How To Love Yourself More and 5 Reasons Why It’s So Hard

If you need to learn how to love yourself more you’re on the right page…read on my friend and get ready for a healing journey of a lifetime.

You know, I’ve come a long way from where I was, say, 5 years ago. I mean back then I really hated myself. Almost everything about me sucked. Except for my hair. I always have nice hair. Anyway.

Self love was never even thought of. Never crossed my mind once. Didn’t even know what self love was, really. I discovered the truth in a smack upside your head kinda way.

So ya, I hated me and my life and just everything was bad. All the time. It was just after I left my last relationship that I really started working on me. Self confidence and all the other *selfs* which include: esteem, worth, respect but most importantly, self love!

I also really needed to figure out how to love myself more.

Not to mention, it was time to start being happy and stop being miserable. And oh man, was I miserable. Ask any of my friends. All I did was whine and complain. Anyway, the journey began and let me tell ya, it’s not an easy journey.

Figuring out how to love yourself more is no easy feat!

The first *self* I needed to work on? Self love. Yup. The hardest one of all. (go big or go home, right?) I didn’t even know where to start. I had no clue. I knew nothing about love. All I knew about love was that it came with conditions and it hurt all the time.

I knew, or so I thought, I had to give and give and put up with all sorts of ridiculous abuse in order to have it and keep it.

Yup, that’s all I knew about love. It sucked and it hurt. So where do I go from here? How will I learn, who will I turn to, how does this work?

I had a million questions and no answers. Nope, not a one. Off I went to figure out this self love stuff myself. Hard lessons and all.

Though I certainly haven’t got it all figured out just yet, I did discover quite a few things about myself and about the learning process on my way to self love.

I’m still learning but I thought I’d take a minute to share some things here with you in my hopes that they may either help you, alert you, resonate with you or guide you.

Take what you want, leave the rest.

You might also like these articles:

• 5 Steps to Loving Yourself Again and Honouring Your Emotions
• 11 Rare Habits That Mentally Strong People Have (that you should adopt)
• 5 Signs of Low Self Esteem and How to Overcome It
• 25 Powerful Self Worth Quotes to Help You Love Yourself More

Discovering what is blocking us from self love is important!

When we realize what is blocking us from loving ourselves more we can then work on how to fix that. The first thing we have to do is figure out what the underlying problems are.

Sadly, most of the problems lie within ourselves, our limiting beliefs and the way we have been loved and/or treated in the past by either family or former partners.

It’s a vicious toxic cycle of love that we don’t know how to break. You can break it, but it won’t be easy and it will take an awful lot of work from you.

Let’s first look at why it’s so hard to love ourselves.

It’s all you boo

It’s all up to you. There’s no magic wand, no magic pill, no magic potion you can drink that offers instant self love and gratification ( tequila doesn’t count, I soon discovered). The truth is, no one is going to come running to your rescue to show you how it’s done or where self love comes from.

Nope. You’re on your own to figure it out. There are books, oh there are a million books and blogs on self love and you can read them til the cows come home. Bottom line? It’s up to you.

Solution: 

Make the decision to start reading and doing research to find out how to love yourself again. The answer won’t come pounding at your door. You need to take the first step in healing and yes, it’s hard to do, but do it!

When you finally decide you are no longer interested in staying in misery, your whole life will change. Trust me on that.

What’s taking so long?

It takes a long time to get there. I mean to the place where you love yourself enough that no one and/or nothing can mess that up for you. I’m still working on it, every day as a matter of fact, and I love myself a lot!!

Yet I still hit walls, I still fall down, I still break my own heart. And just when I think I am glowing from all the self love I’ve got built up inside of me, whammo, my candle goes out.

Yup. It takes a long time to get to that “self love” place.

Solution:

This healing journey can be long and extremely frustrating. It also comes with a lot of grief and sorrow (as you dump toxic people). Healing is hard. Period. Stay the course. Go through all the tough times. Be persistent and relentless in your journey to self love.

You are worth it. Don’t give up.

We do dumb things…a lot

Well that was stupid!!! Yup. I hear myself say this to me a lot. What on earth did you do that for? I thought you loved yourself! Why did you do that? Smarten up dodo brain. To this day, I still find myself doing stupid things that I would have done 5 years ago.

I mean things that clearly show self love is not high on my priority list. Every now and then I revert back to old habits. The truth is, these are the habits I grew up with and maintained for almost 50 years. Dammit, they’re hard to break you know?

Solution:

Recognize what you did was wrong, don’t beat yourself up over it. You must be gentle with yourself because, remember, you’re still learning how to love yourself. You are totally reinventing your life.

Things will go wrong. It’s ok. One step back, two steps forward. Don’t give up on yourself because you had one slip. Brush off your butt and keep on going.

The universe tests us…a lot

What’s up with all the testing, Universe? I’m almost starting to feel like a lab rat. Ok, enough already. I get it. The Universe has a peculiar sense of humour and continues to throw things in my path that test my strength in the self love department.

Some days I win, some days I learn. Most days I win actually but every now and then something, or should I say someone, will show up and poof, like black magic, I’m the girl I was 5 years ago. Get ready for tests, and lots of them, from the Universe.

Solution:

These tests help you strengthen your self love muscle (or at least, help you grow and learn). Life is full of tests. It doesn’t always matter if you pass or fail them. What matters is that you learn the lesson from them. Find out what you did wrong and make a promise to yourself to not do that again.

Remember, we are not here to be punished or live in misery. Life is full of lessons, trials and tribulations. Enjoy them all. That’s how we grow.

It’s your journey

You may stand alone. Not everyone will get it. Not everyone will understand you. When you start saying no to things and yes to your self love, people just won’t get it. You may even lose some people along the way and that’s the truth!.

Keep in mind that you will need to lose people along the way. Toxic people. People who no longer serve you or who are simply no good for you and ya, it’s gonna be really hard.

Solution:

That’s ok to lose people.

The ones you want by your side will stay there. The ones who move on will make room for the ones who deserve to be in your life. People who used to be in your life may not like the new you. They may start distancing themselves. Let ’em go.

It may hurt but you will see, in time, how them leaving is for your greatest good.

You’ll see.

The long hard journey to self worth

It’s a long tough journey, no question about it. But you must stay true to you.

Do you want to continue to live in the manner you are living and always attract the wrong people and relationships in your life? Of course you don’t. But you will until you start loving yourself again.

Nothing changes if nothing changes. Read that line again if you have to. Nothing changes if nothing changes. And change begins with you.

Make the decision, take the leap, trust the process.

So why is self love so important?

Honestly? For a million reasons. Here are just a few:

• people will respect you more
• you will respect yourself more
• you will attract better people and opportunities into your life
• you will love your life (finally)
• you will be proud of the person you’ve become
• you will hold your head up high and walk in amazing self confidence
• there will be a beautiful inner peace and freedom in your heart and soul

…need I go on?

So why is self love so important? This is the only life you have. Do you want to spend it in misery with people walking all over you all the time OR do you want to be happy and free?

Not a hard question to answer, amirite? The choice is yours. Choose wisely

The healing never ends…

So as I continue down my path of self love, I will remember these hard truths as they show themselves to me, whether I like them or not. As I continue down my path of self love I will continue to grow, learn, love myself more, fall, cry, hurt myself some but mostly just keep on loving.

Self love takes a lot of hard work but it’s not impossible. You can and will get there one day.

Peace and Love

Iva