Loving and loving each other is one of the most heartfelt needs, at the same time the most difficult to achieve because it presupposes the ability to appreciate ourselves for who we really are.
It seems almost absurd, a paradox but every day our very existence makes us understand how important and vital is the need for love towards us which translates into esteem, recognition and acceptance.
We want to be loved but we ourselves do not love ourselves.
Loving yourself is having a good level of self-esteem so you feel safe, happier and even more desirable in the eyes of others.
What does it actually mean to love each other? What exactly is self-esteem ?
Self-esteem is self-confidence, self-respect and belief in one’s abilities.
Self-esteem is something we learn from childhood and that is transmitted to us through the words and gestures of our parents.
As children we mirror ourselves in their behavior towards us for this reason self-esteem is something that is created from within. It is no coincidence that all pedagogical interventions are based on helping children to become confident in themselves, in their abilities to have excellent relationships, not only within the family, as a protected environment, even outside. Children learn to manage frustrations and all those negative feelings that accompany us throughout our lives.
The choice to write this article is dictated by a common thread that I find in all the people who turn to me. The fulcrum is to help them believe in themselves and in who they are, as well as learning to know each other, because only by making friends with the deepest self can you learn to build a peaceful life and healthy relationships.
Content index
- What does it mean to love each other
- Self-Love and Selfishness: What’s the Difference?
- 10 pillars to strengthen self-esteem
- Live consciously
- Accepting ourselves
- Assume your responsibilities
- Learn to show your worth by setting limits
- Create a purpose in life
- Stay true to your rules and values
- Accept your fears
- Accepting yourself for who you are
- Talk to yourself in a kind way
- Appreciate your own qualities
What does it mean to love each other
Andrè and Lelord, two French psychiatrists, in their book, Self-Esteem , write that self-esteem is based on three fundamental points:
– self-love;
– self vision;
– self-confidence.
Self – love depends on the love we received as children, from our family and from those who have always taken care of us.
Self-vision is a kind of inner strength that helps us achieve our goals and which, if lacking, leads to dependence on others because we wait for the other to tell us when and how to act.
Self-confidence needs action in order to manifest, develop and even strengthen. For this reason it is necessary to look at all the successes that occur during daily life; it is a necessary act for our psychological balance.
Self-esteem is a set of internal and external factors that like pieces of a Tetris fit together and create the personality.
In family and school education we must set ourselves the primary objective of our children’s self-esteem, also including it within the values we transmit. Only in this way will we be able to prevent both a lack of self-esteem, which can lead to extreme shyness, for example, or an excess of self-esteem, which leads to boasting and being overconfident.
Society also has its role.
The events that we experience or that are imposed on us from the outside have their ability to affect reality; this obviously lowers or increases one’s self-esteem.
We live in a society based a lot on appearance so it draws from the outside, from the successes and positive messages that others send back to us.
In the adolescent stage, life gives us three keys that will help us move from childhood to youth:
- A key that opens the doors of self-awareness and asks you to discover positive and negative sides, weaknesses and resources.
- Another key that opens the truth of being authentic and of accepting yourself for who you are, manifesting yourself in your relationship with others including your own intimacy.
- Finally, the one that opens the door to intimacy where you fall in love with your first boyfriend, your first love and you have direct contact with the real world, even with disappointments and failures.
If all these keys have not been used, no one has taught them to do it adequately, the resulting effect is disesteem and the continuous external search to be loved, appreciated, esteemed and welcomed for who we are.
Sometimes we pretend to be as we are not really or as we will never be for this we do not allow ourselves to recognize the potential, the virtues, the innate gifts that we carry within us. Nor do we allow ourselves to use them in the service of the whole world. Everything comes from the personal sphere which, like a mirror, reflects on the professional one and relationships.
The fairest and most convenient way would be to learn to build our personality by knowing deeply who we are including fears, sufferings, dislikes. It’s easy to love all that is beautiful within us, all the part of light that we know how to transmit much more difficult is to accept the pain, what we don’t want to be.
Loving yourself involves putting together our dark areas with those of light to have the full power of ourselves.
Self-esteem is a judgment one makes of one’s own worth. There are 3 fundamental points: self-love, which depends on the love we received in childhood from our family and on the emotional nourishment that was bestowed on us; self-vision, which allows us to achieve the goals we aspire to, despite adversity; self-confidence, which needs actions of external events of daily life to keep developing […] self-esteem is a flower that must be watered every day like a flower.
Willy Pasini
Self-Love and Selfishness: What’s the Difference?
Is self-love synonymous with selfishness ?
To answer this question I use three important historical figures: Thomas Aquinas, Augustine of Hippo and Jesus.
The Italian theologian Tommaso D’Aquino writes: “What characterizes love between men is the love with which each one loves himself; Therefore from this love we must deduce the measure of every love with which one loves someone. The love with which one loves himself, is the form, it is the root of friendship: in fact, the friendship we have towards others consists in the fact that we behave towards them as towards ourselves. ”
The African bishop Augustine of Hippo tells us: “First learn to love yourself… in fact, if you don’t know how to love yourself, how can you truly love your neighbor? ”
And then we know well what Jesus announces to us as the eleventh commandment: ” Love your neighbor as yourself “.
How can we love the other if we don’t love ourselves first?
From these three greats of history we understand that in order to truly love our partner, our parents, others, in general, we must first of all take care of love towards ourselves. It is a sine qua non , a necessary condition to be authentic towards others.
Loving yourself is a great responsibility, it takes commitment and perseverance which leads to maturing one’s personality by developing the gifts that have been entrusted to us by nature, the so-called talents.
Reading these words and changing the vision we have of loving each other we understand how much it has nothing to do with selfishness. Now I’ll tell you why.
Self love is:
- be yourself and express an authentic self-image;
- be humble;
- recognize one’s gifts;
- being able to appreciate the gifts of others and be happy when others achieve results;
- knowing how to rejoice in one’s successes;
- accept challenges;
- know how to welcome constructive criticism to improve;
- take care of your time, your diet, your well-being;
- being able to accept the shadow areas as well as the light areas that dwell within us;
- appreciate your own worth.
Selfishness is:
- always complaining and self-pitying;
- bragging about one’s achievements by making others feel inferior;
- constantly comparing yourself to others;
- being envious of the successes of others;
- look at one’s own worth through what others do;
- say you are perfect;
- do not accept criticism and continuously criticize the other;
- focus only on yourself and your needs;
- attributing our failures to others;
- don’t care if you hurt the other person.
From these two lists you can see how much difference there is between selfishness and loving each other. They are two completely opposite behaviors. When you have doubts about being selfish, you can refer to these two small lists to understand if you really are or if you are just respecting yourself.
10 pillars to strengthen self-esteem
The American Nathaniel Branden states that having a positive self-evaluation is like having a strong immune system referring to our intimacy because it is a guarantee of strength, resistance, capacity and recovery.
If we don’t trust ourselves, even the love for another person will not be completely true and real.
Branden identifies six fundamental pillars on which his idea of self-esteem is based and to which I have added four more.
1. Live consciously
Every event, situation that happens in our life is real, so it’s essential not to deny it. It’s right not to be deceived by illusions to be more sincere towards yourself. Having an optimistic self-evaluation strengthens one’s personality, the charisma in order to be able to transmit it in every area of our life.
2. Accepting ourselves
Stop self-sabotaging yourself, having hostile behavior towards yourself. This is an attitude that happens especially in terms of partner choice. When we notice danger signs or alarm bells, of unease within the relationship we don’t keep telling ourselves the beautiful story that doesn’t actually exist. We learn to take situations head on, with strength and believing in ourselves. Putting hams on your eyes will only aggravate the situation. Who will lose in all this will be us and our happiness.
3. Assume your responsibilities
The choices we make and make are our responsibility alone. Even when we listen to the advice of others it is always us who choose and decide for ourselves and for this reason the responsibility always remains ours. Placing the blame for one’s actions on someone outside won’t help change the situation itself, so it’s better to dwell on the teaching that every “failure” has passed on to us.
4. Learn to show your worth by setting limits
It’s okay to be available, to say yes to others to help them but going overboard only leads to putting ourselves and our needs aside. Putting limits means saying yes to yourself and doing, acting according to what we like most, removing that feeling of heaviness we feel when we do something that doesn’t make us carry out. Saying no to what you don’t like is loving yourself.
5. Create a purpose in life
Groping in the dark without goals always makes us feel lost and takes away from us the possibility of realizing ourselves. It’s always better to think about small goals that can stimulate us and at the same time be absolutely achievable. Obviously a small degree of difficulty must be entered to give us the gear and grit to be active.
6. Stay true to your rules and values
This means remaining firm on one’s positions, decisive and authoritative, showing one’s values . Always compromising is neither appropriate nor healthy because it distorts us and makes us live according to what others want. The aim is to live aligned with ourselves, with what we feel inside and with what our heart suggests.
7. Accept your fears
Being afraid is absolutely natural, it has been part of being human since the dawn of time. Denying, avoiding this bad feeling will only create the reality we don’t want. Fear drives us to behave as we don’t want to. I learned to manage it by talking to her. Welcoming what she has to say is giving space to your inner child, that part that she needs to be reassured and protected. A pinch of positivity in all of this will lead to change and transform reality itself.
8. Accepting yourself for who you are
Removing criticism from yourself, the difficulty of forgiving yourself even when you’ve made a mistake helps shift the focus from thinking you’re stupid, foolish or incompetent. It means growing up and measuring yourself against your limits. One must accept one’s imperfection and erase from one’s mind the claim that it is necessary to be perfect. We only give ourselves. Successful men learned from their mistakes, built their ultimate theory by trying and trying again. Continuing to place energy on the negative will continue to reinforce the belief that we are not good enough.
8. Talk to yourself in a kind way
Words have great power. They have the power to change our internal and external reality so my advice is to speak to each other with kind words in order to convey a positive energy of oneself. Before we get caught up in negative emotions, take a deep breath and stop for a moment to process what just happened. It’s a very simple exercise but it’s an inner cuddle that will allow us to welcome and love each other deeply.
If we want to transmit love we must speak to each other with love.
10. Appreciate your own qualities
An effective exercise that I always propose during my sessions is to write down all the qualities that belong to us. I recommend doing this exercise by taking time for yourself. It takes 10 minutes to play relaxing music, light your favorite incense to focus only on yourself. It is a moment that helps to become aware of one’s positive sides, of those qualities that we have forgotten or that we take for granted. To ensure that not only the words written in the notebook remain, it would be advisable to transcribe them on post-its to stick on the computer. An alternative to paper is to write reminders on your mobile phone that remind you, during the day, who you really are and the most beautiful part of yourself.
To have esteem, self-confidence and love yourself, you need to learn to know yourself not only in a rational way, but also by recognizing the inner beauty that you possess. Positive people who evaluate themselves in an ameliorative way are those who experience a state of well-being and greater creativity.
Allowing yourself to decrease the distance between your true self and what you think you are will lead you to love yourself and finally be free to express yourself following your own nature.
If you feel you want to be accompanied on this journey of self-discovery to get to know the best version of you and fully realize yourself in your relationship, send me an email using the form or by contacting me on social channels .