So you’ve just gotten out of that dreadfully toxic relationship and you are back at square one with–you. The process of starting over and reclaiming yourself can be a very daunting task. Some relationships forced into situations that make us reflect and challenge our actions, beliefs, ideas, thoughts, etc.
After a breakup, we are now faced with dealing with any issues and possibly relearning how to love yourself. Despite the details in the relationship, we learn things from the other person that either:
- a) agree with our nature and suit our character or ideals
- b) conflict our nature and oppose our character or ideals
- c) inspire us to add to our character or ideals
The list can go on, but in the end, these three aspects from the baseline of what makes you like or dislike a particular trait in someone (or yourself).
But like most things in life, we tend to learn more through pain—in this case, a relationship or situation going sour, to help us rediscover who we are. Back to you. You now are left with dealing with picking up the pieces and reclaiming who you are.
This process is not always easy as you may have to find new ways on how to love yourself. You can’t outrun it, outwork it, forget about it, hide, or any other avoidant techniques that you believe will solve the issue.
“I’M IN YOUR FACE,” is what your inner self is saying to you, but are you listening?
Let’s get into this self-help guide on how to love yourself.
How to love Yourself and Deal With You
Not hearing or listening to yourself can cause a rude awakening. If a relationship is no longer fruitful, there tends to be visible evidence of red flags that existed from the beginning.
You can either listen and move forward or not and deal with everything that comes with it. This is not made to evoke feelings of guilt or shame, but to address personal accountability for the choices you make.
When you start dating, potentially disastrous damage can happen to your life. However, you will learn a lot about yourself and things that are important to you throughout different relationships. The main importance is knowing when a situation no longer serves you, you have to let it go.
Dealing with you is simply acknowledging when you have made a mistake and being able to get up and move on. This is difficult because it’s easier to make someone else accountable and not take responsibility for our actions.
At some point, we have to come to terms with what we’ve done to get our selves in a less than favorable situation.
Let’s look at how we get in these types of situations in the first place.
- We’ve connected with someone who shares in something similar (interests, careers, shared traumas, cultural beliefs, etc.)
- This person has something to teach or show us about ourselves
- We have undermined our own intuition (ignoring red flags, making excuses for things you do not accept, etc.)
- We have chosen to learn through pain via this relationship experience
Now that we have agreed that we have chosen this path, we can deal with the aftermath. Acceptance is the first part of any healing or growth process and we mustn’t blame others, or ourselves, for what transpired. What we can do is accept what has transpired and promise you do not need to learn this lesson again, so the next time it appears in our life (trust me it will come back again, life is funny), we will be better equipped to honor our intuition.
Now that’s covered, let’s get into the self-help aspect of learning how to love yourself, creating a relationship with yourself, what it is about, and why it is important.
Learning How to Love Yourself Is Work
Now, this may be hard to accept, but yes, the process of learning how to love yourself is work. It takes time, dedication, repetition, love, forgiveness, so forth and so on. You can have a multitude of things at your disposal and none of them will help you avoid the work that you must put in––with yourself. If anything in life worth having requires work—this does as well, so don’t shortchange yourself or half-ass it.
You are an organic machine with the world at your disposal, literally. From the moment you wake up until the time you settle down to rest, you should be enjoying yourself. Why? Because you are all that you have and nothing will change that… Sounds harsh right? Yeah, but it is what it is and it really cannot be any other way. Work on yourself, work on loving yourself flaws and all; work on appreciating the person that you are, despite the critiques of others, etc.
You have to take the time to do it, it is necessary for learning how to love yourself. Every moment you have—no matter location, time of day, amount of money you have, and who you are surrounded by—every movement is an opportunity to work, grow and love yourself.
The Relationship Fluctuates…
There is a major misconception that you have to be happy. Some experts do not necessarily agree because of the relationship that exists between pain and happiness. You are never stuck with just one emotion at a time, you usually are experiencing multiple emotions at once.
Given that understanding, it can be safe to conclude there are many emotions to be experienced. Similarly, you won’t ever just feel sad, going through pain, etc. The main point to understand is that just as emotions fluctuate, so does the relationship with yourself.
Think about your life and what you’ve experienced. If you could use a visual representation of your life it would be more of a sine wave shape than a straight line. Truth is working on yourself will not always make you happy.
You can be happy with the process, but sometimes, growth comes with pain This is not something easy to accept but to prevent any more negative relationships with others we have to stop having them with ourselves. You do not have to like the unfavorable parts you believe you possess, you just have to accept them— if you don’t, work on them, it is that simple.
Getting yourself into a rut does happen. It is as normal as waking up, the difference is staying in one isn’t. While depression may set in after a negative event, we can transition from grieving, to get to the healing process.
After we have taken time to heal, we can then learn to accept and appreciate the experiences that help shape us to be better in some way ..but, is constant
Previously, we spoke about how a relationship fluctuates in feeling. Despite its vacillation, learning how to love yourself is constant. It never goes away and you cannot break up or get a divorce.
You’re STUCK! So it would better serve you to make it work and enjoy the ride. We have friends, families, and pets at some point, but we only have ourselves all the time. You don’t get to take a break from yourself ever and treating it like a death sentence will make it just that.
Although this might sound like common sense, one does not “normally” take the time to psychoanalyze the fact that he is with himself all the time. It is something—understood, that goes without mentioning.
The Relationship with Yourself Determines A lot
Until we can form our own ideas and beliefs, the relationship with one’s parents sets the blueprint for the development and perception of things. As unconscious youths, we were bred to take on the viewpoints of our elders.
After maturity, how we treat ourselves is our responsibility. It can determine the quality of our friends, our successes and failures, the type of intimate relationships we accept, our internal image of self-worth, etc.
How could a relationship with yourself affect the type of job you get or even if you get a raise or promotion? It is easy because that relationship affects things the SAME WAY!
Hypothetically and realistically speaking let’s look at an example: You have been working at this company for a few years. It’s not your dream job, but it pays the bills. A vacant upper-management position recently opened and you have the required qualifications. Although you would like to apply for the position, your insecurities prevent you from seeing the possibility of advancing. You may even muster up the strength to apply, but because of the doubt, you tell yourself “they aren’t going to hire me.”
The position is then given to someone else. As you can see, the relationship with yourself, self-image, and perceptions affect all that you encounter.
Have you ever heard the slogan, you can’t love someone until you love yourself? It may or may not be true but one thing it can determine is the way you love.
While it is possible to learn what makes someone else happy, it may be more beneficial to find out what makes you happy first. Without this knowledge, it is easy for signals to be crossed as misunderstandings and miscommunications pile up.
How does the relationship with yourself affect things you attract?
Another way the relationship with yourself can influence your world is by affecting the type of people that you attract. What you attract in life is heavily influenced by the overall relationship with yourself. Like attracts like, so when you are down in the dumps, feel bad, don’t believe in yourself, or whatever is it, you will attract the doppelgänger.
The frustrating part is not being able to see what is really happening before our eyes are, although people appear happy on the outside, we all live double lives on the inside.
Do you ever wonder, “why do I keep attracting this type of person, personality, or experience?” If you stop to look for the patterns, they will manifest before your eyes.
Voila, magic! The common denominator in all your relationships is you. So there has to be an explanation for you attracting undesired parts of yourself in different people.
How you are treated is determined by no one other than YOU. You have to claim your personal power and accept that how people treat you is largely related to the way you treat yourself.
In the book the “Four Agreements” by Don Miguel Ruiz (a book that is based on self-improvement and understanding the human experience), he states:
“humans are addicted to suffering,”
and
“If someone treats you a little worse than you treat yourself, you will leave.”
Most will not want to admit the validity of both statements but the latter typically occurs at the breaking point. If you already treat yourself badly or have a negative perception of yourself, you would not accept someone making you feel more worthless—then you already do. Understanding how to develop a healthy relationship with yourself can offset a lot of these issues that arise when coming in contact with others.
How to improve the relationship with yourself
Here is the most important part of this posting: You have the absolute power to change what is happening right now in your life! Some would reply, “How can I change? I have kids, no time, no money, and no friends.” Any excuse can be used to fill in the blank, but the truth remains the same, you can improve if you really want to. This goes for any and every aspect of your life, but let’s stick to the matter at hand, loving and improving the relationship with yourself.
Say you are stuck in a rut or trying to get over an emotional situation and you do not know what to do (we will start from being in the midst of something since none of us can really start fresh).
How do you feel better and improve your mental outlook amidst murky circumstances? There are a variety of ways in which you can get better at becoming a better asset to yourself.
Improve your self talk
- Avoid pessimism
- Change your attitude towards negative experiences
- Fall in love with yourself and learn how to love again
- Focus on the solutions
- Surround yourself with positive, uplifting people
While relationships can be complex, they do not have to be. This starts with you. Getting to know your self is a beneficial part of growth. It helps you learn how to love again, how to be a better companion, and gives you the parameters of which people will operate around. These tips are but a few of many things that you can do to improve the relationship with yourself.
How to learn how to love yourself
This is the main part that people want to know, how can I love myself. Learning how to love yourself, is a very simple process that can be broken down into a three-step process. Check out the infographic below.
Doing something special for yourself
This may seem elementary or silly, but doing something special for your self every once in a while allows you the opportunity to feel good. When you treat yourself better, it is less likely that you will allow others to treat you badly.
This is important because sometimes we judge ourselves based on how others treat us but not based on how we treat ourselves. Besides that point, it is a liberating feeling to be able to do something that makes you happy and that you enjoy it.
Appreciating all of you
Appreciation of your positives and negatives can help the process of loving yourself become easier. This is not always easy to do, as we have been conditioned to feel negative about our “bad” parts.
The not so nice parts of ourselves still are a part of us, and although we are great people, occasionally, we will have days and moments that can make us appear otherwise.
Allow yourself to be human
Lastly, allowing yourself to be human is probably the most important part of the aforementioned. What exactly does being human mean?
It means taking time to understand that you are flawed; taking the time to understand that you will make mistakes–and it’s okay. Being human means that you are perfectly designed to have the experiences that you have, there is no right or wrong way to be YOU. Allow your self room to think, mess-up, and grow, you owe it to yourself!
Conclusion
There is no one size fits all way to love yourself, because different people have different parts of themselves that need nourishing.Does this guide help in learning how to love yourself?
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