On loving yourself

Here’s something fairly obvious that took me a long time to understand.

Loving yourself isn’t about finally managing to convince yourself that you’re beautiful, or smart, or special. It’s about finally reaching the point where you care more about being okay than being good enough.

In fact, let’s set aside that phrase “self love” for a second. “Love” is a tricky word. It’s emotionally loaded and it means different things to different people. Some people, when they think of love, they think of admiration, adoration, or attraction. If it’s difficult for you to understand the concept of “loving” yourself because you’re having trouble “admiring” yourself, then consider the word compassion instead.

Think of the compassion that you feel for other living things, for other human beings. Think about the desire you have for the people in your life to be okay, to be safe, to be happy, to be healthy —does this desire stem from these people being intelligent, funny, rich, successful, beautiful?

Or do you care about these people simply because of their humanity, and because of how their humanity adds value to your life?

Human beings are worthy of compassion. They don’t have to earn compassion by being high performers.

Compassion is the kind of love we talk about when we talk about loving ourselves. And that is why loving yourself isn’t vain, selfish, or self-indulgent. 

Loving yourself comes from a place of humility. It’s about relinquishing that sense of entitlement. It’s about understanding that you don’t have any innate right to be perfect, to win in comparison to others, or to rank above others, and that your worth as a human being doesn’t stem from being better than others.

Loving yourself is about valuing humanity more than excellence.