Today I want to talk to you guys a little bit about why it is so important to love yourself and focus on loving yourself. If you haven't noticed, in today's society - at least I personally feel like - we are being taught all of the time, especially on social media and in magazines or wherever, that we are not enough. We are taught to compare ourselves to the celebrities behind filters and crazy high follower counts and we feel like we are not enough because we can't compare to these people in our heads.
I am going to tell you something really important right now and I need you to hear me on this point if you do not hear anything else in this message: Loving yourself is not selfish. You have got to take care of yourself. That is just practical common sense. If you cannot take care of yourself then you will never be able to really take care of someone else. I am sure you have heard the phrase that you can't pour from an empty cup. Well, it is true. If you want to help others or even just be a normal functioning person in our society then you have to be able to take care of yourself and love yourself without feeling guilty for it.
If you are not able to love yourself then nobody will be able to love you the way you need to be loved. That is why so many of us get into relationships, and we don't know what love is so we just accept whatever they give us. We start to rely on love because as humans we need love to function, but instead of giving love to ourselves, we require love from other people which can make us desperate and can keep us in situations or in relationships that we know that we shouldn't be in because we are too afraid to be without love. If we could just start to love ourselves then we would not feel the need to settle for horrible relationships that keep us down or make us feel like less than we are. If we could start to love ourselves then we could know what love should look like and we would know when to accept it because it is genuine from somebody else.
Loving yourself means owning everything that you are. I want you to understand that you were created for a purpose, and on purpose. There are beautiful things about you that you need to be aware of for when you are feeling like less than you are, but there are also some dark and not as beautiful things about you just like everybody else. Loving yourself means accepting both the good and the bad for what they are and continuing to love regardless of either. If you ever want to truly love others, if you ever want to truly be loved, if you ever want to help others, if you ever want to be regulated among the people around you, then you have to start by accepting yourself and learning to love yourself. And no, that is not selfish.
It all starts with you.
