Love Yourself First: The Importance of Self-Love

 Love yourself first, and everything else falls into line. Lucille Ball

Most women see their value reflected back to them via their relationships – if someone loves us, then we feel lovable. If someone values the work we do, then our work is valuable.self-love

Our priority is on fitting in and meeting other people’s expectations before we give ourselves permission to feel good about ourselves.

This sounds a little backwards doesn’t it? But from what I’ve seen, it’s the way most people believe life works: lose weight, get a great haircut, buy some new clothes, get the right man, the right job, and a great place to live and now that everything is lined up, you can finally say to yourself, maybe I’m OK.

 

Loving Ourselves is Difficult

Why is it so difficult to love ourselves? Many people grow up hearing negative messages about not being good enough, smart enough, or pretty enough, and end up feeling unworthy. These old messages live deep inside us. Even when our later experiences prove these early messages wrong, there’s something about how old they are, how impressionable we were when we first heard them, and how deeply they impacted us that makes them stick.

 

Why Is It Important To Love Ourselves First?

  • We can’t truly love others if we are critical, judgmental and harsh toward ourselves.
  • We can’t allow ourselves to receive – to take in – good things that come to us, whether it is the perfect job with the amazing salary, the partner who truly cherishes us, or simple acts of kindness if we don’t value ourselves.
  • We can’t make our dreams come true if we don’t love ourselves. When you lack self-love, you will beyond a doubt sabotage your dreams. Your affirmations and visualizations for having a life filled with love, success, and comfort will fail if you don’t believe you deserve what you want. Only when you bring strong, positive emotional connections to your dreams and truly feel that you are worthy of having your dreams come true, will they manifest.

 

What’s Different When We Love Ourselves First?

When we are able to have a healthy self-love, we have a new kind of inner compass available to us, so that as we read above, everything else falls into line. Loving ourselves allows everything else to fall in place because:

  • With self-love as a guide, we will make healthy choices – whether that choice is about picking a spouse or deciding on what to eat today.
  • We will be clear about our value and our self-esteem will come out of honest self-awareness. As a result, other people’s opinions of us carry less weight than our own opinions.
  • We know what we want from our lives and feel good about following our own north star. Whether we succeed or fail, we are being true to ourselves and our own natural gifts.

 

How Do We Learn To Love Ourselves?

The reality about self-love is that it requires honesty: it’s about taking a serious look at yourself and accepting both the good and the bad, the best and the worst, about yourself. In a nutshell:

  • Know who you are
  • Accept who you are
  • Know your worth

 

Who is Lucille Ball? Lucille Ball was the star of the I Love Lucy show a 1950’s comedy about family life. In the I Love Lucy show, she pushed the envelope of physical comedy for women. The show dealt with marital issues, women in the workplace and suburban living. It launched a new genre of family-centered sitcoms. It was the Number 1 sitcom for several years in the 1950’s. With her husband, Desi Arnaz, she formed Desliu productions. When she divorced him in 1960, she bought his interests in the production company and became the first woman to run a major television production studio.

In honor of Women’s History Month, I will be sharing inspired quotes from inspiring women, to acknowledge the collective wisdom that has often been ignored or hidden.

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