able to take care of yourself thus good as you can do it and there is nothing strange or negative in the necessity of taking care of yourself. You are in your body and you have your mind. If you take care of them, you will become happier and will be able to make other people happy as well.
In this article you will find crucial ideas about the love to yourself.
What is the love to yourself?
If you still cannot imagine the feeling of love to yourself, try to think about the people you genuinely love. This is a popular recommendation of psychologists.
Just imagine what are you doing for those people who are realty important for you, especially, for children if you have them. You accept these people just as they are and do your best in order not to judge them and criticise. You are taking care of their health and mental well-being trying to do everything you can to make them feel good. You are very careful about their feelings and emotions. These are just some of the things we are doing for others, however, many of us do not do the same for ourselves.
Unfortunately, this does not bring us anything good. Others see the way we are treating ourselves and believe they are allowed to do it in the same way. Not loving oneself can cause a whole variety of unfortunate events and situations in our lives starting from health deterioration up to getting into toxic relationships.
The signs of not loving yourself
There are many signs which can tell you that you actually do not love yourself. Some of them are particularly widespread and obvious.
Trying to change your appearance with potentially risky procedures
Of course, experimenting with your body and changing it are not necessarily bad things. For example, you are severely overweight and you would like to regain your health switching to a healthy and well-balanced diet as well as regular workouts. This is certainly an example of loving yourself and taking a proper care of your body and mental well-being.
Still, some people are choosing harsh diets literally making themselves starve. This makes the process which was supposed to be a journey to health, turn into a real torture. The worst part of it is the fact it is you who is torturing yourself.
Unfortunately, there are many other ways of showing disrespect and hatred to your body. Another widespread one is performing various dangerous cosmetic procedures. In fact, no matter how you percept an urge to change something in your appearance, in the majority of cases people believe these changes will change their entire life and make them happy and successful. Unfortunately, this does not work since the root of the problem is going rather deeply and such an attitude to your body is the result of psychological problems.
Some people even do not love themselves to such a degree that they are saving money by choosing the cheapest cosmetologists for their dangerous beauty procedures which can be extremely dangerous for their health.
Saving money on yourself
Saving money on yourself is one of the signs you do not love yourself as well. Certainly, if your financial condition is rather difficult right now, it is obvious that you will tend to resign from any expenses which are unnecessary. Still, many people are doing it even though there is spare money. Such people are not necessarily stingy, because many of them are willing to spend money on those whom they love but will never buy something for making themselves happy.
Using spoilt things or wearing uncomfortable clothes
For some people it goes even further and they are ready to wear clothes which is uncomfortable or not fitting their bodies making them literally suffer. This can be either because such people again are not ready to spend money on themselves or they believe that their uncomfortable outfits make them look better.
Not being attentive to your health
There are many ways in which you can ignore your health starting from not having enough of sleep up to the moment when you start ignoring real symptoms of health conditions and avoiding visiting doctors. If you want to start loving yourself, just think about a baby, will you ever treat your child in the same way?
Believing other people are more important than you yourself are
Some of the things mentioned above are already an indication of the fact you believe other people are more important than you are. Yet, it can also be apparent if you are willing to compromise your own needs and tasks by constantly helping others.