The one person you know for sure you will have a relationship with for the rest of your life is – you.
No matter how hard you try, you will never get away from yourself. You will always see yourself in the mirror, you will be there for all the ups and downs, and wherever you go, there you are.
When this insight sinks in it becomes very clear that how you treat yourself is one of the most important things in life. You will always have to live with your own decisions, hear your own thoughts and live in your own body.
Considering how much we are willing to do for other people we care about, even though we will at best share a part of our lives with them, isn’t it strange how badly we are often willing to treat ourselves? Let’s change that. You can’t get rid of yourself, but you can start appreciating yourself and, if you like, become the most awesome version of you possible.
One of the biggest self-help clichés is “love yourself”. Well sure, but how the heck do you do it? Let’s turn it around for a moment. Think about someone you love who isn’t you. What do you do to love them? This question made me laugh the first time I heard it because loving the people I love doesn’t feel like a task I can describe or practice or put down on a to-do-list. I just love them.
If self-love doesn’t come as easily one way to make it more concrete is to look at how you think about, talk to and behave towards the people you love, and compare it to how you think about, talk to and behave towards yourself. Is it similar or is there a difference?
If you find that you treat others better than yourself, I invite you to write a list of the loving things you do for others (comforting instead of blaming them when things go wrong, showing them appreciation through kind words, gifts and support, speaking up if someone treats them bad etc) and start doing that for yourself.