A student recently asked me, how can ‘I’ love ‘myself’? Wouldn’t there have to be two of me to make that happen? This is so true. However, for most people this is an understanding that comes much later, because they’re too caught up in hating or criticizing themselves. So if you think there is no one to love, move on to another post. If you hate yourself and want to change that, this is for you.

Now, imagine you have a plant. You love the plant. What does your loving the plant involve?

If you truly love the plant, you will ensure it gets proper sunshine, manure and water at all times, trim and prune it every once in a while and you’ll probably also spend time talking to the plant and showering it with your love, to ensure that it grows and radiates with health and happiness.

1. Sunshine

Loving yourself is pretty much the same in concept. If you truly want to love yourself, you need to ensure that you get proper sunshine – i.e. exposure to the bright side of life – happy thoughts, spirituality, love, and this comes with surrounding yourself with the right kind of people and if that’s not possible, the right kinds of books and tv programs (dramatic soap operas, reality shows like Big boss, news channels do NOT fall into this category, they’re disease).

2. Manure

You need to ensure you have good manure and that you are properly grounded and do not let your ego take flight. Use the stinky, smelly stuff that life throws at you to propel you to the top, learn new lessons and grow into a better person! Take care of your ‘roots’, i.e., remain humble and have your feet firmly planted on the ground.

One simple question helps to keep the focus on yourself instead of on everyone else – ‘what is the lesson life is trying to teach me, through this incident?’

3. Water

The watering – fuel for growth, as well as cleansing. One needs to monitor one’s thoughts and eliminate anything that is counter-productive to growth. Grab any opportunity to grow and make full use of it. Whenever you find a fault within yourself, yes, accept your faults, but don’t stop there – start changing yourself and work on becoming a better person so that you don’t have that fault anymore.

4. Trimming and Pruning

When you start to grow, you’ll realize that you need the trimming and pruning every once in a while. Growth and change are not permanent and often, we need to unlearn our lessons and move in a new direction. When a plant grows in a direction we do not want it to grow, we cut off a part of the branch and allow it to grow in a new direction.

When we realise that a part of our personality is resisting or hindering our growth in the direction we desire, then we need to (lovingly) clip that attitude and let go of past lessons. For example, a child with nasty class-mates might have learned that the best way to defend itself is to fight and bully its peers. However, once an adult, it will need to let go of that attitude to be able to succeed at its workplace.

5. Take responsibility for yourself

When we don’t love ourselves, we lack the motivation in doing things for ourselves. We then expect that those we spend our time on, should spend time on us, but this is rarely the case, because usually those who don’t care about themselves don’t get cared for by anyone else. Be your own best friend first, invest in yourself.

We try to bring the plant to the perfect state of health again. In the same way when we discover a fault or make a mistake, we don’t start hating ourselves, but start working towards it immediately.

… physically, mentally, emotionally
This means taking care of your diet and exercise for physical health, taking care to watch your thoughts and not take them seriously, for mental health, and surrendering to your feelings and let them come and go, for emotional health.

6. What do YOU want?

Most often, people hate themselves because they’ve been surrounded by critical, judgmental people for too long, and believed them. They then end up filtering their actions and words based on those judgments. In the beginning, it helps to remind oneself that those are just judgments, and ask one question ‘what do I want?’

Closing Remarks

Loving oneself does not give you the license to hurt others. It might be tempting in the beginning to just damn those who have suppressed you, and do whatever you like. But this is the opposite state of where you’ve been and will also bring you pain. Relax into a state where you are really aware of what your needs are, and ensure that those needs are met in a pleasant, comfortable way. It is possible.