#008 - The Problem With Self-Love
One concept every therapist and self-help author want to forcefully shove into your mouth is that you should love yourself. Whatever your problem is, it's the groundwork for healing. Embrace your imperfection and don't let adversity and failure drag you away from what you love. Because everybody else fucks up all the time.
That shit is easier said than done.
You've come across someone who subscribe to self-love (or is trying his or her best) and it’s the weirdest, most uncomfortable Manson girl shit you've ever witnessed in your life. They looked at you wide-eyed and say shit like : "I choose myself" or "Self-care is health care" and you already know hat they’re not sincere. Inside, they’re screaming: “DON’T YOU FUCKING DARE JUDGING ME, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE. BECAUSE I AM GOING TO DO SOMETHING I’LL JUDGE MYSELF FOR ANYWAY."
Because these poor, shell-shocked people are desperately clinging to a discourse in order to feel better about themselves, like kids cling to "But mommy says I can" in order to fucking breathe. I've been there. It’s like being in school all over again. You can try to apply the formula and hope that it fucking works and get away with it. Sometimes it does. For some people, turning yourself into a Manson girl does wonders. But it always works better if you understand the underlying ideas. Then you’ll KNOW it’ll work.
The underlying idea of self-love is more complicated than it seems and therefore less accessible to people who need it. Human beings are all equipped with the ability to love, right? To care for people, help them achieve their dreams, marvel at their achievement, cry their failures and whatnot. Whoever you are, if you're well-balanced enough to live in society there's 99,999% chance that you have people that you care about like I just describe. Those who don’t are either in prison, in a hospital or dead.
Self-love is looking at yourself and processing your behaviours and feelings like you'd process those of someone you love. It is a much colder and distant process than it seems, especially if you're hard on yourself. Because it requires being less hard and not more warm or whatever. You have to put some distance between what you did and how you feel about it. It is really weird and trying because when you feel like shit about stuff, it’s easier to let your feeling overwhelm you like a tidal wave or load up on alcohol.
The starting point is never self-explanatory either. Whatever you believe your problem is, it’s just a symptom of your real problem. For example, I tend to run away from what I actually WANT to do and who I actually WANT to be in order to perform what is expected of me. I've long been obsessed with providing value in other people's live in order to avoid being deemed inadequate. But no matter how you chase that hit of being there for others, no one will love you like someone who does things for themselves.
Especially when "being there for others" is just an excuse to cover up for you insecurities.
It's weird and cliché and contrived, but you can't be loved the way you want to be loved until you love yourself. At least a little bit. People want to associate with people who are more successful than them. Whether they want to be inspired or network their way up is irrelevant. People who attract people attract them because they’re doing something special for themselves. They’ve chosen themselves. That is what choosing yourself means. It means investing yourself into what YOU want.
Not spending the night in, splurging on Netflix and eating Doritos. That’s just social anxiety.
But the question remains. This rant is extremely abstract. How do you do it in practice? How do you become a kinder person to yourself? Well, here are three ways I identify that work for me:
1) Self-forgiveness. Whether it's professionally or emotionally, it's OK to mess up. Even if you get fired. Even if you hurt someone you love. It's OK to mess up if a) you understand that you mess up and b) you do your best not to let it happen ever again. Making mistakes is part of getting better. It works for sports and it works for any human interaction. Mistakes are flags you plant along your journey in order to remember what path not to take. You have to confront them, understand them and eventually forgive yourself.
2) Responsibility. Once you understand that it's OK to mess up, you need to take the path your desires are guiding you towards. No one will take it for you. No one will help you succeed because they're either trying to succeed themselves or they’re looking up to people who already did. Loving yourself is being responsible for yourself and your dreams the way you would be with a child. You have to enforce discipline and organization and you have to pep talk yourself into it like you’d pep talk your best friend.
3) Pride. You might not be proud of the things you WANT to be proud of. There is most likely something to be proud of in your journey. If you stop looking at the path your didn't (yet) take and look at the one you did, there’s remarkable progress somewhere. Take pride in that. Take pride not in being better than anyone else, but in being better than you were. Now is the moment of your life where you're at your wisest and most discerning. Look back in order to understand you can progress even further than you already did.
Self-love is hard work. It's not a balm you can put in your soul in order to make it stop hurting. It's a journey and whoever reads this, make it your first. Don't be a Manson girl turning in circles inside your living room, self-justifying the person you seek help not to be anymore.
The Manson girls are in prison and so are you.
