How to love yourself

Hellooo, time to read reaaad :))

Today, I was asked by someone to write about 'how to love yourself', and I am very excited to share my perspective on this.
It is actually a topic that just came in with good timing because the other day my friend literally told me that I come off as someone who loves herself, and that got me start thinking about this. And l love answering random questions because I constantly do it in my head as someone who is super curious haha.
I hope you enjoy today's article.

'Love yourself' is easier said than done

First of all, I have a question.
…what is 'loving' for you?

To me, loving is a commitment.
Whereas liking is more focused on finding things that you can instantly become fond of, loving looks like it always comes with patience. I often see Instagram posts saying 'love yourself' 'tell yourself I love you, you are brave and talented' etc.. and I do think it is a great way to treat yourself.    
However, I may not be fully satisfied just with those words.
Telling yourself kind stuff is nice,
but I believe there's more that loving requires.
If it was that easy to love yourself, the person who asked me to write this didn't even give me the topic, people don't have a discussion about it over decades.  
The relationship with yourself is the longest, forever ongoing relationship you ever have, so it makes sense that it can be challenging to do it 'well'.

Who are you to yourself?

To love yourself, I think for us to know what kind of relationship we want with ourselves helps lots. I personally always see myself to be a best friend of mine. And to me, best friend is the person who is always honest and doesn’t run away when things look difficult. Like I know I want to try lots of things but I always find it difficult for myself to get myself out of comfort zone because I have many fears. So then showing that I can overcome things like that is a way that I love myself.

Yet, I don't think loving yourself is to only accept yourself because you can do something or have achieved anything.  Loving yourself is to be patient with the process that you become who you want to be. So no matter what you want from the relationship with yourself, loving yourself requires a lot of time and practice.
Just like you build a solid relationship with your partner.

Perfection < No lies in imperfection

In my life so far, facing who I truly am has not been something that I did without struggling. As we navigate life, it looks like it's one of the most difficult things to see ourselves for who we really are. We always live with expectations. And as much as we naturally expect things from others, we also do that from ourselves. It's not easy to let go of ego, to realize things that you didn't think were parts of yourself acutually are, to be okay with yourself not fitting in somewhere you thought you would, to recognize a mistake you’ve made and forgive yourself, to admit that you have things you can't easily like about yourself...literally there is tons of things that can challenge us so we see our true selves. But I believe you'll feel better once you be honest with your own imperfection than looking away from who you are.

Feeling safe with a bit of excitement

Over the last few years, I have learnt how it feels like to love someone.
Wait, does it sound like I had a big romance?😂　Unfortunately no lol

But I luckily had many moments where I knew that I love people around me and am loved by them. Friends, coworkers, and family.

Love feels secure.
You just feel safe to express who you are,  
And it's not feeling plain.
You naturally look forward to seeing where a relationship with whoever you love is going, like you are excited to just experience things together, Not too much of worry, no judgement.

What if we all could love ourselves like we genuinely can be so excited about ourselves? Isn't that such a beautiful thing?

Loving isn't done without working on a relationship. But just because it's so, it doesn't have to feel tense all the time, either. Even sometimes we pressure ourselves to love ourselves well, but at the end of the day it's just the small things we can do for ourselves and we don't need
to doubt too much to the point if we do it right.

Sending love

Wow, it was so much fun to write this article.I truly enjoyed reflecting on what I've learnt so far especially intentionally over the last 5.6 years.

Thank you to my friend who gave me this idea, thank you all for reading this aaalll the way through! (I know it was long!!)

Lots of love,
Hanae 🩷