10 Reasons Why You Should Love Yourself First

Have you ever heard the expression, “You can’t help someone else until you help yourself”? The same idea applies to self-love. How can you love someone if you don’t love yourself first?

Try to visualize yourself with a ball of white light in your chest. It glows with pure love, especially when you are with family and friends.

When you want to express your affection to someone, you take a small piece of that light and hand it to that person. With every coffee you buy for a stranger, listen to a friend when they feel down, or lend them one of your favorite books, you are giving them a piece of your light. It is unlimited, so you need not do anything replenish it.

However, when you don’t love yourself, it depletes with every kindness and affection that you show to other people. This light eventually goes out, and you feel burnt out and exhausted. Once you become emotionally exhausted and unable to find the positive in anything, depression sinks in.

Here I’m sharing with you 10 reasons why you should love yourself first.

1. You Have To

Loving yourself first is essential if you want to be happy and live your life with no regrets.^[1] You may have been holding back because you have been told you aren’t worth loving at some point. Thus, you’ve been bullying yourself about it ever since.

But that is the glass ceiling that this generation must break through immediately.

You deserve to be loved. You are a wonderful human. Life on this planet is short; do you really want to waste it with self-loathing?

Hate only leads to hate, misery, and war. Do you want to be at war with yourself forever? Or do you want to be at peace and create new and amazing things?

You have a whole life waiting for you on the other side of all that.

2. It Is Your Responsibility

By taking self-love out of your control and leaving it in the hands of others, you can only ever be disappointed. After all, it isn’t someone else’s job to do that.

Pressuring other people to do it for you is unfair. You need to love yourself, not your parents, spouse, or kids. It is time to take responsibility for that now.

3. It Isn’t Selfish

They say in every flight that you have to put your own life mask on before helping another person. It isn’t selfish to do that because you will die before you can help someone who can’t help themselves. It is impractical — not heroic — to make yourself suffer while trying to be there for others.

Similarly, you need to love yourself first so that you can help anyone you want. Put yourself first, say no to draining circumstances, and make choices in your best interest.

Although it sounds selfish, it is not bad at all.^[2]

4. It Makes It Okay To Be Unloved By Others

When you love yourself, you live on another level, another vibe.

Some people won’t like that, and that is okay for you. It may be even good, considering you will see who cares for you, who is happy to see you happy, and who just wants you to be miserable.

When you prioritize yourself, you can see who matters and clear out all the toxic people in your life.

5. You Deserve It

All of your life, it may have been heavily implied that you aren’t supposed to love yourself.^[3] You are supposed to help others first and only gain it as a result of your acts of service. As we have all experienced, love isn’t always equal.

Still, let us reiterate: you deserve to love yourself. You are a beautiful, caring, selfless human being, so why on earth would you deserve any less?

This article can nudge you further in the right direction: How to Love Yourself And Embrace Who You Really Are