The Significance of Self-Love

The concept of self-love is a broad subject to consider but I wish to put a light on it as we lack to love ourselves amidst our imperfections. For many of us, the subject has been over-blown and we have cornered ourselves searching it in self-help books, or just to hug a tree or treat ourselves with devilishly delicious food or going on solo-dates! We have been always trying to be perfect and work towards perfection in a way that, after a long time we end up being hard on ourselves all too often without even realising it. Love is the one that keeps us going in this fast-pacing world. But do we have enough love to give for ourselves? We all would have gone through a phase when we have all the things required in life but still we lack happiness, still incomplete with confusion and hatred for no reason. Have we thought of why? We have been conventionally seeking love from others, expecting a validation we never get, but in this journey, we lose ourselves, our respect, and our own happiness. We forget to appreciate ourselves but we expect the same from others. This does not seem logical because we solicit the validation from others which we can obtain from ourselves. It is like we are seeking an answer from the world when we know it all by ourselves. The coercing nature of society pushes us to satisfy everyone's desires, but it is paramount to look after ourselves in this journey of satisfying others. We have been destined to achieve something that nature has manifested in us, but we try to build and confine ourselves to something that the society expects. At the same time, we forget ourselves and our actual purpose. Self-love is not about being selfish, but it is about putting ourselves first over anything. But how do we know that for which all things we need to put ourselves first? It is our soul that answers to every activity or every transaction we perform. When the inner 'I' say that we are not good enough in doing a specific thing then we need to reconsider the decision of proceeding further. As the saying goes, we have answers within ourselves but we often ignore them because we always get carried away with the flow which is a peccadillo we do to ourselves. We often forgive the mistakes committed by our loved ones, but we punish ourselves with guilt and regret for the mistakes we do. That's bizarre!! Our perception of ourselves affects our vibe. If we could forgive our loved ones, then why we carry the pain, regret, and guilt with us when we can forgive and accept us amidst all the imperfections? This is how we have been created and we need to accept for the way we are. We always compare our lives with that of others but comparing would only slow us down in a longer run. We do not give ourselves enough credit for overcoming things and getting better. We pretermit to celebrate our strength. We should always know our own worth before setting an expectation from others. Once we achieve it, we will know what to and what not to permit in our inner circle. Self-love is the key to happiness, once we are happy, we are in a far better position to achieve success in every aspect of life. We need to love ourselves, but also analyse and be critical of how we think, act, and behave because self-love without self-awareness is futile. Always be accountable!