Loving yourself means more than liking yourself or feeling good about yourself. Those are important, good places to start, but even more important, loving yourself means taking the time and energy to make good choices for yourself. Would someone who loves you make bad choices for you? Think negative, self-defeating, self-sabotaging thoughts about you? Utter discouraging words? Allow bad habits to persist?
At its highest level, love is not a noun, not just a feeling. Love at its greatest, love at its best is a verb, the willingness to take positive action (or refrain from negative acts/words).
If you love yourself in a wholesome, supportive way you make the effort to create a good life for yourself; you invest in yourself, you are willing to spend the time to read insightful literature, to learn the skill sets and thought patterns of maturity, to raise your emotional intelligence, to journal, to increase your self-awareness, to never stop growing.
In short, loving yourself means you are willing to discipline yourself.
Closing Quotes:
“Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you. Never excuse yourself. Never pity yourself. Be a hard master to yourself; lenient to everybody else.”– Henry Ward Beecher, 1813-1887, social reformer known for his support of the abolition of slavery
“If we don’t discipline ourselves, the world will do it for us.” – William Feather, 1889 –1981
“Talent without discipline is like an octopus on roller skates. There’s plenty of movement, but you never know if it’s going to be forward, backwards, or sideways.” – H. Jackson Brown, Jr. b. 1940, author, “Life’s Little Instruction Book”
As always, I share what I most want/need to learn. – Nathan S. Collier