How does one love themselves without being conceited? I want to practice self-love but every time I try I feel guilty. I am always afraid that I will be in denial about my weaknesses and flaws if I practice self-love and acceptance. I want to say, “I am okay the way I am”; however, there’s always this huge “But!” in the back of my mind. But what if I am not okay or am truly a bad person after all. I feel like if I love myself then I am accepting myself as a failure.
Accepting yourself as you are does not mean that you have to be in denial about your weaknesses, it only suggests that you cultivate compassion and support yourself as you journey through your instabilities. We all start weak and helpless as babies, and we require an environment that nurtures and supports us, so that through our mistakes and experiences, we grow to become stronger. Just as we would not deny love to a baby for not knowing how to walk yet, it is unfair to deny yourself acceptance and love because you fear that you are imperfect.
And I do not think that finding this love for yourself will make you conceited. On the contrary,[B] it begs that we begin at the bottom and recognize both our blessings AND our flaws with total honesty, as one cannot love something which one does not know.[/B] A dedication to honest self-evaluation doesn’t lend well to narcissism, so if you really work hard towards a goal of whole self-acceptance, this shouldn’t be a problem.
To end, some words attributed to the Buddha,
“No matter how hard one searched one could not find anyone in the Universe more deserving of love than oneself.”
Loving and accepting ourselves as we does NOT mean that we become apathetic and stop growing. In fact, even accepting failure does not mean that we will not continue to grow. Failure is one of the most powerful teaching tools out there. When you fail, you discover what does not work for you.
This physical world is impermanent. Change is inevitable. The more we can LOVE ourselves, the more likely we are to direct the changes in our lives towards positive growth.
No matter how limited and imperfect we perceive ourselves to be, each of us is a unique manifestation of the one energy that animates everything. To begin loving yourself, love that part of yourself. The part of you that is connected to all is absolutely perfect. When we tap into that side of our selves, we become humble and the idea of being conceited becomes ridiculous. And from that humble place, we can sweetly love our imperfections as one of a kind expressions of the bigger energy.
Learning about, moving beyond, and even working with our imperfections will allow us to help others with the same afflictions. In this way our imperfections are a doorway to discovering what we have to offer the world.
I guess this is one of my hardest challenges in life. It should be so simple…to love oneself. At this point I feel as if I won’t be able to love myself in this lifetime. There is this one saying that goes something like, “You are exactly who you are supposed to be”. I try to remember that flaws and all that this is who I am supposed to be at this point in my life. Why is this such a difficult concept for me?
I found this quote online:
“Why compare yourself with others? No one in the entire world can do a better job of being you than you.” ~Unknown
the way it worked for me… to accept flaws and failures I had to meditate on [U]self-forgiveness[/U] first… if you are mad at some of your qualities or mistakes you have made, it is going to be hard to love yourself.
all the bad things in me they are given by the divine as well…they are part of the divine plan if you wish…and I had to accept them humbly as part of me.
so forgiveness and acceptance came first…
what are your flaws that you can not love?
What do you mean by Love yourself? seems like in the post you are talking about pride for your good qualities and deeds.
a.mi.,
Please re-read all the posts. Each one is ‘talking about the self’ without realizing that duality is built into the very act. The ‘self’ is different from the act of ‘loving, evaluating, denying, pardoning’ the self. Bodies simply exist at various levels, planes and dimensions. It is the awareness that remains sunk in any one of them to give us the ‘self’. The question is which self is to be loved and ‘who’ is loving it?
A few other things come to mind. Each one of us is an object amidst a myriad of them. All objects have the same composition of one or more of the five basic elements and they differ only in scale. Objects relate by perceiving eachother that makes each object externally oriented. If perception is with a desire to know other objects, there is no need for it, since it should be possible for an object to know itself to know every other. Own self, is the most accessible window to the world; the richest lab at hand to experiment. Then it is easy to love it.
Lastly, I am reminded of the pre-fligt announcement about an emergency action. After the oxygen masks drop, we are told that you are better off securing the mask for yourself before helping others. That way you are a more able helper. It is not being selfish.
I am slowly getting better about accepting myself everyday. I truly believe that this issue is deep rooted psychologically for me. I am highly sensitive and have taken criticism to heart in the past. I think that I have been afraid to accept myself for fear that I will stop growing somehow. However, I am beginning to realize that accepting myself is not about surrendering myself to all my flaws. It is about realizing what myflaws are and improving on those that are reasonable within this lifetime.
I think that originally I was thinking that self-love had something to do with loving the “image” of myself rather than who I truly am. I feel like I am going to dig myself into a circle of “words” the more I go on. It is because there are so many different interpretations and meanings to “self” and “love” which all get muddled with the notion of “ego”.
A wise man once told me that each of us was put on earth for our own individual reason, that no one else can do what you are meant to do, or be as amazing as you are, and that we are not here to give the best of us or what we are best at, but to work on what is the worst of us and try to improve it. Our challenges in life can define us, an example is if you are a great doctor, maybe that is not why you are here, because it is something easy for you, and maybe you are bad at compassion for others, so working on trying to be compassionate, may just be why you were put here.
I can’t explain it as eloquently as he could, but each individual is a gift to this earth with a special purpose, even if it is hard to see.
And trust me a.mi, i struggle with knowing my purpose and loving myself everyday too. But like the motivation to attain a difficult yoga pose, with much determination and time, you can find love for yourself and your purpose
Not being able to accept flaws in you will tell you something very crucial about yourself: impurities cannot taint you. You will always be aware of those impurities. In other words you are ever pure.
The true atheist is one who does not accept themselves. Accept yourself as the most worshippable thing there is. Indeed, unconsciously you already have accepted yourself as the most worthy of worship - before you - everybody else falls short. When you will be able to love yourself, you will be able to love anyone.
“How does one love themselves without being conceited?”
It is only something which becomes possible when you are not being conceited. Otherwise, what one is calling love may be going by many different names, but that is not the kind of “love” that I am referring to. To “love oneself”, perhaps one is unaware of what this implies. Because what you are as a human being has very little to do with your ego, or your personality. The same forces of existence which are working everywhere are also working through man’s being - he is not separate from existence. And if you come to know yourself, right down to the very core, to the very source of your existence - then you will know that whether it is your own source of being, or that of the whole existence - it makes no difference, they are one and the same. That is why, through truly loving yourself, you are loving the whole existence. It sounds selfish, and it is selfish - because the only way to come to a communion with existence is to turn inwards. But this is not the kind of selfishness in which you are gaining at somebody else’s loss, it is of a different nature. It is simply coming to self-knowledge, and through self-knowledge - you are entering deeper and deeper into the heart of existence itself. So that is why - very few people are capable of understanding what it truly means to “love yourself”. Because one will find that it has very little to do with yourself actually - it is only because there are so many other forces supporting your existence, that you are even capable of living as a body and mind. This insight gives you enormous gratitude, and a sense of being interrelated with the whole existence. And in fact, it may be better to do away with this word “love” completely - because depending on your own ideas, you will have different meanings as to what “love” is. There is a certain inexpressible communion that happens through entering inwards, but it is only possible through self-knowledge.
Just think…what if you had a room mate you couldn’t stand being with and had to live with that person forever? What kind of life would that be? Much more fun being with a room mate that you loved, who made you laugh, listened when needed to talk, and accepted you for all that you are.
SD is right. Someone who cannot accept and love themselves would find it challenging to accept and love others sincerely.
Loving Yourself – in its purest form – means one thing only …
It means loving yourself AS others (All Others) in Creation.
In other words, not experiencing yourself as separate from anyone or anything else is truly loving yourself.
When you know yourself (and feel yourself) as One with All, you are also – at the same time – loving all others (ie, the others are all different expressions of you) WHILE and as a part of the process of loving yourself.
Does that help?
Lovingly … (big smile) …