Learn to Love Thyself

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Valentine’s Day is on the horizon. For some people, the day conjures up images of Cupid with an arrow, fancy chocolates in a nice red box, and lots of beautiful red roses. For many others, the day is approached with dread. Valentine’s Day can be a reminder that you’ve not yet found the right person or that the one you’re with isn’t really up to your standards or, even worse, is making your life miserable.

This can be because we have the idea of being able to love another all backward. It’s hard to love someone else when you really don’t care for yourself much. For many people, the most appealing aspect of a relationship is that the other person “completes them.” That person “makes them feel whole.” Why use language like this? Aren’t you a complete human being without anyone else to help you?

We talk about becoming whole with another in part because of the shadow aspects of our own personalities we don’t like or want to own. Jung wrote extensively about the Shadow Self, and it is often reviewed by psychologists when working with couples. If there is something about yourself you don’t like, you might look to your partner to fill that gap. Or you might hide that aspect from your partner, making you feel less real. Or, your shadow might envelop your partner, and you dislike something they do because your shadow reflects upon them.

You can learn a lot about yourself by engaging with another person. In fact, when we stay open, if we are willing to learn, the best lessons come from seeing ourselves how others may see us. Listening, learning, and growing are all aspects of a healthy relationship.

To be in a relationship with another person, or to be happy out of a relationship with others, the first and most important job is to learn to love one’s self. This is a lifelong journey for many people and can be a hard thing to do. Many people are raised to feel that they are not enough or to be guilty about who they are and what they do. Many have been told by teachers, parents, friends, or bosses that they don’t measure up and they are lacking in some way. These messages can become internalized and believed, and the rest of one’s life can be about trying to compensate and become “whole.”

How to build self-love

Rather than spending this February trying to find your wholeness in another person, apply that need and desire to become whole just the way you are. Give yourself a break, and remember that your current view of yourself was years, decades—a lifetime—in the making. You have to start somewhere, so start here.

1. Be a friend to yourself.

Think about when someone comes to you, and they are hurting somehow. Most people don’t use that opportunity to beat up more on the person. If you care about them, you try to show them the strengths they have to overcome the problem or the path forward, or you simply listen and give them a willing ear.

Now, imagine you are your own best friend. I find it helpful to channel my actual “real” best friend. I hear her voice, I think about the words she would say to me, and I give myself the same encouragement she would offer.

2. Remember, every human being is trying, including you.

We are all on the journey together. No one has it wired. No one is perfect. No one has the secret to what makes a life worth living.

Remind yourself as often as you can that you are human. You are working through things. You are learning, growing, changing, developing, and sometimes back-tracking. That’s the road. The path isn’t a linear line. You are a work in progress—focus on the “in-progress” portion as often as you can.

3. Make a list of your strengths, blessings, contributions, good news, and anything else that makes you happy.

Read the list a few times a day. Read it out loud as if you were sharing the good news with someone else, and read it with enthusiasm and joy. Channel your inner cheerleader.

4. Refuse to beat up on yourself for past sins.

Did you do something wrong? Congratulations: You are human. There is no one without some sort of blemish, and remember, everyone judges and values things differently, so we are all quite capable of seeing our own “wrongs” as catastrophic, even if someone else wouldn’t agree they were that bad.

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Know that you made a misstep and learn from it. If you need to apologize, do so, then drop it. If you need to fix a problem you have created, do it, then drop it. If you have wronged someone and need to own it, do so, then drop it.

Ruminating doesn’t change anything. Learn. Change. Each minute of each day gives you a new beginning. Take it and move on.

5. Separate loving yourself from ego about how great you are.

Many people feel the need to prove to others that they are great because, deep down, they don’t believe they are worthy. Loving yourself does not mean pretending everything you do is perfect. It doesn’t mean thinking you are above others. In fact, loving one’s self is the perfect intersection of confidence with humility. We truly are all equal. There is no better or worse.

6. Remove negative self-bashers from your vocabulary.

Stop thinking in terms of “Why can’t I?”; “Why don’t I?”; “I wish I didn’t”; “I can’t," etc. If you want to do something, you can—with effort and focus. If you don’t want to do something, then don’t. Just don’t waste time negatively talking about it. Do and be, but don’t keep thinking and talking to yourself about it.

7. Drop gossip.

It’s useless. People do it to pull themselves up by tearing others down. It actually diminishes the person doing it. Stop it.

8. To the degree you can, be happy.

It’s hard to love someone who is sour and complaining and negative all the time. This goes for others around you, and it goes for you too. If you can’t see the good, believe in the good, and focus on the good, it will be hard to find it within yourself. You don’t have to pretend. If your breath works, you have anything in life you care about, and you are able to read this post, something is working for you. Focus on what’s good.

Loving yourself isn’t easy. It’s a fits-and-starts process throughout your life.