I used to hate hearing people say you have to love yourself. Find self-esteem. Have better self-worth.
Blah, blah, blah …
Sounded a bit too New Age Hippy to me.
As though that was a simple solution to all my troubles at the time!
Like the fact I was in an abusive relationship and almost killed by my ex.
Just love yourself. Yeah, right!
As Justin Bieber says: You can go and *love* yourself!
Love myself
I never thought I had a problem with that anyway. I was confident, popular and most of my friends saw me as the strong one.
I thought I was too. My problem was him. My ex. He was the abusive one in our relationship. I was trying to help him. Nothing wrong with me!
I was wrong. On both counts.
I didn’t realise then that I was the opposite. Insecure, needy, lacking self-esteem. So was he. Our baggage matched.
I was looking outside of me to fill that void or empty bucket I had inside. That feeling of not being good enough.
I needed him to fulfil me, make me feel secure and lovable. And for a while he did.
But he had an empty bucket inside him too. He looked to me to fulfil his needs and make him feel secure as well.
Sometimes I could do that. Most of the time the bar was so high it was impossible. If I ever did reach it, he’d simply lift it higher.
I had to prove myself more, change myself into someone I wasn’t. I desperately tried to make him feel loved and be worthy of his.
His bucket had holes in it. I was never going to make him happy as he was full of shame and insecurity.
I could keep trying, but nothing would ever work. His neediness was insatiable.
But, then, so was mine.
Self-Esteem
[bctt tweet=”If you are insecure and have little self-love, you look to others to fulfill this for you. When you are low in self-worth, you attract those who treat you as unworthy. ” username=”beingunbeatable”]
Those who are also insecure and with little self-love.
You look to each other to fill your respective empty buckets. But buckets with holes in them will never do so.
If your bucket is damaged, then how can you deal with someone else’s?
Without self-love you depend your entire happiness on someone else, who is unhappy within themselves. And vica versa.
You can’t find happiness within. That’s the definition of a dysfunctional relationship.
Without self-love you are unable to make confident choices in life. Your decisions are based on insecurity and neediness, not because they’re the right choices for you.
You stay in relationships that are no good for you and hurt you.
You look to others for approval, so your boundaries are weak. Like when you people please at work.
Saying yes to taking on workloads you really want to and should say no to.
You allow others to drain you dry emotionally. Perhaps a friend who leans on you too much and at your expense.
Without self-love you beat yourself over the head every day. With your critical inner voice. That gets in your own way.
When someone first said to me:
Love yourself first
I thought, that’s easy for you to say. Phhhh!!
But in fact, once I got that it was the secret sauce to life, everything changed for me.
Just love yourself!
Learning to love yourself
I realised they were right. I didn’t feel good enough. I never felt good enough.
I was a frightened little girl inside.
Loving myself was the key to taking my power back. This was such a lightbulb moment for me.
I tell a lot of you who follow me and email me to do this. And I know it sounds naff, so I wanted to explain how important this is.
I tell them:
Take your focus off everyone and everything else around you. Do everything in your power to learn to love yourself first. Above all others.
Be it by getting help and support. Or reading every self-help book you can lay your hands on.
I love myself
I was loving someone else too much. At the expense of myself. I almost lost my life because I didn’t love myself first.
I was terrified of confrontation and a people pleaser. I became someone I didn’t even recognise. I wasn’t me anymore. Or, living true to my core values, beliefs and goals.
I lost myself.
The day I decided tom let everything and everyone else go was the day I started to change my life.
It was liberating for me. All I had to do was work on loving myself.
I swear from that moment on, the rest followed.
I found happiness like I’d never felt before, true love and a lasting relationship and success in my TV career.
I found the courage to leave an abusive relationship. I was good enough and deserved better.
I learned how to say no, which was terrifying the first time. To stand up for myself assertively and not fear confrontation.
I learnt to say ‘I don’t know’ and not have to have the answers all the time.
That I didn’t need to control everything and everyone around me. Only myself and how I reacted to things.
I was able to set stronger boundaries and signal to others how I wished to be treated.
And make better choices, based on whether they were good enough for me and my well-being.
It sounds simple because it is.
Love yourself first
Now I’m that New Age Hippy banging on about this to everyone:
Love yourself first.
You are all you have control of in your life. Which came as a relief to me.
Change you, you change your world.
Try it. Work on loving yourself first.
I promise a little self-love goes a long way.
Here’s some Love Yourself Quotes to inspire you:
Are you looking outside of yourself for happiness? Are you people pleasing?
Does your inner voice criticize you all the time? Are you finding it hard to love yourself?
Let me know in the comments below.
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