

What is Self-Love?
Being a Lesbian November 23, 2015 Nazish Idrees

No love is meaningless, for LGBT community the self-love concept is even more important than others to prevent them from the harmful actions of not only those who are outside this group but also the harm intended to have from their own partners. It is normal to sometimes get along by wrong partners and life goes on by trying and testing options we find in life. Change is constant and we need feelings of self-love from time to time.
Defining Self-Love
In healthy terms, it is defined as the urge of one’s internal feelings to seek warmth from his or her efforts. Any act intends to perform for the purpose of own well-being and welfare. It can also be seen as a respect for own benefit.
Importance
- Everyone is worthy of being loved, when there is a feeling that that love lacks in our life, start to love yourself is must for healthy and happy existence
- Trusting on self is the secret to drive others to trust you, if you cannot trust own self then it is not wise to expect it from others, this same principle works on respect. So respect “you”, values and attitudes to receive from others too. Without these ingredients the recipe of satisfactory life is incomplete.
- If there is a gap of love feelings in one’s life this affects on goals, desires and thinking abilities love “you” and make right decisions for future.
- Self-love habit covers negative emotions of anger, guilt and even events like failures.
- Self-love promotes confidence.
- It removes the evils of complaining and comparisons from your social life.
- It breaks the outline of perfection and change view towards “its fine and normal to be different”
- Self-love encourages you to fight in hardships with smile.
- Self-love gives ability to control self, inject the sense of accomplishments and help in being proud of yourself for whatever you do.
- It allows to select best option out of opportunities of self-growth and development and to take advantage of an only available option.
- It enriches you to be an independent and responsible citizen.
- It makes you to handle criticisms and to volunteer for new challenges to become better.
- A reason and motivation to survive is achieved.
- Happy relationships will establish
- Make you the developer of your own road to success
Effectiveness
It is determined through researches on people with all gender identities and the results had shown that those who practice self-love have better personal life, relationships and careers. The supporters of self-love do perform best of their skills while others have difficulty in moving with the constantly shaping life events. It is served a trigger towards the mastery of developed skills and awareness about one’s own personality, expectations, weaknesses and wishes.
Disadvantage of having excessive self-love
- Perceived as boasting
- Makes you think superior when done a mistake
- Ends secure relationships
- Makes you unable to see areas need improvement for own betterment
- Letting you loose inner control while outside issues are not critical enough
- Spreads negativity
Dealing with Barriers in self-love & ways to practice it
- Consider treating yourself as you are someone dear to you
- Take care of yourself physically and find solutions to heal and improve your soul
- Speak to yourself daily about what positive traits you have
- Think about your achievements and compliments
- Weekly plan a fun activity to do on daily basis
- Include jokes, funny images and soothing lyrics in your daily words
- Try to make a poetry, poem or a funny statement depending on your abilities
- Be fond of physical movements, can be exercise or dance
- Forgive others, it will bring peace
- Avoid getting judgmental or critical of others
- Perform your feelings in front of a mirror, be an actor and praise yourself
- Accept others, no matter what they are giving. If you agree to stand by them forget their faults
- Make a art piece, any drawing or display of expression
- Show your emotions daily
- Value yourself, talk about what’s good in you
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Campbell, W.K., Foster, C.A., & Finkel, E.J. (2002). Does self-love lead to love for others? A story of narcissistic game playing.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83(2), 340-354.
Freire, E. (2013). The healing power of self-love. Therapy Today, 24(9), 34-35.
Holmes, L. (2014). Five science-backed reasons it’s important to love yourself. The Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/30/love-yourself-science-study_n_5900878.html
Neff, K. (2015). The five myths of self-compassion: What keeps us from being kinder to ourselves? Psychotherapy Networker Magazine, 39(5), 30-47.
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