Love yourself a little extra!

If there's one word that is precious to me and close to my heart in this entire universe, that is Self-love. I always believe that it is self love that shapes us into what we are and who we are becoming. It is our echo that binds us to our core. We are nothing if there's is no love for ourselves. We live like an empty shell with no purpose, with no goal, with no direction if there's no love for ourselves inside us. It gives us true identity, it is a safe space where we are true to ourselves, true to our beliefs and thoughts. Self-love is like a life long romance with one self, where we love ourselves no matter who loves us or not, where we hold ourselves no matter who stays or who leaves us, where we choose ourselves no matter who chooses us, every hour, every minute and every second of our lives.

Some people think self-love is selfish, and an obsession, but it isn't. It is more like a self awareness, a consciousness and hope. The whole point of Self-love is something where you water yourself before you water someone else. Where you be there for yourself, before being there for someone. Where you take care of yourself, before you take care of others. Where you love yourself, before you love others. If you can love, care and be there for yourself and when you know how to do it, it becomes easy to do that for others. If you can make yourself feel loved, you can make others feel loved. If you know what makes you happy, you can make others happy. If you know what hurts you, you won't hurt others in the same way. If you know what's best for you, you do the same for others. Above everything else it makes you empathetic and kind.

If you ask me why self-love is so important for everyone? Let me tell you, it is what makes you stronger from the inside. We often look for strength in our partners, family members and friends who believes in us. We lean on them. But what if I tell you that you already have that strength inside you all along, but you just don't know that you have it inside you and you don't know how to find it. You can find self-love when you believe in yourself before someone else believes in you. When you love yourself before someone else loves you. When you become your best friend before someone else becomes your friend. So if you become complete and enough from within it becomes easy to navigate the relationships. It becomes easy to be with someone who comes as an addition into your life. 

Because Self-love teaches you what is good for you, what is bad for you. It helps you differentiate between right and wrong. It tells you what to hold and what to let go. It tells you when to stay and when to leave. It tells you what is fair and what is not. When you know all these and practice them in your life, you know how to treat your partner, and you will also know how your partner is treating you. Everything becomes transparent. And when someone is being wrong to you, you can sniff that problem from a mile away. You will know what kind of love you want and what kind of love you are getting. You can know the respect you deserve and the respect you are getting in a relationship. You will become self aware of everything that is around you when you are calm and composed and strong from inside, but if you are shattered from inside and when you don't heal yourself and if you are constantly longing for a support and a shoulder to lean on, and if you are looking for love in every person you meet, and if you are searching for love, comfort and validation from outside to complete you and to fix you then that get's you nowhere.

 

Sometimes we become way too kind in friendships and relationships and we forget to draw the line. We get close to someone that we forget to keep boundaries and they misuse that kindness for a weakness and takes us for granted. I always believe that in any relationship there should be a limit. No one tells you what is that limit and where to draw the line. But I can tell that it is your tolerance level that decides the limit. When you know you can only give a certain space to a relationship, you draw the line there out of self-love, don't go beyond that level, don't go beyond anything that pushes your tolerance level. The more you tolerate the more you run out of your limits. This is where people go wrong when they misinterpret things. When they misinterpret patience as strength, endurance as love, and silence as acceptance. So you have to decide the limits so that no one can break you. The way you keep monthly budget for your shopping out of salary, where you know how much you can spend on something, in the same way you should know what level of emotions you can spend on someone or in your relationship, you should know the level of pain you can tolerate. If someone is hurting you and you go on accept it without stopping them then that's not love my dear, that's madness. If the other person truly respects you and loves you then they will never hurt you. So you should know that limit when to stop someone, when to say no and when to move on. But if you don't stop them and they do it over and over again then it effects your mental health. And it comes down to a point where you lose yourself. That is why self-love is important. It helps you to be kind to yourselves.

When I said be kind to yourselves, it also applies to the people who carries the grief inside them for a very long time and hurts themselves unnecessarily. The sadness they feel when they lose their love, when the person they love betrays them, when everyone around them hurts them and makes them feel like they are nothing, when they lose everything in life and when they don't see any hope in life it sinks them into depression. When a person knows that they can't hurt others they should also know that they shouldn't hurt themselves carrying that grief for a longtime that can break them beyond repair. Sometimes you should let go of that pain and free yourselves from it. If someone betrayed you, then that's not your mistake. It is the nature of that person. You thought of them as love and they thought of you as an option. And now instead of realising that truth you are hurting yourself thinking about it over and over again why it happened and why that person has done that to you. And you are stuck in that loop forever. Can I tell you something, If someone truly loves you, they don't betray you. Period. But if you can't break that grief wall that you have surrounded yourself with, then you are hurting yourself thousand times more than the actual hurt. They have hurt you once and you are hurting yourself everyday. That's not fair. You have chained yourself in a cage of darkness that is eating you little by little everyday from inside. Do you think you deserve that after all the love and time you gave to a person and a relationship? You deserve all the happiness in the world. I wish that for you, for everyone who is reading this. I wish you healing from all the things that were not meant to break you, not meant to make you so vulnerable, and not meant to happen to you, for all the things that are not your fault. But you can heal yourselves and come out of that darkness only when you are ready to let go that sadness and that void out of your lives, and when you embrace all that broken pieces of you without any guilt and shame. For that you need to accept things as they are and stop overthinking. And when you start accepting and loving your new self, when you think you are ready, you can welcome the love again into your life. I repeat WHEN YOU ARE READY. Don't push yourself more. Just take one step at a time towards healing.

That's why I recommend self-love to everyone. It is not only a everyday essential but it is also a magical ingredient for a long, healthy and happy life. Because when you don't love yourself your only source of love will be from outside and when you lose it you become empty. That's why "Love yourself a little extra everyday and when you love yourself more, it becomes easy to live even when someone stops loving you."

Love and Light,

©Author Queeny Yalangi.