Most of us have had dreams of growing old with the person we really love. We want commitment, loyalty and trust. We want to feel safe. We want security - the pleasant fact that we have somehow who promised to love us and keep us company. We want to make them the happiest they've ever been. We want to spoil them. We want to think about them more than we think about ourselves.
In the meantime, we date. We search for someone who we think would make the perfect boyfriend (If you're a guy reading this then, girlfriend). We want something that will become serious and last a long time. We want to cook for them, take them to parties, introduce them to all our friends. We want someone who is funny, kind, caring and smart. We want a partner that will listen, someone who will try to help in any way they can. We want them to not only be our boyfriend or girlfriend, but our best friend, too. We want someone who has the ability to make us laugh and cheer us up and bring us down. We want the jealousy and the pain. We want all of the agonies, too.
Because that's what happens when you're in love. Many of us just want to be loved, the problem is, sometimes the "he" in our lives becomes more important than the "me." We forget to love ourselves in the mix of loving for someone else, which results in you becoming more vulnerable to getting hurt. We cannot hope for someone to support us if we don't have faith in ourselves. We cannot wish for security and laughter and jealous fights if we do not believe we deserve them. We cannot be honest to another human being if we are not being honest with ourselves. Someone else cannot listen to us muffle our inner voices. Someone else cannot take care of us if we don't know how to heal our own wounds. Someone else cannot make us feel confident if we are deeply insecure. Most importantly, you cannot expect another person to believe in you if you don't believe in yourself.
I cannot begin to stress how important it is to love yourself. Loving yourself is an important task that can be extremely challenging as well. I have met plenty of people in my 18 years that have perceived compliments as a form of arrogance, and would constantly remind the people around them to not love themselves "too much," for this type of self-indulgence would become a narcissistic, ugly trait that would hinder the possibility of being loved by another human being. But I am here to tell you that despite the popular belief, loving yourself without restraint does not make you conceited. It makes you indestructible.
Self-love is not a crime. It's time to eliminate the myths we tell ourselves; time to retire those tired old stories. It's time to stop making excuses, and to step up and live the life we've always wanted. It is truly possible to live from the most passionate, rambunctious part of yourself - I am living proof, and I am by any means, not super-human. I am just like you. I spent years battling the inner voices in my head simply because I didn't have the tools to help me deal with my emotions. Throughout my self-discovery, I've discovered and created a litany of tools and techniques, which make us the basis of my teachings of self-love. Teaching young women like me, to fall in love with themselves - madly, deeply, and passionately. My life gets better every day, because I "walk-my-talk." I mean of course I have rough days, but who doesn't? You can't have good days without the bad. But every time I practice self-love, I become happier, I feel more thankful, and I radiate that love out to others.
So please, learn to love yourself before loving another human being; lacking to do so will only result in heartbreak.
