ME, MYSELF AND I

Method 1: Understanding self-love

Before you start practising self-love, you should first understand why you may have a low self-esteem, what the dangers of lack self-love is and the effects of outside comment.

1. The importance of childhood experiences: the way our parents treat us as a child can affect the development of our self-confidence and self-esteem. Everything that happens in our childhood has a big influence on us while growing up. To develop a healthy self-esteem the parents have to be emotionally connected to their children. This means:
- Listening
- Speaking respectfully
- Giving them appropriate attention and affection
- Recognizing their children's accomplishments as well as mistakes or failures. And instead of putting them down for doing a mistake, acknowledge the mistake and accept it.

It isn't just our parents that influence the development of our self-esteem, but also people who are close to us like a teacher or coach. Childhood experiences like being harshly criticized, ignored, ridiculed as well as being expected to be perfect all the time and even sexually, physically or emotionally abused, may lead to low self-esteem.

The danger of lack self-love: having a lack of self-love not only affects how we see ourselves, but it also affects the experiences we have in our lives, or rather how we react to them. When you have a lack of self-love you will often feel like you're not good enough and you will also develop negative thoughts. This can lead to anxiety and depression, as well as other unhealthy habits like drug addiction or anorexia.

The effects of outside comments: you can't practice self-love when you're living in a bubble. There will always be outside comments and potential negativity that will try to influence you. For this reason you have to learn to deal with negativity, no matter from where it comes, whether it is from your partner, boss or even a stranger on the street. You have to learn to not let such negativity change your feelings and self-worth.