Self-love: A Mirror Image of Yourself

Do You Truly Love Yourself?

 I’m sure most of us are familiar with the saying, ‘...love your neighbour as yourself’. 

A lot of us make use of it regularly without actually having an understanding of what it is. It’s a beautiful instruction, but often quoted without a true understanding of what it really means. There may be other views on it, but today, I want to share my view with you, and I hope it gets you thinking.

Before you go all ‘love your neighbour as yourself’, ask the big question: ‘Do I love myself?’ It is important to ask that because you can’t give what you don’t have.

You must love yourself enough to be able to love someone else right. It is the amount of love you have for yourself that will reflect on how you treat yourself and the people around you, just like a mirror image of yourself. 

What Does Self-love Mean to You?

 Self-love is beyond feeling ecstatic or having butterflies in one’s tummy. Self-love does not always mean comfort or pleasure; it is not always sweet, it could be a sacrifice.

 It might mean giving up toxic habits for healthier ones, giving up junk for healthier food choices, hitting the gym instead of going for quick-fix creams and medications, it might mean enduring the pain because you have something to gain, just like the fitness mantra:  'No pain, no gain’.

Self-love could mean healing from childhood trauma so you can treat people better. 

Remember, hurt people, hurt people? 

When you’re broken, you tend to see other people through the lens of hurt or brokenness, instead of love, and instead of showing care, love, or affection, you tend to emit hatred, resentment, jealousy, and revenge. 

You suspect everyone who comes close to you because you’re judging them from a place of hurt and not love.

This happens because you’ve not healed enough to be a source of healing to someone else, you’ve not experienced love enough to be able to love others, and you struggle to treat people rightly because you’re still struggling with yourself. 

Self-love is inside-out; it’s an overflow from what you have that others feel and enjoy. But first, you need to feel that love enough to be able to give it out.

Self-love could be reading or learning something new just to overcome ignorance, not because you compete with anybody, but because you’re out to become a better version of yourself. 

It simply means that you love yourself enough to evolve, and so you pay the sacrifice of reading, researching, and self-development; it’s about becoming better even when no one is clapping. Because in the end, you can’t teach what you’ve not learned or studied about; you teach from your reservoir of knowledge or experience, and that’s a function of self-love.

You can’t love others well if you don’t love yourself first.

So the next time you hear, ‘love your neighbour as yourself’, ask yourself, ‘Do I love myself enough?’

✍️The Expression Voice.