I used to think that ‘to love myself’ meant spoiling myself, indulging in all things and situations that make me feel good. Regardless of the consequences.

Of course this concept is wrong. When we love ourselves that way, overlooking the consequences will only bring unwanted consequences. Indulging in junk food, for instance, can easily lead to health issues like high cholesterol which increases the risk of heart disease. A disease that can simply be avoided by watching what we eat.

What Is Self Love Then?

1. Having a True Emotional Validation

Self-love is treating ourselves like we would treat our best friend or a small child in a healthy family. When they’re sad and just want to cry, we don’t scold them. We don’t force them not to feel sad. We don’t force them to smile when they just want to cry. We sit down with them, listen to them, and be patient with their emotions. It’s called validation. We validate how they feel instead of dismissing their true sadness.

This means, when we’re sad or having any uncomfortable feeling, we don’t deny or minimise it. We sit down and embrace it. We’ll tell ourselves that our feeling is real, it’s OK to feel that way and remind ourselves that nothing is permanent.

2. Having a Healthy Boundary

In the Oxford English Dictionary, boundary means a line which marks the limits of an area; a dividing line.

Having a boundary doesn’t mean building a wall so high that nobody can go inside.

Having a boundary simply means saying ‘no’ when we mean no. We don’t say ‘yes’ when deep inside we scream ‘no’. And not saying ‘no’ when we actually need it, just because we have such a huge ego. Or fear.

Having a boundary means we know what we want and what we don’t want. We know our own rules of conduct when interacting with other people and how people should treat us.

These rules of conduct can get complicated as they are heavily influenced by personal beliefs, past experience, culture, education, etc.

Having a boundary means knowing our values and will not let anyone persuade us to downplay or even remove our values to accommodate the other person’s convenience. It also means we’re not afraid of being seen negatively.

What Does an Unhealthy Boundary Look Like?

Having defined what boundary is, it’s easy to associate it with ‘resistance’.

In its true meaning, a boundary is not about resisting. It’s about knowing ourselves well enough to say ‘no’ when we mean no, and say ‘yes’ when we mean yes.

Having an unhealthy boundary means resisting everything by having an unnecessary wall where nobody can enter no matter what. For example, isolating ourselves when we’re actually craving connection with other people.

The Need to Reassess Our Healthy Boundaries

No matter how healthy our boundaries are, we need to reassess them from time to time.

For instance, if we like to immerse ourselves in work or a hobby, and we now have a partner who points out the lack of quality time spent together, then we need to adjust our boundaries if the relationship is important to us. If it’s not important to us, then perhaps we are not with the right partner. Another reason to reassess our boundaries.

Always keep in mind that when we reassess our boundaries, we should always check and validate our feelings. We don’t change our boundaries just because someone wants us to. And we don’t adjust our boundaries according to their needs without taking our feelings into account.

What Happens When We Don’t Love Ourselves Enough?

When we don’t love ourselves enough, we feel tired and often resentful as we give too much to others. One of the worst side effects is we end up having a Martyr Complex.

People with Martyr Complex are addicted to sacrificing themselves for others and often blame others for their unhappiness or even illness. This is very common between parents and children. Parents would often scream at their children, telling them that they have sacrificed so much for their children’s welfare. A lot of narcissistic parents even use their self-sacrifice to later convert their adult children into their emotional punching bag.

When we don’t love ourselves enough, we let others violate our boundaries, we abandon ourselves. By others, I mean everyone, including partners, parents, siblings, your own children, friends, neighbours, etc.

Therefore, before we feel resentful for saying yes when we actually want to say no, do listen to our own feeling. And listening to our own feeling shouldn’t be based on what we want to achieve. For example, we help our friend just because we hope that they will help us later when we need them. This hope is manipulative. It is toxic as there’s an intention to later guilt-trip the person we help.

Connect with Our Inner Self

Beware of anyone who tries to blur our boundary by telling us, for instance, that we have an irrational fear or we are being selfish. If we feel something’s wrong with a certain situation or someone, then trust that feeling. Remove ourselves from the situation we’re in or the person we’re dealing with.

Nobody should tell us what to feel and what our boundaries are. We need to be able to trust our own feelings. For many people, the skill of trusting themselves doesn’t come naturally as they’ve always been surrounded by people who often violate their boundaries, including parents, siblings, partners, friends, even culture and society.

However, this skill can be learned. Doing at least a 20-minute meditation every day is one of them. I will write about meditation separately. In a nutshell, meditation helps us connect with our inner self. Once we’re connected to our inner self, we’ll be able to recognise our own feelings better than those who are not connected with their inner selves.

The Benefits of Loving Ourselves

Loving ourselves undoubtedly brings tremendous benefits. Not only do we feel good about ourselves, but we also build trust within ourselves. This reflects on how we interact with others. We will lean into having a healthy relationship with our family, partner, friends, colleagues, etc.

A healthy relationship means equal respect where no one feels that they’re being manipulated or abused. It’s a life worth living and most importantly, we are able to do what we’re supposed to do here, which is doing our life’s task. Here is a post I wrote a while ago about life’s task.

A healthy relationship between human beings creates a healthy society. The world will be so much better this way.

Having Said That…

Of course everything is always easier said than done. I mentioned healthy and unhealthy boundaries and know the differences, but sometimes, OK maybe often, I catch myself having unhealthy boundaries. After all, I’m just a human.

I have my own fears and traumas. I often give answers based on fears or ego instead of my true feelings. That’s another topic. But I believe we’re on the right track by being aware, instead of running away from our fears and ego. And perhaps, most of us need to succumb to fear and ego first before being brave enough to embrace our true feelings. Just like learning how to crawl before learning how to walk and run.