How You Learn To Love Yourself By Loving Others

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It’s hard to live in this society and not automatically compare yourself with someone else. We learn what’s attractive and what’s not attractive through media. We follow people on social media who seem to have a better more fun life than us. We scroll and compare, we meet and compare.

How do we stop comparing ourselves to everyone we come in contact with? How do we stop being insecure and more loving, not just of ourselves but more loving of others? Common advice now is to “love yourself” and “treat yourself”. Some say no one can love you unless you love yourself first. This is not true. I think, now I’m not an expert or anything, but others can love us in our darkest times when we don’t love ourselves.

The thing is, if we don’t love ourselves we don’t accept the love others offer and give us.
We don’t believe it, we don’t believe the words they tell us. It’s not other people deeming us unworthy of love, it is ourselves. How do we love ourselves though? I think a big part of learning to love yourself is learning to love others.

If our heart is filled with envy and bitterness and hatred for others because we think they are better than us there is no room in our heart to accept ourselves and for love. So stop comparing, start loving. We need to melt away that idea that others are our competition, that we can’t exist mutually without there having to be a better than or prettier than.

Another thing to note is that we are not alone. We were not meant to live life alone in our heads comparing and hating everyone including ourselves. We were made to love each other and to support each other and encourage each other. In outflowing onto others and this world, we find love in ourselves for ourselves too.

So accept that others are different than you, they have different skills and different hair and different body types and different friends. But remember that different doesn’t mean they are better or worse than you. Different just means they are not you. Accept that and you begin to accept yourself along the way.