This is one of the most promising topics i will be writing on over the days in this series.

I don’t know why but I have so tried to avoid writing about self love after i announced in my last post that I’ll be writing about it. Lol.

The thought of it sends me chills. Almost backed out today but i feel it’s really going to be a mind blowing experience writing about this.

Alright. So what’s self love really?

Let’s check it out…

According to Wikipedia, Self-Love was first recognized in 1563 but was only later studied by philosophers William James and Erich Fromm who studied emotional human behaviour such as self-esteem and self-worth.

Self love was later defined in 1956 by psychologist and social philosopher Erich Fromm who proposed that loving oneself is different from being arrogant, conceited or egocentric.

Meaning instead caring about oneself and taking responsibility for oneself.

I would have just said, self love is loving yourself. And went away. But come on, it’s far more than that.

It’s really sad that most of the time we don’t even understand what it means to love ourselves.
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But the first thing about self love is the fact that it stares us right in our face every single day. The fact that we have a self that deserves love.

The fact that we deserve happiness, love and every good thing in life and the reality that if we are to get any of those we are absolutely responsible for it.

So self love is actually accepting your responsibility to yourself. This is where real personal leadership starts.

But, there’s a problem…

You see, writing from experience, so many times, the first place we look for love and validation is never within ourselves.

We hardly try to look inside. Because we believe everything good is outside.

That’s what growing up and society taught us. That until mum says our Christmas clothes is beautiful it’s not really beautiful. That until our teachers tell us Weldon, we’ve not done anything good.

So we kept doing good things as kids just because we wanted to be good boys because people love good boys. And then we grew up with that.

Then we came up into a society that has rules. And then our Peers expected us to be like them. And then we tried to blend in even when we hated it.

On and on it went. Until we got buried in seeking other people’s approval before ever thinking about ourselves.

Then one day folks noticing our desires to always please them began to take advantage of us.

They realized they can always “fuck” with us and get away with it or at most beg for forgiveness.

We practiced external gentleness just to fit in while secretly hating it until we lost ourselves in the process of trying to find love and acceptance.

We drown our own voices, belittle our own aspirations. And then it became difficult to even leave the shadow of others.

And then one day we found the courage to ask ourselves, what really happened? But is the answer too far away?

It’s always with us. Only that the courage to really accept the truth is what we don’t have. Because even at those times all you need is someone to confirm it, that you indeed deserve love.

Imagine if you come to the place where you accept your self wholly, the good, the bad, the sexy and ugly notwithstanding.

Imagine if you came to accept the fact that you deserve to be treated right, to love, be loved and pursue your personal aspirations without fear of what people think.

Just imagine the power you’ll wield the moment you really stand up for yourself. And then demand of yourself, the first steps.

Think of all these and you’ll realize there would have been so much difference. So much difference about who you are right now, what you’ve achieved for yourself and everything in between.

You see, starting from unnecessary suicides to abusive relationships and unwanted career choices, self love has such an important role to play in our lives.

It is a reaffirmation of who we are, what we deserve and our innate capacity. And without self love it is still a long journey to a meaningful life.

I will be sharing my experience and that of others as we work on this topic. Keep tabs.

#onselflove
#21daysbloggingexperience
#day6