How Do You Know if You Love Your Self?—5 Signs

Because so many people are unclear about what self-love is and often confuse it with selfishness and conceit I wanted to take this opportunity to clarify what loving your Self truly means, why it’s important, and how to know for sure if you love your Self or not.

Self love is the core from which self-confidence, self-esteem and self-trust spring. Self love is knowing who you are, where you’ve been, what you’ve done and loving your Self, not in spite of it, but because of it. Loving your Self is liking YOU, being your own best friend and knowing that you’ve always “got your back”.

A solid foundation of Self Love is your point of power to love more deeply and completely others and to create the life you thought you could only dream of having. Loving your Self is not selfish, as some may believe, self-love is the source of your love for others. Attempting to love others before loving your Self creates conditional, judgmental, gossipy, passive aggressive, codependent, angry and resentful relationships.

How do you know if you love your Self or not? There are 5 definite signs that you love your Self.

1. You take action. Procrastination is an act of self-sabotage born of fear. The fear that you are not capable of doing what needs to be done, the fear that the action you take will not yield the results you want, or from the desire to complete the task perfectly (perfectionism). All of these fears represent a lack of confidence in yourself which is a symptom of not loving yourself.

2. You define and design your life. Your days include activities that provide you with a sense of fulfillment, joy and purpose. Filling your days with tasks that are on your “should” list so as not to disappoint others or to impress others is “people pleasing” and “approval seeking” behavior which indicates that you DO NOT approve of (love) yourself.

3. You ask for what you want. You understand that you deserve what you want. You are not willing to settle for less in your career or your relationships. You express yourself confidently, asking for what you want and expecting to get it as a win/win with all others involved. A belief that you cannot have what you want or that you shouldn’t have what you want because it may rob others of their desires leads to self-sacrifice and is the opposite of self love.

4. You feel and KNOW that others opinions and emotional reactions to you is about them. Because you love your Self you can allow others to be who they are without making it about you. There will always be people who judge you but you are so comfortable with who you are that their judgments simply do not matter to you because you understand that their judgments are based on their fears about themselves and have nothing to do with you.

5. You take care of yourself. You eat the foods and drink the drinks that support a healthy and energized body. You bless yourself with exercise. Making time for yourself and honoring your commitments to your Self is a sure sign of self love.

Indications that you do not love your Self:
• You are in a less than satisfying relationship and justifying it.
• You are in a less than satisfying job/career and justifying it.
• You set goals or intentions but you lose interest in them, lacking perseverance.
• You doubt your ability to create the life you want. You doubt your ability…period.
• You sabotage your own efforts.
• You are indecisive, worrying that you will make the wrong decision or you worry about what others will think about the decision you make.
• You are paralyzed by the fear of failure or even by the fear of success.
• You avoid new activities for fear you will not do them perfectly.
• You are in relationships that are conditional, judgmental, gossipy, passive-aggressive, codependent, angry and resentful.
• You are highly judgmental of others.
• You engage in negative “self talk” calling yourself names are defining yourself as incapable.
• You feel stuck.
• You put off self-care making others priority over you.

Of course loving your Self does not mean you NEVER engage in the unloving acts and ALWAYS engage in the loving acts, do not get caught up in perfectionism over this. You do however want to be spending significantly more time in loving acts rather than the unloving acts.

If you are ready to quit sabotaging your Self, playing small and settling for less than you want and deserve I invite you to register for your sessions to fall in love…with your Self and make 2011 and the rest of your life better than ever before.


Here’s to you… living large,
Michelle Lee, CH
www.overcomeangerandlowselfesteem.com

Beautifully said Nancy. If a person was to simply take each of your Self Love points and ask how the statement spoke to how they are living that moment in their own life, the answers would point to one small step forward that they could take.

Nobody is perfect, we are all here to learn. A beautiful homework project that could fill 2011 with satisfaction and fulfillment AND start 2012 as an even better year.

Sue Rumack

I agree Sue, truthfully it is a life long project... as we continue through life, we travel down different roads and find we are challenged by many different things that affect us on a personal level. And given the fact that we are all human, we must continue to maintain that balance in life.

But I must not take any credit for this original post, as it was the works of Michelle who crafted and shared this plan with us all. Thanks again Michelle!