People are constantly advising that you have to "love yourself" completely before you can love anyone else. I think I believe this to an extent - but that is not what this article is about. "Loving yourself" should come from you and be for you, not for anyone else. You shouldn't learn to love yourself for the end goal of meeting your soulmate. Self-acceptance and self-love are about the self, and sometimes that is the hardest thing to accept.
We live in a world of rejection. It is unfortunately something we will all face multiple times throughout our lives. We don't get into that college, we get heartbroken, we don't get the job, we get heartbroken again. The list goes on and on. This pattern makes it extremely easy to let that voice in your head berate you with, "you aren't good enough, pretty enough, smart enough." Muting that little demon is the hardest thing, and we have this horrible habit of only listening to the negatives in our head instead of the positives, but it can be done.
This past week I received timeless advice. I had the opportunity to go to the American College Theatre Festival (it was just as theatre-nerdy as you're imagining), and it was wonderful. I'm convinced there is no one better to get self-loving advice from than a working performer - no one knows rejection more intimately. A guest artist at the conference spent the first 45 minutes of a master class on a beautiful lecture of loving yourself. He said to make it in the business, and even in this world, you have to learn to love yourself. You can tell as soon as someone walks in a room if they love themselves or not. It is not just about confidence, but about the way you treat people and interact. People who love themselves are respectful, kind, and willing to take risks. People who are blatantly rude and degrading have built up this defense mechanism because they do not love themselves.
In order to get to this place of self-acceptance, you have to recognize that you are unique. Every single person is unique. You have the body that you were born with and no amount of wishful thinking is going to change that. The first step is accepting yourself and embracing everything that is unique about you. Don't try to hide the fact that you are 6 feet tall or 4 feet tall - that is what makes you unique, and unique is beautiful.
It has taken me 22 years to slowly learn to love myself, and I'm still not completely there. I like to think that most days I do love myself, but it is by no means a constant feeling. It ebbs in and out and there are days where I may feel like complete and utter shit, but I'm working on making these days more rare. I'm working to love myself not for that person I used to love or for anyone I will love in the future, but for me. Loving yourself is a life-long practice, but it is worth every second of your time.
