Self-love is essential to learn. You can learn to cultivate self-love even if you don’t think you could ever love yourself. What is self-love? It is the love of self. You can go on a journey to love yourself, despite your warts and all.
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What Is Self-Love?
In Greek, philautia means self-love. Self-love means that you love yourself for who you are. You care about your well-being. Self-love is vital for singles to know, understand, and practice. This is the love whereby you learn to love yourself.
Self-love is a necessary step before you can move on to self-acceptance. You can then begin to develop self-awareness. You won’t respect yourself until you accept yourself and love yourself first.
You can begin to accept yourself for your weaknesses. You can start to forgive yourself for your mistakes. It won’t be easy, but it can help your self-love journey.
Self-interest is an aspect of self-love. It is natural for you to want to be successful. You will take actions that give you an advantage. It is natural to play to your strengths. Self-interest is natural. There is nothing wrong with wanting to reach your life goals and be successful.
Once you can love yourself, you can then begin treating yourself better. You can then practice self-care. You can take care of yourself. You can become more confident. You want to work to achieve your life goals.
Related – What Is An Intrapersonal Relationship?
7 Ways Society Distracts You From Practicing Self-Love
There are many ways in which society distracts you. Society does not want you to learn to love yourself. It does not want you to learn to know yourself. It misleads you with entertainment, fear, and stress.
Entertainment
Social media and entertainment are ways to prevent you from getting to know yourself. You may compare yourself to others you see on social media. This will affect your self-esteem and your self-image.
Entertainment on television, Netflix, or watching your favorite influencer or content creator are ways to ensure you are distracted. The entertainment industry is there to prevent you from being productive.
Solution
Entertainment can be a waste of time. You don’t need to watch the latest movie or television show to be happy. You can start to use your social media accounts less. You could consider canceling your subscriptions to save money. You can then become more productive.
Related – Welcome To The Circus: Bread, Circuses, And Debt Traps
Fear
The mainstream media keeps you in a state of fear. It does this by showing and telling you information that is always bad. The goal is to keep you in a state of fear to prevent you from acting in your own life.
When you are fearful, you cannot function. You go into a defensive mode. When you are on defense, you will never be able to find ways to improve yourself or to get ahead. This is precisely what the mainstream media’s role is. To prevent you from being afraid of whatever the current new enemy or fear is rather than from focusing on yourself.
Solution
Turn off the television. Stop watching the news. 99% of the time, what is on the news won’t directly affect you.
Financial Stress
The financial system is built on debt. That is why the system wants you to be in debt. Add on top of the financial stress from being in debt, unable to get by each month, and then having to pay your taxes each year to scrape by, and it is no wonder why people are stressed.
Solution
You can take on a side hustle to bring in extra income. You could eventually turn your side gig into your full-time job once it brings in more money than your current job. You could also consider starting a business. A business can be a physical or online business today.
Relationship Stress
Your relationships with yourself, friends, or family may need improvement. This can add to your stress. If you have difficulty with a relationship, you may have to work to repair it. This will require you to put time and effort into a relationship.
Solution
If you have toxic people in your life, get rid of them. You can spend less time focusing on external relationships and work to develop the relationship with yourself.
Related – Learn How To Remove Toxic People From Your Life Like An Expert
Emotional Stress
Emotional stress is a natural reaction to the stresses of life. You may have depression, anxiety, lose or gain weight, drink too much, or have another emotional problem. You may just have experienced a bad day at work.
Emotional stress can negatively affect how you view yourself. If you experience depression, at worst, you may think that life is not worth living. You don’t think you could ever practice self-love when you have dark thoughts. Self-love is a process that starts every single day again.
Solution
You can practice meditation. You can do an activity that calms you down. Destress and control your emotions. Work to rid yourself of negative emotions and replace them with positive emotions.
Romantic Relationships
Romantic relationships can be distractions. People may be single for many different reasons. Society tells people to focus on romantic relationships rather than learning self-love. People do not know about themselves this way. They become distracted and waste valuable time and money on dating.
Solution
You can learn to enjoy being single! You can focus on yourself. You don’t need to date or marry to be happy.
Giving Up Self-Responsibility
Society wants you to give up your self-responsibility to politicians and the government. It tells you that politicians and the government are there to serve you. Politicians would never use their position of power to benefit themselves. That could never happen. Politicians would never put their self-interest before voters. They would never do insider trading or put the interests of their lobbyist friends before you to put money into their pocket.
If you believe politicians are angels, you still believe in a fairy tale.
Solution
You can practice self-responsibility. You can work to find ways to become less reliant on politicians, the government, and other institutions. You can work to take back your life. You can begin to find ways to have more control over areas of your life.
Conclusion
Self-love is important. The most important relationship is the one that you have with yourself. Yet society distracts you with things from entertainment to the news to your financial situation. You can learn to love yourself for who you are. You can then begin focusing on yourself to improve your situation.
