If you were watching Sex&the City, than you probably remember the Samantha’s sentence, when she was leaving her boyfriend (I don’t remember the name, sorry…): “I love you, but I love myself more”. It is anthological sentence! 

There are many kinds of love that we carry in ourselves. We are surrounded by love that we get from our partners, friends, family, pets…and we also give our love to them.  Then there is the love according to the all material and spiritual things which improve our lives – books, music, movies, other cities, other cultures… But, the most important of all is self-love. Because, as Oscar Wilde said:” Self-love is the beginning of lifelong romance”.

How do you feel about that? Do you think it’s selfish or you think it has sense? How many times have you heard ''you must love yourself truly, before you can love another''? Although it is a cliché, some people feel uncomfortable when they hear something like this (for example my mother), some of them don’t even understand what is it about. "The worst thing in the world is to accept oneself completely," said Karl Gustav Jung, one of the founders of analytical psychology. And if we want to love ourselves, we need to do just that, the worst – to know ourselves and to accept ourselves completely. Why is it sometimes so difficult? Spin the wheel back…remember what your parents said to you when you were children, when you “disturbed their life routine” with your childish behavior. Their tone was always high, angry… As children, could we express our personality without “you are always making problems”? There is a root of not self-love, the lack of a positive image and love towards us as we really are. 

Later in our lives, maybe we felt unwanted, unloved, we feared that our feelings and needs are not important or valuable. Many were raised by parents who were unable or insufficiently mature to show unconditional love that belongs to the child, to accept and express emotions. Instead of joy, approval, love, in the eyes of parents we saw anger, fear, sadness, apathy, indifference… 

Then, dealing with the environment in which, very often, somebody’s security, self-confidence and arrogance getting a label of insensitive. Then you start again to examine your point of views, attitudes, you want to fit in. Often we are leaving our own needs aside. It often means that we are killing the most beautiful and best in ourselves, what makes us unique individuals.  Mae West, American actress and sex symbol said "I do not love myself, I am crazy about myself!”  It’s not about egoistical, selfish, irrational or narcissistic love which endangers other people’s needs for sake of our own. When we love ourselves, we don’t neglect the other. On the contrary, when we love ourselves, we are able to give more to others. Balance is essential, you can not give to others, if you at the same time not give yourself. It sounds mathematically, but admit that has sense. We have to “feed” ourselves first, and then we will have something to share with others. People who don’t love themselves can spend a lifetime looking for peace, fulfillment and satisfaction in the very wrong places. Do you find it is hard to accept a compliment? Do you often denigrate your achievements? Do you speak about yourself through mocking and jokes that could sound bitter to the listener? You might think that it’s all irrelevant, but be careful; you are maybe already fighting with lack of self-love. "You can explore the universe looking for somebody who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and you will not find that person anywhere" Tomorrow: Learn to love yourself