All You Need is Love - No, Seriously.

So we’ve made it past Valentine’s Day…. A holiday that purports the celebration of love. Meh. Anyone who knows me, knows that I share Ron Swanson’s sentiment regarding Valentine’s Day. I am all about celebrating love. I just think buying chocolate and flowers on February 14 every year is kind of counterproductive. It’s also become known as Single’s Awareness Day. Doesn’t that sound awesome? It’s a holiday that single handedly makes more people feel like shit about their lives than any other day of the year. I can’t tell you if every person you know has had a least one good one, but I can almost guarantee you that every single person you know has had a shit one that looks something like this Will Ferrell meme… 

Since, we are now beyond that lovely holiday, I think that maybe we should practice celebrating some love in another way.

We all have people in our lives that we love. In theory, love is unconditional. Our flawed nature sometimes gets in the way of this. That being said, I really want you to concentrate on one of the purer forms of love. How do you love your children? Parents? Grandparents? Do you accept their flaws? Do you want them to be happy? Do you beat them up about every mistake they make? Do you judge them for every wrong thing they’ve ever done? Do you forgive them? Accept them as they are? There may be hiccups, but at the end of the day, you love them and you forgive their downfalls and celebrate their virtues.

If someone messes with one of them, you want to kill them, right? If someone told them that they were worthless, you would want to throat punch them. They are worth more than the sun and the moon to you. If someone consistently made them feel bad about themselves, you would gleefully plan their death.
 

So why, for the love of everything holy, would you treat yourself any differently?

We all have problems. Nobody’s life is perfect. And narcissists aside, I’ve found that not loving oneself seems to be central to overcoming those problems. It’s central to finding true fulfillment in your life. Narcissists don’t have the same problems. Their problems are usually more about being confused and frustrated that the rest of the world isn’t worshiping the ground they walk on.

Why am I picking on narcissists? Because I don’t want you to confuse loving yourself with being egoistical, narcissistic or selfish. It’s about treating yourself with AT LEAST the same deference as you show the people you love. We all know one, and we want to avoid becoming one. This isn't the same thing. 

Loving yourself is about balancing your self-worth, your self-esteem and your self-respect. It’s forgiving yourself. It’s showing yourself kindness. It’s nurturing yourself. Loving yourself means accepting yourself. It means allowing yourself to be you and even pushing yourself to be you.

Ok. Trust me when I say, I’m fully aware that this is easier said than done. However, I promise you that whatever you want out of your life, it will be lost to you until you acknowledge that you matter.

That is your starting point. You have to believe you matter enough to learn to love yourself. Then what? (I’ll just pretend you asked) I think that answer is different for everyone, but I’ll give you a short list of the things that have worked for me or have helped people I know.

1. Stop the act of people pleasing. You CANNOT make everyone happy. It’s not your job. You cannot make someone love you by being what they want. It never, ever works. Never. Ever.
2. Spend some time with yourself. Get to know yourself. I can claim to love Chris Hemsworth all I want, but the truth is that I can’t love someone I don’t know and neither can you. I can love to look at him but it’s hard to get to know someone from 500 feet away. Spend some time alone with yourself. Get intimate with yourself. (No. That’s not what I meant, but if that’s what it takes – go for it.) 
3. Allow yourself to have feelings. This doesn’t mean dwelling in them. For example, I don’t advise you plotting the death of someone who you strongly dislike, but you can just accept the fact that you dislike them. Envy, greed, and those other five bad boys are part of our nature. You can deny them or you can accept that they exist and figure out how to deal with them. 
4. Do things for yourself. Nurturing things. Restorative things. Take care of yourself. Take a bath. Go for a hike. Read a book. Lock yourself in the closet with a bottle of wine so the kids can’t find you for a little bit. Whatever you need – do that for yourself. Don’t depend on other people to do it for you.
5. Every time you see one of those all inspiring quotes on the internet about love ask yourself if you are loving yourself that much. I guarantee you that you do the same thing I do when I turn that around and go, “Shit. Not there yet.” Which is fine. It’s just a friendly reminder that you are worth being there. (One of my faves is this Thich Nhat Hanh quote )
   
6. Are there certain things that you beat yourself up about a lot? Are there things you do that you hate about yourself? Yeah, stop doing those. You won’t be able to quit cold turkey, so for the love of Christ, don’t beat yourself up about that either. Baby steps. Resolve to improve, not perfect. Progress over perfection – always remember that.
7. Do not, under any circumstances, allow someone in your life to make you feel like what you feel and what you think does not matter. Do not misunderstand this. They may actually not care what you feel or think. And you can’t make them. Don’t let them convince you that their opinion of you is more important than your own.
8. Don’t keep score. There isn’t a scorecard with people that love you. They don’t owe you. You don’t owe them. I’ve done pretty hateful things to people in my past. I called a waitress at Chili’s a hussy once because she took forever to bring me a chocolate molten lava cake. I owe her an apology and I should never do that again. I don’t owe her any more than that. There is no such thing as “making up for” your mistakes. Stop killing yourself trying to.
9. Stop the blame game. Nothing is all your fault. It’s not all someone else’s fault. “The man” is not bringing you down. Everything is a result of a million different factors. Accept that, learn from your part in it, and move on.
10. Accept the love you are given. Let it wash over you. There are people who love you, and I’m assuming that you respect and love some of them. Let them love you exactly as you are. See yourself through their eyes and don’t dismiss their opinion of you.

Some days I find it very hard to love myself at all because, quite frankly, I am even a pain in my own ass. It’s kind of like loving your mother (Hi, Mom. Love you!) Moms can get under our skin like nobody else can. I think this is especially true of mother/daughter relationships. There was a whole year of my life that I didn’t actually speak to my mother completely sober. My mother’s mother drives her and my aunt insane too.

My point is even though we love our mothers, sometimes it’s hard to act that way. Some days that means waiting until we are in a better mood to return that phone call. The same goes with ourselves. Sometimes we don’t feel like acting in self-love. It’s ok. Give yourself time. Just like that phone call to your mom, you are going to have to return it eventually. Even if you don’t get in the mood. Do the same for yourself. Because at some point in time you are going to be sick or hurt and need your momma. At some point in time you are going to challenged and heartbroken and need yourself.

Everything you want is on the other side of that. Loving yourself will make you more lovable. It will teach the people around you to do the same. What better lesson could you teach your children than this?
 

It’s not quite like a State Farm commercial. You don’t get to enroll in loving yourself insurance and then magically sing a jingle for everything you want in life to appear. That would be so awesome wouldn’t it? Loving yourself does the same thing that someone loving you does. It bolsters you. It builds you up. It strengthens you. You have to work for the things you want in life. You have to struggle for them and hurt for them. You can’t have the life you want without believing that you are worth having it.

Congratulations. You survived another February the 14th. From now on, don't just talk to yourself like you would someone you love, treat yourself that way. Try to make this the last Valentine's Day that you don’t buy yourself flowers and chocolate. 

So while you all go do that, I’m going to see if the State Farm jingle will bring me some ice cream and wine. When that fails I’m going to see if I love myself enough to get out of this chair and get it.