Self-love: Reasons To Cultivate It, And How To Do It In 5 Steps
Self-love is a very important ingredient to enjoy psychological well-being. Whatever we do, if we don’t value it, it won’t have any meaning or help us feel good about who we are.
However, self-love is something that is normally seen in a very distorted way, since most people think of it as if it were the result of reaching certain vital goals that we all supposedly share: being popular, having a certain purchasing power, having the ability to be attractive, etc. This is an illusion, as we will see.
Self-love, associated with self-esteem, is something that takes all the positive emotional charge linked to our self-concept. Let’s say that on the one hand we have information about who we are and what we have done throughout our lives, and on the other we have the emotions associated with that kind of autobiography and that concept of the Self.
Self-love can be so important that it will lead us to radically change our goals in the short, medium and long term if we feel that what we have been doing for a long time, even if we do it well, does not speak well about who we are. That is why it is necessary to stop to listen to it and regulate well the emotions that mediate it when it comes to providing us with “glasses” with which we judge ourselves.
How to increase self-love: 5 tips
First of all, we must keep in mind that self-love is not something that is cultivated simply with introspection and reflection. This psychological aspect is part of the emotional dimension of the human being, which goes beyond our ability to use logic and reason. While the power of reason can help, is not in itself enough to work on self-esteem. This can already be seen in the first tip of the series that we will review below.
Self-love always depends on what our reference group is. If we take for granted that normality is, for example, fitting into a group of elite Harvard students, failing to reach the academic goals that others do reach will take a toll on our self-esteem, since in that social circle this is something highly valued, especially because of its competitive nature.
However, having exactly the same abilities and personality, we could have very good self-esteem in another richer and more heterogeneous social environment. The key is that our way of socializing, and the spaces we choose to socialize, create the frame of reference from which we begin to value our own competencies. Regardless of whether we do the latter rationally or not, the former is something that escapes reason.
So, first of all, assess whether your frame of reference is adequate or whether it creates unrealistic expectations. It’s not about raising or lowering the level; It is also about stopping to think about whether those personal traits that people from those social environments focus on to attribute value are something that really has meaning for us. For example, in the case of Harvard students, the grades obtained may matter a lot, but this criterion may not be worth anything in another social circle in which the main thing is creativity and even social skills and a sense of humor.
In short, self-love is greatly influenced by the reference group and the way in which we would be valued according to their criteria, but we can also assess whether that reference group satisfies us or not.
There are people whose strategy for socializing consists of doing make other people feel bad about themselves. It may sound like something that doesn’t make sense, but it actually does, if certain conditions are met. If a relational dynamic is created in which the person is receiving constant criticism from others, the idea is created that the person who criticizes has a lot of value in being able to “see” those imperfections in others, and that consequently they remain At your side is a way to gain value in the eyes of others.
These types of social ties, of course, act as a mortgage for self-love; you are constantly receiving gratuitous and unnecessary criticism simply out of habit, and in exchange a supposed advantage is obtained if it only works as long as we stay close to the other person.
Ending this type of relationship, whether by physically distancing ourselves from the person or facilitating their change, is necessary so that self-love does not continue to deteriorate.
3. Assess your strengths and weaknesses
Having literally written down those characteristics of ours that we interpret as imperfections and those that we believe are positive, helps us to have a reference about what our initial state is.
Thanks to this, it will be easier to detect those moments in which our current emotional state is further distorting our self-concept, which in itself is something to a certain extent mobile and arbitrary.
For example, if we believe that our ability to listen and have deep conversations is good, but something happens that makes us feel bad and We come to see this as an imperfection as well, we will have reasons to think that it is not an accurate conclusion. And if something happens that leads us to think of a characteristic that appears as an imperfection in that record, it will be easier to think about its limitations, that it does not constitute the totality of who we are, since many other similar traits share the same rank her on the list of flaws and strengths.
Self-love is also cultivated by doing something that shows us that we are progressing. If we believe that our social skills are bad and that this should not be the case, the simple act of working on that facet of ourselves will make us think better about ourselves, since it makes it possible for us to see progress.
5. Meet people
The more people you know, the easier it will be to get to know those you connect with, and who see qualities in us that others did not see. As we have seen, one thinks of oneself primarily in terms of the adjectives and semantic categories that one is accustomed to using with others. If the words and concepts that can be used to refer to our positive qualities are rarely used in a social circle, we will be unlikely to notice them.
