Reflective Essay Example on Self-Love

To extend love to other people, we must first show ourselves, love. We must love everything about ourselves. One can not have self-appreciation without self-love. In today's society, it is very difficult to love ourselves unconditionally. We live in a world in which materialism and fabricated lives are the norms for everyday life. The standard for beauty is unrealistic because they are set by individuals who are not really happy with themselves. We have showcased a false perception of how we should live our lives. I believe that genuine self-love is taught by our parents or caregivers. A parent's love is unconditional for their children. There are no conditions to the love that they give to their child. You are loved just because you are yourself, nothing more and nothing less. This perception is skewed as we grow older in our lives because we are bombarded with society's beauty standards. That same unconditional love that our parents gave to us should be the same love we give ourselves every day. It is truly sad to know that it is very common in the world for children to grow up without learning this love. This could be because of a variety of reasons. At the end of the day, many of these unfortunate children will go on through life searching for the love they never received as a child. Despite not being raised in an unstable background, most people still search for love to compensate for things that are missing in their lives. The most common reason why people search for love from others is that they are not allowing themselves to love themselves in aspects of their lives that require self-love. Many young teenagers enter romantic relationships expecting all the problems in their lives to be resolved. As we all know, this is not true. In order to extend authentic unconditional love to others, we must first give that unconditional love to ourselves. Personal insecurities are projected onto the other person because they were not managed from the beginning. We must always take care of ourselves before we can make the decision to take care of other people. 

Fortunately, self-love awareness is becoming more popular amongst younger generations. Giving love to yourself is an ongoing process that we must do every day. After we provide ourselves with self-love, self-appreciation is what helps support self-love. Self-appreciation is affirming our own respect and appreciation for ourselves. Self-appreciation has a lot in common with self-love. We can not have self-love without self-appreciation, and we can not have self-appreciation without self-love. It is easier to appreciate ourselves when we have taken the time and energy to love everything about ourselves. The most important thing we can appreciate from ourselves is being proud of ourselves and how far we have come in our lives. Also, appreciating our negative qualities and making an effort to better ourselves. There are an infinite amount of things we can appreciate in ourselves, but these are the most important because these two things allow us to accept other people around us. If we truly love ourselves and appreciate ourselves on a daily basis, then we are able to appreciate and love others. 

Self-appreciation and Self-love are something that I have only recently learned. I became aware of these two things from self-help books. I have learned most of my daily habits from these books. I respect and appreciate myself for reflecting on how far I have come in my life. I reflect on all aspects of my life, but the two most important areas that I constantly reflect on that make me proud of myself are my education and my personal development. I can proudly say that I am becoming the person that my younger self wanted to be. I used to be very shy and timid, but through self-love, I have learned to become more outgoing and confident. Throughout my whole kindergarten through high school education, I never felt smart enough. It was not until college that I realized that I was trying to be smart enough for other people. I was achieving many great things, but I kept discrediting myself because I was looking for the appreciation of other people around me. All I needed was to be proud of myself and how far I was able to go with my education. Recently, I have been reminding myself daily that I am about to graduate college, and so much work and dedication has been invested in me. I am able to receive help from others because I understand that I am not perfect. Like everyone else, I have my flaws and imperfections that make me who I am. Acknowledging these flaws allows me to accept help from others who are willing to provide their help for me to grow in these areas. An example of this would be my attending therapy sessions. Lastly, I am able to provide help to others who are in need by acknowledging the other person's yearning for improvement. I am very willing to offer my help to a person who is trying to become the best version of themselves. Lastly, the only things challenging my self-love and self-appreciation would be doubted. I find it very easy for myself to enter ruminating negative thoughts of doubt and failure. These thoughts arise when one negative thing occurs in my life, and I begin to dwell on other negative events that happened. With the help of my therapist, I have learned to break out of this pattern. This is done by understanding that I have triggered myself into thinking negative thoughts and stopping myself from continuing these thoughts by distracting myself by focusing on something in my environment. Also, I break free from this thought pattern by ruminating on positive things that I have happened in my life.