Usually, people are quick to jump to the conclusion that “loving yourself” means to be vain and egotistic. Or that by loving yourself, you are selfish and ignorant for thinking only of yourself and seeing nothing wrong in yourself. In many minds, to love oneself is to be a narcissist who is obsessed over things that only benefit them. But all those assumption do not define what it truly means to love yourself, because self-love isn’t just love, it is acceptance. Self-love is accepting who you are today, who you were yesterday, and who you will be tomorrow. It’s about embracing the good and bad of yourself, and accepting that this is who you are. But self-love is a hard task to grasp and take control of completely. In fact, rather than finding the love in themselves, many argue that it’s more important to show your selflessness by loving others more than yourself as that will teach you how to love yourself. Nevertheless, the importance of self-love before all else is far more significant in comparison than to the effect of giving one’s love to others. The lack of self-love can harm you in several ways, and overall, make the quality of living not as good as it could be. But, those negative outcomes of self-loath give you more reasons to learn to love yourself and put yourself first. It is more important to love yourself before all else, because if you cannot accept yourself now, eventually you won’t be able to accept anything else either, no matter how much you may love someone or something else.

There are those who loathe themselves and often claim that when they love someone so much, it’s enough to make them forget about their negative self-image. In other cases, there are those who say that loving others has taught them to love themselves, because they didn’t understand love until they started loving someone else. However, the fault lies in the absence of their own self-acceptance. If one hates themselves, but is able to “forget” their own hatred as a result of loving someone else, then that love for the person has become a placeholder for their unsettled emotions. Following that, it is possible that there is someone to guide you on your journey in accepting and loving yourself, but loving someone alone is not enough to fully change your perspective of yourself. In a short article about how self-esteem affects relationships, the author shows one way of how low self-esteem affects a relationship badly as they explain “You’re willing to commit yourself to the person who expresses interest in you. You become much less discriminating about who you choose. You may even be willing to put up with behavior that doesn't satisfy you, because you feel lucky to have anyone at all, even though you are aware you are not happy,” (Lachmann). In this case, if one’s self esteem is at a certain point of low, they show more signs of desperation for affection since the love for themselves is what they are missing. Whilst hating yourself, you cannot simply learn how to love yourself by being in love. Being in love with someone will not teach you how to love yourself because the more you love someone, the less you focus on yourself, and in many cases, you change who you really are for the sake of this “love”. Rather than helping you learn to love yourself, loving that person is only a mask for your true feelings. Soon enough that mask will be broken down if the relationship is built only on loving your significant other and abandoning who you were for their sake. Using another person as a mask will never fixed the damage within, only you can fix it. It is like putting a bandage on a wound without cleaning it first. Eventually that wound becomes an infection that a bandage can no longer cover anymore, and it will become a bigger pain than it was before, leaving a bigger scar as well.

At some point in life, everyone has faced a moment of feeling the worst they have ever felt. It felt like a time where all hope was lost and any motivation had disappeared. It was a time where our self-esteem dropped and we didn’t have any love to spare, especially not for ourselves. But, this type of behavior has unfortunate consequences, as stated in an article posted by the Harvard Health Publishing, “Without self-acceptance, your psychological well-being can suffer, and often, beneficial interventions are less helpful for you than for others with higher self-acceptance,” (Pillay). Self-love plays a greater role in your mental and physical health than you think. As an adjacent to self-acceptance and self-esteem, loving yourself is the root in a greater self-acceptance and higher self-esteem. Another example of how damaging the lack of self-love and acceptance can be is in relationships again. Those who get into relationships without even slightly understanding and appreciating themselves have a harder time maintaining that relationship. If you aren’t able to understand, love, and respect yourself, it’ll be just as difficult to do to your significant other. Likewise, as mentioned above, for the sake of loving someone else we often change ourselves to fit the mold of what others want us to be. But in that process of trying to gain love from others, you lose more of yourself each second. In Dr. Phillip C. McGraw’s book Self Matters, he explains that “Forcing yourself to be someone you are not, or stuffing down who you really are, is incredibly taxing. It will tax you so much that it will shorten your life by years and years,” (McGraw, 17). Rather than trying to please those around you and gain their love, there should be a focus on loving yourself, as trying to fit someone else’s mold will eventually lead to you mental and physical stiffness and decay.

Nonetheless, loving yourself is far from easy. Although constantly emphasizing it, the reality is that it is a very hard task to accomplish, but that’s also why it is so important. The idea of loving yourself isn’t to be completely happy with everything about your life. The purpose is that you can accept what cannot be changed, and even embrace the things that you are insecure about. In a Harvard article, the author explains how there is “evidence that people with high self-esteem are happier as well as more likely to undertake difficult tasks and persist in the face of failure,” (“The Use and Misuse of Self-Esteem”).  In terms of high self-esteem, that trait balances out with love yourself and feeling confident and proud of who you are. Loving yourself is to have confidence in who you truly are, and who you hope to become. Self-love allows for growth as a person, which is something you need when learning to love others as well. If you can love yourself, then so can someone else. But, if you loathe yourself, then there will always be someone who loathes you as well. As mentioned before, loving yourself is no easy whatsoever, but by changing your habits little by little, you can learn to turn your harsh words into encouraging phrases.

More often than not, people change themselves into what others desire, despite being unhappy about it, society pokes at their insecurities and self-doubts, turning them against themselves in this race of time. But, all they truly have is themselves. Spending so much time to simply please another, they forget who they are, and no longer exist as themselves but as someone who loathes themselves. Many people forget that their life is their life is their own, and that they deserve to be loved. Once you can love yourself just enough to see who you are, you can speak yourself, and breathe as you and only you. You live for yourself and no one else, and that in itself allows you to live your life with others in harmony. Self-love isn’t adoring every flaw and everything little thing about yourself, but about accepting the things as they are. When you have finally found yourself and accepted who you are, you can accept everything around you. You deserve to be loved, especially from the person that matters the most to you; yourself.