The other day, my 7-year-old daughter was about to leave my room when I stopped her and said, “Hey Quinn! One more thing! Do you know how special you are? Because you are.”
She smiled her sweetest, most genuine smile and gave me a look that said, Mom, I knew you were going to say that.
After this quick exchange, she turned to leave and then stopped, facing me one more time.
“Mom? Can you tell me that every day? Because I never want to forget.”
I rocked back on my heels at the profound truth in that request.
We all want to know we’re special.
We all want to feel seen.
We all want to be loved.
But this is where it gets sticky: Outward love isn’t always readily available.
- We don’t always have people giving us the words of affirmation we may crave.
- We don’t always have a warm body to hold us in a hard moment.
- We don’t always have someone to reflect back to us the best parts of ourselves, in the way that I hope I’m doing for my kids.
This is why self-love matters so much. Only YOU can take care of yourself in the ways that you need the most, because you GET yourself! You know yourself better than anyone else can.
To put it simply: you’re the BEST person for the job!
All of this said, I also know that for many of us, loving other people feels natural. It’s what we were raised to do, and it feels GOOD, as it should! But loving ourselves? That often feels HARD.
For today, here are six reminders why you are worth loving. (Always.)
6 Reasons to Love Yourself—Even When Loving Yourself Feels Hard
1. Self-loathing and self-criticism are NOT effective ways to motivate yourself. They always backfire eventually.
If you beat yourself up enough, you’re bound to change, right? So you put yourself down over a hundred things—how awkward you are when you meet new people, how unmotivated you are in your work, or how unproductive you are as you go throughout your day.
You make yourself out to be too much of most things—and not enough of the rest.
“Too” talkative, too quiet. Too lazy or too dumb. Too big or too small.
Not smart “enough,” not pretty enough. Not selfless enough, tidy enough, creative enough, adaptable enough, confident enough.
{Side note: You are always enough. 37 Things You Don’t Have to Do or Be in Order to Be Enough}
With each of these self-directed statements, you’re not motivating yourself; you’re shaming yourself.
Shame—the belief that you’re unworthy of love and belonging—does not support long-term, transformational change. In fact, it’s exponentially more likely to trigger the habits that drive you even deeper into shame. Which brings us to…
2. Loving and accepting yourself is the most effective way to create long-term change in your life.
I know it sounds counterintuitive—claiming that the best way to change yourself is to accept yourself. But through my own experience and what I’ve heard from so many of you, I’m learning that it really is self-love that allows us to grow.
Self-love helps us see our own potential, allows us to forgive ourselves when we take a step backward, and eliminates the shame spiral that so often lands us right back where we started.
3. Loving yourself allows you to love others deeper.
Think about much time and energy we spend thinking about ourselves. How to act in a certain social situation. How to flatter your body with clothes and makeup. How to maneuver yourself into a job position, a relationship, or a different pant size. How to quell the worry and overwhelm inside your mind.
The trade-off of all of that time and energy focused inward is that we don’t have as much to share outward.
When you’re less preoccupied with yourself, you can focus on others more.
When I’m treating myself with love, I’m a million times more able to love my friends and family. I can see them, appreciate their quirks, laugh when something goes wrong, and treasure this season of life while it’s here.
4. Loving yourself frees you from worrying about what others think of you.
Goodness gracious, is this not the BEST? This is one of my favorite reasons to love yourself.
For every part of myself that I’ve decided to accept over the years, I’ve felt the pressure of other people’s opinions fall away. It’s like shedding layers of clothes… or bricks in a backpack on my shoulders… and I feel so much lighter with every outside expectation I manage to release.
It takes practice to tune out the loud opinions around you and tune in to the quiet beating of your own heart. But those moments when you do? They’re everything.
5. Loving yourself allows you to make peace with the past.
Do you ever catch yourself reliving past failures? Or ruminating on what you said—and what you wish you’d said instead?
When you love yourself like you’d love a friend, you start to see that that version of you—your past self—was working with all of the information, energy, skills, and understanding she had IN THAT MOMENT. She was doing her best, and that’s all anyone can ask.
6. Loving yourself gives others permission to love themselves. (Especially your kids!)
Our kids? They are perceptive. They SEE how we talk to ourselves, how we take care of ourselves, and how we respond to both their mistakes and our own.
Through the way we live, let’s give our kids—and anyone who knows us—full permission to love themselves just as they are.
Download and print this free image, and stick it somewhere you’ll see it OFTEN!
More from Episode 2 of “Life On Purpose with Erica Layne“
- What Matters Most: If you woke up with lost memories and only have five questions to put your world back together, what would you ask? Also known as—That time my brother-in-law got a concussion and what you and I can take away from it.
- Off-Ramp: A segment where I share something I see women doing that I’d love for you to QUIT. (Dial it alllllll down, my friend!)
- Do you have a story that illustrates What Matters Most? If so, I would LOVE to hear it and maybe share it on the podcast. Email it to me (or send me a voice memo) at [email protected].
Listen to the full episode right here, or follow one of the below links to your favorite podcasts app, and be sure to hit subscribe! (Thank you!)
Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | Overcast | Stitcher
Show produced by Callie Wright
Hello, this is so great exactly what i need to read in my 20’s. Thank you for reminding
I’m so glad to hear it, Reina! Sending love!
This is excellent, Erica. It’s so easy to forget we’re not being selfish when we admit to loving and accepting ourselves. It seems to me God even says loving ourselves is a prerequisite to loving others (“You will do all right, if you obey the most important law in the Scriptures. It is the law that commands us to love others as much as we love ourselves. James 2:8, Contemporary English Version)