Valentine’s Day, you either love it or you hate it. Most people who love it have someone to share it with. And most people who hate it either have no one to spend it with or they are cheap and don’t like buying gifts.
But every Feb. 14, we celebrate love, and it does not have to just be love towards a significant other. It can also be loving yourself.
Loving yourself is a crucial key to overall happiness and good mental health.
YouGov reported on how many Americans actually like themselves in a personality study, “Only (12%) say they don’t like themselves “most of the time,” and very few (2%) say they don’t like themselves at all.”
You may say fourteen percent is not that much at all. But that is also information contained to just one study.
Center For Communication reports on the self-esteem of college students stating, “some have an extremely positive concept of self, while others might have a neutral self-esteem. Unfortunately, many college students suffer from having a low self-esteem—a problem that can be caused by negative life experiences, mental illness, and past trauma.”
Loving yourself is important, and it is time we learn how to do so.
You can start by stopping comparing yourself to others. Everyone is different and has a variety of experiences, upbringings and genetics. Comparing yourself to others is unfair to you and is not healthy.
Looks wise, it is important to learn that beauty and the “ideal body type” is versatile and has no one perfect face or body.
We often find ourselves comparing ourselves to celebrities while they spend thousands of dollars on their appearance and diet. Especially in the age of Ozempic, it is not good for ourselves to yearn for their features because it is not particularly healthy.
It is also important to learn how to look beyond your mistakes. According to childhood legend, Hannah Montana, in the song “Nobody’s Perfect”, “Everybody makes mistakes, Everybody has those days.”
While this is just an excellent song from 2007, the meaning still holds up.
Loving yourself is also forgiving yourself. We have to forgive ourselves for doing bad on exams, skipping a gym day, not sticking to our healthy diets, missing a class or messing up in general.
While it is okay to make mistakes and not live a “perfect” lifestyle, we also must set goals for ourselves. Staying on track with what you want to achieve will always make you feel good about yourself.
Your goals can be as simple as brushing your teeth, showering, cleaning your room, doing your homework, going to the gym or drinking more water.
A great way to keep track of your self-care and your daily goals in an app called Finch. You hatch a pet to take care of by completing self-care and other customizable goals.
Loving yourself is not always easy, and we know that, but it is vital to our survival.
Taking care of yourself, accepting your beauty and accepting your flaws are the key to finding love within, not from someone else.
So, if you do not have a partner to spend your days with, take the love someone else could give you and give it to yourself. You deserve it. Everyone deserves it.
