Top 10 Steps to Finally Love Yourself
Most people have no idea who you truly are.
They think they know you, but what they know is the mask you put on every day. They only know what you are willing to show. They don’t know every mistake you have made; they don’t know every horrible thing you’ve done, and they definitely don’t know the twisted fantasies you store deep down. There are only so many dark secrets you are willing to share with the world.
Depending on how nice of a mask you are able to put on every day, most people may find it easy to like you. They would recite all of the good they see on your surface if asked, maybe only complaining about the minor annoyances they have found peeking through. It is easy to like someone when all you know are these finely edited superficialities. That is why it is a completely different task in order to love yourself. You don’t get the refined version of you. You know every mistake you have ever made. You know all of the selfish or evil desires you have ever had.
You can see through that mask into the deep, gritty, visceral meat of your being and find every terrible aspect hidden from the light.
When you’re in a relationship, the point at which merely dating can extend into love is when you expose the inside of yourself to your partner. At this point, if they still care for you after seeing your demons, then a foundation of trust can begin to form into a love that could never happen without allowing them in first. This becomes even more difficult when it comes to loving yourself, because you will always know more of yourself then you will know of anyone else. There isn’t a single detail you can hide. So, knowing that every aspect of yourself is bare, and not a single nasty detail can be kept from the light, how is it possible to truly love yourself?
These are my Ten Steps to Finally Love Yourself.
1. Be Honest with Yourself
In order for healing to begin, all of your wounds must be opened to the light of day. You need to get an account of who you are before thinking you can properly judge yourself. What harm have you caused others? What mistakes have you made? What of that could have been controlled or prevented?
You need to be honest with yourself and take account of all the reasons you may believe you are not worthy of self-love.
Once you have opened yourself up to self-examination, you will be able to take stock of who you are. Don’t only focus on the bad you have done. Take in all that you have done to see the full picture. Maybe there is more bad than good, maybe you have done unspeakable actions that you believe are beyond forgiving yourself for. Maybe once you really take in all of your actions you will see that you aren’t as bad as you thought or you were under circumstances that pushed you to not be your best self. Now that everything is exposed, you can begin the healing process.
2. Open Up to Others
Repression does not make mental trauma go away, it only buries it into the subconscious where it can destroy the foundations of your mind unseen. After being honest with yourself, the next step is to start being honest with others. Find people in your life that you can open up to, allow your thoughts to be viewed from a different perspective to see them in a different light. Maybe someone you talk to has been through a similar situation and can help you find a solution. Maybe they can help you see that your actions are forgivable and that you shouldn’t judge yourself based off those unseemly circumstances or choices.
Sometimes there are traumatic incidents, horrible desires, and self-destructive levels of guilt that can’t be dealt with alone or with friends and family. Sometimes these must be exposed to a professional therapist or psychiatrist who can truly break them down and help rewire your brain towards a path of healing. You need to trust that there is hope for even the most damaged of minds.
3. Forgive Yourself
What good do you believe is done by dwelling on past mistakes and berating yourself over them? Do you believe you are making yourself better by mentally punishing yourself repeatedly? The pain that occurs from messing up in life is inevitable, the suffering that you inflict upon yourself is optional. You need to learn how to forgive yourself for what is no longer within your control in order to move on.
Forgiving yourself doesn’t mean you are telling yourself what you did is okay, it is only an agreement with yourself that you no longer need to suffer.
In order to forgive yourself, you must take account of what you did. You must know that it is in the past and that no amount of self-torture will allow you to change what you did. You must figure out what you can learn from it, so that you may avoid making the same mistake again. Then you must accept it and let go. This doesn’t mean you will forget the incident, it only means you will not dwell on the memory and cause yourself mental punishment over it any more. There will always be mistakes you can find as an excuse to not love yourself, you must accept that to err is to be human and see yourself as stronger now that you have gained the experience that comes from that failure.
4. Focus on the Good
Sometimes, accepting all of the bad isn’t enough to justify the love of oneself. Sometimes you need a little encouragement to see yourself in a good light. So, you must learn to focus on the good that you have done.
Everyone has made some positive impact in their life, and you may be surprised at how much good you have actually done that you don’t give yourself credit for. Find those instances, give a little focus to them and see that you have good inside of you. Find the things going right in your life, the little miracles you may ignore to instead focus on everything going wrong. You choose what to focus on, why not choose the things that help bring you to a state of peace and happiness?
5. Better Yourself
If after all of this self-reflection, you find that the list of good is seriously lacking, you need to know that there is always a chance to change your ways, and that time is always now. You know what aspects of yourself cause you to have a negative self-opinion. Are those aspects out of your control? Then stop blaming yourself for them immediately. Are they within your control? Well, then you need to get to work controlling them.
Don’t pretend that you are a victim of a weak mind, you are in control of your mind and there is no excuse that takes away that responsibility.
When you find yourself faced with a choice, start pushing yourself to make the better one that you know will best serve you and others around you. Know that self-love is more important than fleeting pleasures that rot you away from the core. Find ways to challenge yourself and do it every day, turning it into a habit to constantly find ways in which to improve your life and yourself. Make sure to not do this from a mindset of “I am shit, therefore I must improve” but rather from one that states proudly “I am good enough to do better.”
6. Help Others
Sometimes, to help ourselves, we must help those around us. Helping others doesn’t only give our socially evolved brains pleasure, but it also can add to the reasons we can view ourselves in a positive light. You may also find that the more you help others and build relationships, the more people you have in your life that care about you. This may start to make you realize that you are deserving of the love you are learning to give yourself.
When you help others, you help to build a positive environment around you. Whether it be at work, within your social circle, or within your community, your actions will start to build a bubble of good will that will return to you in a practical “pay it forward” type of karma. As the area in which you live or work begins to improve, your life will start to improve, and it is always easier to love yourself when life is going well.
7. Discard your Inherited Trauma
Many times, the negative thoughts you have about yourself grew from the words of your parents or others who mistreated you. It is said that the voice of our mother can become the voice in your mind that speaks to you. If you were mentally, emotionally, or physically abused as a child by those who were supposed to show you unconditional love, it can have a lasting effect on your self-esteem.
You must know that this abuse was not your fault, and that it very well would have still happened even if you were a perfect child. That abuse was born of their own negative self-esteem or past trauma, one that was so strong they were not satisfied in yelling at themselves. They saw you as a version of themselves and thought they could take out their anger and self-hatred on you in order to resolve their own issues. Maybe it was even done as a twisted form of love, where they thought they were improving the negative aspects of themselves that they saw in you. Whatever the reason, you must know that allowing that negativity to live on inside of your mind is your choice. You can forgive them and stop allowing their abuse to let you suffer, or you can continue to let it determine your own thoughts about yourself. Kick out their anger, fear, and guilt from your mind and take control of your own self-worth.
8. Kick out the Negativity of Others
When someone says something negative about you, there are many ways you could react. You could get angry and try to hurt them back, you could ignore them, or you could allow those thoughts to take root in your mind and become your own. It could be from the words of bullies, attempting to assert power and feel better about themselves by putting you down. Or from bad teachers or supervisors that only focus on your shortcomings rather than giving you a fair appraisal.
No matter the source, you must realize that those words only become true when you believe them and make them your own.
If someone states something negative about you, take it into consideration and ask yourself, is it something out of my control? If so just know that this person is thriving off of you suffering from their mention of it, and it is up to you to take away that power from them. Is it something within your control? Well then, there is a follow up question; is it something you agree you should improve upon, or is it an aspect of yourself that you are okay with? If you agree with them, don’t hate yourself over it, just take the actions necessary to change. If you don’t, then screw them; you are your own person and it is their job to learn they don’t control you.
9. Learn how to Love without Condition
There is a universal love that transcends the normal idea of interpersonal love. This love is a realization that the universe is all connected, that we are all one, and to cause undue harm to anything else, is to harm ourselves. This love is unconditional, and requires a very strong level of understanding.
This may seem contradictory, but the easiest person that you can love without condition is yourself. You know everything, and so there is no wondering what may be hidden. You can learn how to forgive yourself and how to improve. If you can agree there is always a way to find a path back to loving yourself, then why do you feel there can be conditions to that love? You can skip right to the end and maintain that love for yourself and then extend that understanding to others and the rest of the universe. Of course, you can go back through the steps to clarify this ultimate understanding, but you may find it easier to accept this unconditional love first, and then to ease out your qualms with the truth right at hand.
10. Take Control of your Mind
Imagine there was someone in your life that told you on a daily basis that you’re not good enough. They would call you an idiot every time you mess up, reminding you that it’s your fault your life is fucked up. Every time something good would happen, they would warn you not to get your hopes up because it’s not going to last. They called you ugly, fat, lazy, and worthless. Would you keep this person around? Or would you rather yeet them out of a moving vehicle the first chance you got? If so, then why do you allow your own mind to do this to you?
An uncontrolled mind can easily destroy any chance you have at loving yourself.
Having such a negative person in your life would be terrible, yet even they would not be with you at all times or be as convincing as the voice playing inside your head. This voice can grow inside of you like a cancer, taking over your mind to the point where it can control you every thought, mood, or action.
You must learn to not give these self-deprecating thoughts any focus. You need to take back control of your mind by choosing to first respond to those thoughts with positive statements. They will sound ridiculous at first, but you will start wearing away at this cycle of negativity. Then you must choose to repeat these positive affirmations daily. Finally, you must be able to learn how to completely ignore those thoughts, to treat them like the random blathering of an infant or a lunatic, words that do not even deserve your consideration. At this point is when you can take back control of your mindset to one that can support the self-love you deserve.
Check out “The Heart of Unconditional Love: A Powerful New Approach to Loving-Kindness Meditation” by Tulku Thondup.
“The unconditional love that we all long for can be experienced in the practice of loving-kindness. In this popular form of meditation, the love inherent to our own nature is gradually expanded until it embraces infinite beings. Tulku Thondup introduces a new four-stage format for this practice, rooted in the traditional teachings of Tibetan Buddhism: We first meditate on the Buddha of Loving-Kindness as a body of unconditional love and receive his blessings. This spontaneously awakens his unconditional love in our heart. We then find the whole world reflecting back to us as a world of love and peace. Finally, we remain in oneness in the realization of ultimate love.”
Leave a Reply