You should go and love yourself

What does that even mean?

I never hear men talking about self-love — how they express it or what it even means to love oneself.

Admittedly, I shouldn’t assume women do a whole lot of this, either. I would guess that it’s a more common and socially acceptable conversation to have in a group of women than men in our society, but that is beside the point.

Regardless of whether you are male, female or trans, you have found yourself here on Earth scurrying around in this organic vessel we decided to call a “body”, with something we labelled a “mind”, doing things with more or less of what we chose to call a “purpose”.

And so how do you think about your role in all of that? Are you wonder-struck, grateful, disappointed, or totally confused about it?

Whatever your level of certainty is about what this thing we call “life” is all about (let’s not dive into that right now), I believe we stand to learn a lot by exploring the concept of self-love and how we relate to our Self in general.

Starting to unpack the concept of “self-love”

Is self-love simply anything that is done intentionally to honour, respect, appreciate or nourish yourself — be it the body, mind or soul? In that case, this could be anything. Perhaps you take time to stretch your limbs each day or read positive affirmations each morning before you leave the house. Maybe you make time to do yoga on Tuesdays or go 10 minutes out of your way to the place that gives you a scalp massage when you get your hair cut.

What if you performed these same activities, though, without a “loving” intention, without it being perceived as an act of self-care? Would you be recieving the same benefits?

Then that begs the question, What are the benefits that we are trying to achieve, anyways? What is the aim?

Maybe it comes down to something deeper that is even more important to explore — something to do with the underlying beliefs and thought systems that shape our perspective of who we are as individuals and how we relate to the world around us. Things such as, How do we evaluate and derive our self-worth? How do we relate to others? What makes us complete and loveable people? What, if any, conditions are we placing on this or any of the love we experience in life?

I want to explore this topic more, and am keen to make this a sort of dialogue. I want to hear your thoughts. Shoot me a note or reply in the comments with anything that comes to mind. Here are a few questions to consider, too:

How do you express self-love?

When do you feel the most or least loving towards yourself?

What is your self-love contingent on? Are there conditions?

What is love, anyways?!

As always, I invite you to try out open dialogue as a tool for self-reflection. You can sign up for the trial of the program here.

Finally, this came to mind as I wrote the title of the post :)