Loving Yourself is Empowering

Loving yourself means you get your validation and worth from the inside. This is empowering and changes your entire world for the better. 

When we are children, we feel love deeply and share the love inside of us with joy and exuberance to everyone we know, especially our parents. That love is truly unconditional. 

But we also absorb what we receive back as the truth about our worth. 

We believe adults know everything, so if there is something wrong, it must be our fault. If a parent tells us something, we believe it wholeheartedly. Even something as ridiculous as the Easter Bunny or that we are no good. 

Wait, what?

If your parents told you all of the time how worthy and lovable you are, they did help to foster confidence in your belief that this was and is true. If this was your upbringing, your challenge in relationships will be when someone doesn't treat you that way because it will be so foreign to you. 

If your parents were not loving and supportive, or if they were very inconsistent due to their own issues, then you'll have a tougher time as an adult. 

Either way, you have to learn how to love yourself if you want to have deep, truly loving relationships.

If you don't love yourself, you'll seek constant validation from others. It isn't present in you, but it is a need. So you'll have to get it elsewhere. But if you do get it from one person, it still won't feel right. The only way this can be maintained long term by one person is if they take the validation away and give it back...over and over again. If they are consistent with their love, there's nothing to keep winning. So you'll look elsewhere to see where you can win it from someone else. Maybe from another partner or people, maybe at work, or still from your parents as an adult. But you won't ever find lasting peace.

When you love yourself, you already have that inner love and validation. It will be wonderful to get more of it from someone else, but you won't need it from them because it's already within. 

If you try to share love with someone doesnt love themselves, they will either not return love to you, or be inconsistent. If they do not return love to you at all, you will not be attracted to them. If they are inconsistent, you may try for awhile, but the lows will wear on you and you will eventually lose attraction to that person. 

The inconsistency is the only way they know how to receive love and keep winning it. They want it, but don't feel inside that they deserve it. So instead of a steady reciprocating force that makes you both stronger and better because of the relationship, it becomes a drain on you and confusing to them. 

If you love yourself but don't understand that you can't make someone love themselves no matter how much love you pour into them, you'll be stuck on a rollercoaster or two before you learn. Everyone is responsible only for their own self-love and cannot fix anyone else's lack. 

If a person isn't able to reciprocate, they need to recognize this within themselves and begin to foster and develop the love within them that will allow them to share and receive true love. They can't share what they don't have. They may have deeply intense feelings, but love is a certainty, not a hunger. It's hard to explain unless you have felt it. But once you have, the difference is night and day. 

But again, they need to realize that they are the cause and solution to the problem. That's what responsibility is. That sometimes only happens when they lose someone who truly loved them. It's a painful way to gain clarity, but it's a powerful one. 

Loving yourself isn't easy or instant. It takes work to forgive yourself, accept yourself, celebrate who you are, and become your own best friend. But once you do, you become whole. Once you are whole, you become a gift to everyone you meet. And more than that, you become a gift to yourself. You can still get hurt in relationships, but you'll never be dependent on the opinion of another person again. That's true empowerment.

-Doe Zantamata 

Learn how to love yourself again, or for the very first time: https://amzn.to/46CX1mm