We are glad to observe that nowadays people are realising the importance of self-love and engage in loving behaviours towards themselves. We have noticed three typical responses when people do things for themselves; some feel righteous, others feel a sense of guilt because somewhere they believe it’s ‘wrong’ to cater to their own needs, and some feel a sense of peace. All these responses come from our beliefs.
Because of conditioning, many people were taught that being a good person means they need to sacrifice and put others before themselves. This leaves them with the raw end of the stick and makes them perpetually guilty for even thinking of themselves! Then, after years of feeling short-changed, some of these people decided from a place of pain to ‘stop giving’ and seem to have swung to the other end of the pendulum where they only think of themselves, sometimes to the detriment of others and feel righteous about it!
So how do we find the balance? Let’s break it down; first, we need to understand the difference between selfish, selfless and self-love. Selfish is thinking of yourself and nobody else. Selfless is thinking of everyone else and not yourself. Now self-love is right in between; considering what would be loving for yourself and being loving to loving others at the same time too. This type of self-love comes from a place of peace within, and as a result, makes us feel content. For example, if you wish to lay a boundary instead of a cold “No! Go @#%* yourself, that does not work for me!” response, you could lay conscious boundaries that honours both yourselves and others, such as ” I understand this is important for you, I don’t think it works for me because ….. so let’s think of a better way we could address this together?” When we come from this space, there is self-love present as well as peace.