Self-Love: Perfection Not Required

Three of the scariest words I've ever said were "I love me." That's not a typo. I still remember the first time I whispered it to myself while staring into the mirror. I stumbled over the words. I wondered if I meant them. I also wondered if saying them to myself was narcissistic. 

What a strange moment that was. We often talk about self-love with either a wishy-washy, new age-y attitude or with derision. But, the reality is we can't truly love anyone else until we love ourselves. 

Loving yourself might be the farthest thing from narcissism because to love one's self, one must acknowledge and face the things one doesn't much like about one's self. 

Loving yourself doesn't mean you think you're perfect or superior or even wise. It simply means you treat yourself with the same kindness, compassion, understanding, and devotion you treat anyone you love.

For me, at that point in my life, that was unthinkable. How could I possibly love myself? I had all these flaws. What if I didn't have enough love left for him or her or them or whoever? What if I treated myself treating myself with kindness required letting someone else down? What if someone else thought I was egotistical because I loved myself enough to take care of my needs? What if...

Yet, as I stood there and whispered "I love me" to my reflection, something in me also shifted. I felt my body physically relax. Loving myself was the true definition of embracing love as an action verb not as an emotion.

Oddly, I hadn't even realized I didn't love myself until I confronted some self-sabotaging behaviors I'd slowly adopted. I lived in a mindset, as I've said before, where I thought I needed to be perfect to be loved, so I strove for perfection even at the expense of my health, my relationships, my work, my life. Because even though I thought that striving for perfection was about earning other people's love, I had yet to accept that I was also demanding that perfection before I would love myself.

I finally realized I didn't love myself when someone else called me amazing and my first instinct, though I didn't act on it, was to list all my imperfections to prove that I wasn't amazing.

As I started repeating "I love me." to myself several times a day, it became clearer and clearer that I didn't treat myself with love. I didn't even know how to treat myself with love, so I started doing research. How does one treat one's self with love? How does one actively love one's self?

At first I found a lot of things I already did, but as I examined them I realized I didn't do do them for myself. I didn't do them as acts of self-care, self-compassion, or self-love. I did things because they were expected, they checked off a box, they made someone else happy, and/or they worked for someone else.

We can check off self-care boxes all day long and not feel one bit different. The key isn't in the doing. The key is the motivation for doing this or that or the other. We can't take bubble baths or practice yoga or mediate or do facials or journal or whatever it is someones tells us will count as self-care just to check it off a list and expect to feel self-love. It doesn't work that way. I wanted it to work that way. I think many of us want it to work that way.

Self-love takes work. We have to be willing to do the work. We have to be willing to ask ourselves the hard questions. We have to be willing to discover what self-love looks like in our lives. We have to be able to look inside and see what self-care means to us. This was the hardest part for me. I wanted it to be easy. I wanted to check off a box or two or ten of self-care tasks and be filled with self-love. I wanted someone to tell me how to love myself fully through self-care, but it just doesn't work that way.

In the midst of this journey, I spent a year practicing vulnerability and another practicing gratitude. Both these years brought me insights into myself, those around me, and the idea of self-love. 

No one can sell you self-love. You don't get it from taking this course or that course. You don't get it from reading every self-help book on the shelves. You don't get it from buying fancy self-care products. You don't get it from doing what works for someone else.

Now, let me be clear. All of those things might help you learn more about self-care, self-love, and self-compassion, but they won't give them to you. You can take the lessons you learn and apply them to your life, but the real work comes from asking  yourself the hard questions, exploring what obstacles stand in your way, and digging deeper into your own pain than you ever wanted to.

Self-love comes when you identify how to treat yourself with loving-kindness and self-compassion and understanding. Self-love comes when you identify what self-care means to you. Maybe it is some of those things you once checked off a list. Maybe not. I discovered that yoga, meditation, and practicing gratitude are all important parts of my self-care, but they weren't until I stopped doing them to appeal to other people and made these practices about me and my life. I discovered that talking to a good friend, petting my cats, and a teddy bear from my childhood also play a part in my self-care at times. So does writing, whether a poem, a story, a book, an essay, or simply in my meditation and gratitude journals.

I set my office up with artwork, symbols of my accomplishments, photos of people who have encouraged and inspired me, memorabilia, and other inspirational pieces that support my self-care and remind me to practice self-love whenever I feel less than kind toward myself.

My self-care needs change over time. I need to embrace variety in my self-care routines or else they become just one more task to check off a list. I have to pay attention to whether I'm doing self-care as a way of loving myself or from some other motivation.

But, I love myself enough to do that work. I study. I read. I engage. I actively seek ways to take care of myself. I investigate the issues that pull me away from self-love into self-loathing or even self-indifference. Then I look at why and work through the issues. 

My issues might not match yours, but that doesn't matter. It's not about the issues themselves. It's about loving yourself enough to find your issues and address them. It's about loving yourself enough to look in the mirror to look yourself in they eye and say "I love me." even if the person looking back at your seems unfamiliar in that moment.