Life is unpredictable and messy. It can upset calm waters and make them rough, drowning you in overwhelming feelings that make you run away. You spent so much of your time putting your love in people, your career, and living your best life that you forgot one crucial thing: To put a little bit of love in yourself.
It’s a sad day when you realize that all the love in external aspects of life is temporary. In fact, learning to love yourself again starts with understanding that you forgot all about doing it in the first place. Loving yourself again starts with forgiveness. Forgive yourself for everything that happened before. You put your love into people who may not deserve it, a career that may not be what you dreamed of, and experiences that you wish you could take back. And it’s ok that you did that since now you can turn all that love inward.
Loving yourself again means knowing who you are.
In case you forgot who that is, now is your time to find out. First, it includes finding out what made you so lost and negligent. Second, it means going through the hard road of healing yourself from the inside out and tackling the pain. Knowing yourself means finding out all the dark corners of your soul and figuring out what it all means to you.
What’s more, being able to love yourself means knowing what you actually love to do. It means rediscovering hobbies that you abandoned or backpacking your way across the globe. It means finding all the lemons in your life and attempting to make lemonade out of them, realizing it tastes pretty damn good. Finally, loving yourself means knowing that you love new experiences and that you’re making yourself a priority.
When you truly love yourself, you learn to make hard decisions.
If you’re someone who wants everyone to be happy except yourself, then decide to finally do right by yourself. Cut people out of your life who don’t benefit you and help you grow. Furthermore, making a hard decision means not binge-drinking on a Sunday night or putting off seeing a therapist. They’re called “hard decisions” for a reason — they’re hard. But making the right decisions for yourself means you already love yourself more than you know.
To truly love yourself means to set all of your relationships right. Make boundaries when you need to and let people in. Yes, it means being vulnerable and accepting the possibility that the people you want will always be there for you and that you will attract only the people that are meant to be in your life. It means fixing your mistakes and apologizing for your wrongdoings. It means holding your loved ones to a higher regard than you did before and not ever taking them for granted. Finally, loving yourself means sending one more text, making one more phone call, and having one more conversation so that the people in your life know that you will show up for them. No matter what.
Featured image via Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels
