How to love yourself?

We are often encouraged to love ourselves. But how is this love determined? Is it possible to love yourself and not be selfish at the same time? Too fine lines between normal self-esteem and overestimated self-esteem are often misleading. How to love yourself and not overdo it, this article will tell you.

Self-love has deep roots. Everyone in his soul understands that he is a unique, unique person in the world, there is no other, there has not been and will not be. And indeed it is.

A person who has fallen in love with himself has a number of distinctive features, it is they who will help you figure out how much you love yourself at this stage.

• Personal boundaries... He who loves himself knows his personal boundaries, knows how to defend them if someone tries to encroach or manipulate. Even close people, such a person does not allow them to cross their personal space. He also respects other people's personal boundaries with great respect, trying under no circumstances to stoop to manipulation.
• Understanding your desires. A person who loves himself knows exactly what he wants, what his aspirations and goals are. He is not shy about talking about his desires, and if he asks for something, you can be sure that he really needs it. He is not afraid of refusal, ridicule, he will take them calmly.
• Personal care. If a person has adequate self-love, then he is anxious about his body and health.He tries to always take care of himself, look good, eat well and eat well. He does not postpone a visit to the doctor if there are reasons for concern. Those who love themselves rarely sit on long exhausting diets, they will not experiment with medicines.
• Self-confidence... If a person loves himself, then he trusts his intuition, his experience and knowledge. This does not mean that he does not hear or accept advice from the outside. He will listen to them, thank them, but always reserve the right to choose a further scenario. He does not depend on outside opinions, does not worry about what strangers might say or think about him.
• No sacrifice for show. He does not sacrifice himself to receive a positive assessment from the outside, does not do great deeds just to be praised, admired. He already knows his own worth very well and does not need confirmation from others.
• Joy and pleasure in life. Yes, he knows how to test it, and in many ways this becomes possible because he, with a pure heart, without remorse, knows how to please himself, to enjoy life. He knows that joy is a source of vital energy, and it is she who helps the lover of himself eventually reach heights, develop, be successful.
• Internal resources... When a person loves himself, he takes care of maintaining his internal resources, they are not empty. He clearly distinguishes between time allotted to work, time for rest, family, friends, himself. He will not waste internal resources irrationally, and therefore there are almost no people who truly love themselves among workaholics and outright lazy people.
• Ability to make choices. With the proper level of love and respect for one's personality, it is not difficult for a person to make choices in difficult situations. You can be sure that he will only choose the best possible. He will not be content with "a bird in his hands", he will try to get a "pie in the sky" at any cost.
• Order inside and out... In the general sense of the word, this is order in the house, at the workplace. Globally - order in the soul. A person always strives to create an environment around himself in which he experiences inner comfort and tranquility. The same approach to the choice of the environment. He will not have pleasant, uncomfortable people for the individual, he will not tolerate them and put up with their presence in his life. Self-loving people maintain a high level of internal environmental friendliness of the soul - they do not allow anyone into their environment who can poison their perception of the world, spoil their mood, and cause moral damage.
• Attitude towards time. Self-love is manifested by a careful attitude towards your time. This applies not only to working hours, but also to leisure. Instead of social networks, he will gladly spend his free hour on reading, self-development, exercises for beauty and health. He sets goals and distributes them in time, knows how to substantiate his goals and finds ways to implement them. He does not allow indiscriminate actions.
• Search for the guilty. If a mistake is made, then the one who loves himself will not look for its roots and reasons in others, blame them, try to justify the mistake by coincidence. He will count mistakes at his own expense, but not in order to blame himself, but in order to learn from them valuable experience.
• Personal dignity... When he loves himself, it is easy for a person to emphasize his dignity, to present himself. This is immediately felt, and therefore such applicants are more willingly hired, such employees are given preference when determining candidates for assigning the most interesting and responsible projects.
• Honesty. He who loves himself is honest. And not only with others, but also with oneself. He is not inclined to be deceived, tries not to create situations in which he himself may be in the role of the deceived.

Self-love helps to increase self-esteem, to accept all your traits and qualities exactly as they really are. This brings not only psychological satisfaction and comfort, but in general allows you to become a confident, happy person. Finding self-love, a person opens up new opportunities - he can get rid of complexes, feel inner confidence, change his life, learn to respect himself and others.

The benefits of such love can be difficult to imagine theoretically. It is much easier to try to imagine the consequences of a lack or lack of self-worth. A person compensates for the lack of inner respect with unhealthy addictions. It doesn't have to be alcohol or drug addiction. Relationship addiction is common. The inability to accumulate love inside leads to the desire to receive it from the outside, and constantly. A person finds a partner and terrorizes him with this, depends on him in everything.

Start with an honest conversation with yourself - what are your merits, what are your shortcomings, for which you love and respect yourself, and for what - most often you scold and blame. You can make a "diagnostic card" - divide a sheet of paper into two halves and in one describe your undoubted advantages, and in the other - disadvantages. This will be the start for working with yourself. Once you've mastered this, write down your answers to the following questions.

• Does the opinion of others matter to me?
• Do I feel awkward around strangers?
• Am I ashamed of my appearance?
• Do I have the job I deserve?
• Am I comfortable in my existing relationship now? Is there a fear of losing a partner?

If most of the answers are in the affirmative, you need to urgently get to work - to correct your inner self-acceptance.

This is the first thing you should do. Resentment towards others and towards oneself will pull back, hinder the revision of many values, including self-worth. Taking responsibility for yourself can help you cope with resentment. Stop blaming others for your failures, only you are responsible for everything that happens to you. If something unpleasant happens, then you yourself have created the prerequisites for this, if you are surrounded by not the best and decent people who cause suffering, did you not allow them into your life? They are what they are. And the events are what they are. And only your right is to accept them as a lesson or as a tragedy. Understanding this will help to forgive others, to understand that they are doing and did only what we ourselves allowed them to do.

Next, you need to forgive yourself. Love your mistakes that were made, love the ugly actions and words that you made or said. Understand that in the past you did this, and not otherwise, only because you had no other choice, did not have the proper experience and knowledge. But it was these mistakes that probably made you today exactly who you are. Look at the previously compiled list of your own shortcomings. Work with each point from this very position, substantiating the practical benefits of this or that defect, bad deed. From that moment on, you will not stop working on yourself, but you will stop scourging yourself and blaming others, and move on with a light heart.

You don't need reasons to start loving yourself.Each of us is already self-sufficient, and therefore there is no need to try to look for special reasons that will allow us to feel self-respect and self-acceptance. That is why it would be wrong to say “I love myself because ...”. The correct wording is only one - "I love myself!". And it does not matter what shape of your nose, ears, length of legs, color and density of hair.

Stop comparing yourself to others. Everyone in your understanding should become equal. Putting someone on a pedestal by diminishing your dignity is a path that only leads to undermining self-esteem and chronic stress. Understand the role of social programming - the impact of advertising, social beliefs, crowd psychology - all of this is aimed at destroying self-esteem, since it is difficult to make a manageable social mass out of psychologically mature people. Your task is to get out of this influence.

Therefore, stop comparing yourself to others, do not strive for the same images that you see in advertising, do not pay attention to what others say or think about you. If you need to compare yourself with anyone, it is with yourself. Yesterday you were like that, and today you are like that, you have become better, more effective, kinder, smarter, more interesting, more experienced - isn't this a reason to rejoice?

Stop focusing on what others expect of you. Ask yourself what you want. Make a list of your desires, formulate goals. For each goal, it is worthwhile to outline a time frame, identify the means and tools that will help you achieve what you want. After that, you can start implementing. Often, based on false social programs that say that a woman should be sacrificial in relation to her family, a man should be reliable and responsible, we fall into real captivity, doing everything for others, but not doing anything for ourselves. Define your personal boundaries according to your desires.

Don't let others step over them, disrespect your personal beliefs, hobbies, hobbies, personal time. In return, respect the boundaries of others.

It doesn't matter how many university degrees you have, what position you hold, how erudite and intelligent you think you are. There should always be a place for something new. Today, all conditions have been created for this - remote seminars, webinars are held, any literature, courses, schools are available so that you can improve your knowledge not only in the professional field, but in general. Take advantage of this, every day try to learn something new that you did not know before.

But self-development should not be limited only to new theoretical and practical knowledge. Work not only on intelligence, vocabulary, outlook, but also on your state of mind, meditate or go hiking, travel, learn the practices of communicating with people. There is no limit to perfection.

More often than not, when working on improving their self-esteem, people make mistakes that lead to a hypertrophied perception of "I". In psychotherapy, this is called narcissism. The line between healthy self-love and high self-esteem is thin and easy to break. The fact that this happened can be judged by a number of signs.

• A person is constantly concerned with himself and his self-esteem, is constantly focused only on himself and is not capable of emotional empathy - empathy.
• A person painfully perceives disrespect or criticism in his address, becomes irritable, angry.
• In the first place, he puts questions of his own social status and the status of other people. Often he chooses the environment according to this criterion.
• Attacks on the self-esteem of others from caustic remarks to outright manipulation of the will and decisions of other people. In severe cases, it becomes a means of fueling one's own self-esteem.

The second common mistake is the power of doubt. It seems that everything is clear, and the person as a whole acts correctly, but the creeping doubts constantly make him stop and look around - whether he is doing everything as it should. As a result, a person cannot achieve true self-love. In order to prevent such mistakes, it is important to observe a clear measure in everything, to follow the recommendations of specialists.

There are many theoretical articles and scientific justifications for the value of self-love, and after reading them, it becomes obvious to a person why all this is. But to the question of how to effectively come to awareness and acceptance of oneself, learn to accept oneself and others, raise one's inner value in one's eyes, there are not so many specific answers. Therefore, let's try to clearly formulate several effective exercises for each day.

• List of "hundreds". As part of this exercise, it is recommended that you shift your own inner focus from negative to positive. In other words, we begin to see the good in ourselves. On a piece of paper, you should make a list of exactly one hundred points, which will list all your merits and achievements. If there are more of them, it is good, if there are fewer, you should think more. It is incredibly difficult to write the entire hundred at once. Psychologists have noticed that the higher the level of self-dislike, the more difficult it is to make even a dozen points. Therefore, we take it as a rule to fill in from 1 to 3 points per day. More is possible. Reread the list that has already been drawn up at least once a day. This will help to clearly understand how much good, kind, positive you really are.
• "Mistake". This exercise was suggested by Russian psychologists. Its essence is to defeat harsh reactions to your own mistakes and failures. For every, even a small mistake, you should spread your arms to the sides, tilt your head slightly and, in the style of an amazed child, cheerfully say out loud: “Mistake!”. And after a few seconds, put your arms around your shoulders and praise with any words that are pleasant for you. As soon as you feel comfortable and calm, give yourself a mindset for further work aimed at correcting your "mistake".
• Internal critic. Inside everyone lives a disgruntled adult voice - parental, teaching, mentoring. He questions our decisions, criticizes our actions. Did not hear? Try not to go to work, and all day he will "nag" you from the inside. Allow yourself an extra cake and your critic will mumble again. Whenever you feel his awakening inside, boldly and decisively say to him “Stop!” To yourself. Some psychotherapists recommend noting in which part of the body the voice sounds. More often it is the head. When the critic begins his monologue, he must be mentally "moved" from the head to the shoulder, knee, etc. With each movement his voice will be quieter, his tonality softer, until the inner critic is completely silent. This exercise also promotes inner concentration.
• Success program... In the morning after waking up, be sure to set the settings for a successful day. The mood should not be based on "I will try" or "I hope", but solely on "I can!", "I can handle it." Try to capture this determination and maintain it throughout the day.
• Unconditional love... This exercise will help you not look for any reason to love yourself. Imagine that there is a person in your room who loves you unconditionally. He likes all your features, appearance, character, your profession, worldview.Imagine what he looks like, what he is wearing, what gender and age he is. Imagine how he comes up and hugs you. After that, immediately take a pencil and write yourself a letter on his behalf with wishes for the current day.

Living in harmony with yourself and the world around you is not so easy, but also not as difficult as it seems.

• Express your feelings sincerely, do not hesitate to talk about love, friendship, dislike.
• Surround yourself with optimists, communication with them will support your inner work on yourself.
• Tune in to long and painstaking work - the process can be slow.
• Keep a progress journal in which you record positive results every day.