ME, MYSELF AND I

Loving myself isn't selfish!

In today's society loving and taking care of yourself is often mistaken by narcissism. But these two things have nothing to do with each other. Self-love is the key for happiness and only someone who loves and respects herself can love someone else. People like to talk a lot about these words but they don't even know the meaning of them so I would like to start by explaining what those words mean.

Self-love is the act of loving yourself unconditionally. People who love themselves, accept themselves the way they are. With all of their flaws and they even work to improve themselves if necessary. They are confident about themselves and proud of their achievements. But not only of their own but also of the achievements of others. They support and encourage others to do better. The sense of empathy and humility that they have is very strong. They care about other people's struggles and offer them advice if they can.

Narcissism is a personality disorder. Narcissists have an inflated sense of self-importance and a total lack of empathy. They think that they are better than anyone else and don't have any flaws. For this reason they overreact to criticism. They like to be the center of attention and have the strong need for admiration. Narcissists are never happy with who they are and what they have. Narcissist people are very self-centered. That means that they are constantly thinking of themselves and focus on getting their needs met. Often ignoring the needs of others. They are extremely jealous and can't stand others doing well. Instead of fighting for their goals they prefer to take advantage of other people to achieve them.

Now that you know what those words mean, you will understand better what self-love is about.

Everywhere you go people try to convince you that you should be selfless. Everybody expects from you to be helpful and take care of others. And I'm not saying that you shouldn't. The point is that they forget that the most important thing is YOU. How are you supposed to help other people if you are not feeling well yourself? How are you supposed to love somebody else if you don't even love yourself? How are you supposed to give energy and encourage others if you don't even have energy? That simply doesn't work. You cant help others until you help yourself. Once you are in a good mental state then you can start trying to help others.
So if you really want to practise self-love you first have to be ready to make yourself a priority because involving self-love takes time. That also means that you have to be patient.