Love yourself like your life depends on it

Love yourself like your life depends on it. This is a title from Kamal Ravikant’s book. I read it a few years ago.

Some might think is it selfish to love yourself? It’s true that ego and selfishness are very dominant in human beings but here I am talking about having good self esteem, being comfortable in being who we are.

When we firstly see the good in ourselves only then can we see the good in others too. A lot of the world is very quick and very good at pointing out faults in others. But at least there is one person that we have control over who can see the good in us and that’s the person looking in the mirror.

Who does not want to feel appreciated and loved? I remember reading in Dale Carnegie’s books that one of the innate desires in human beings is the desire to be loved. If we start with self love, then it makes it easier to love others. Because we can only give to others what we have. And once we love others, nature has a way to reciprocate.

We reap what we sow, we reap more than what we sow and we reap later than we sow. We sow love in others, we get back in abundance.

We are living in a time when self esteem and self image have become an epidemic in itself. We must strive to have self love so we can spread the fragrance of love to our friends, families, children. And strangers.

And how to love yourself? We must care for ourselves. For our mental, emotional and physical well being. Why? Because care is love in action, that’s one of the quotes by Swami Ji on the Black Lotus app that touched my heart and gave me an understanding on what it really means to love.

And so, loving yourself becomes the opposite of being selfish, it becomes selfless.