Start Loving Yourself Like It’s Your Only Option

Daily Blog #334

It seems so weird to write… Start loving yourself like it’s your only option?!

Imagine writing it as male. A male who is in their mid-twenties and is writing about self-love while most of his friends are probably recovering from a hangover or sleeping in from playing Fortnite until the early morning hours.

Yeah, it’s weird to write about self-love, but it’s important to me and that’s why I am doing it.

The simple truth is that you do have to start loving yourself like it is your only option because if you want to live with any amount of happiness in your life, then it is your only option.

You can’t love someone or something else until you learn to love yourself. If you do not love the space that you are living in, if you do not love all that you have already achieved throughout the course of your life, and if you do not love the person that you are, how can you possibly expect to love anyone or anything else? You spend the most time with yourself, and if you do not love yourself first, then all of the relationships in your life are going to lack the one thing that binds them together – love.

You are you, and that is your greatest power.

If you truly want something badly enough, then you will find a way. Self-love isn’t any different. If you want it badly enough, you will find a way to start loving yourself more.

Think back on the last time that you were craving an iced coffee. For me, it was just this morning. I woke up, got dressed, grabbed my keys, drove to Dunkin Donuts, waited in line for 10 minutes, paid for my coffee, and drove home all before even sipping it. I spent 20 minutes of my life to go out and get coffee. Why? Because I really wanted coffee.

Yet, when it comes to doing things to improve our overall well-being like meditating, exercising, eating healthier, or even practicing how to love ourselves more, often times our number one excuse is that we don’t have enough time.

Why not just call it out for what it is? It’s not that we don’t have time, it’s that we don’t want to make time. We would rather use 20 minutes to go out and get coffee instead of using that time to do things that will improve our well-being. We don’t think of self-love as something that is important enough to be spending our time practicing on, which is why we don’t do it.

In all reality, self-love needs to be the thing that you want the most in life. You need to want it more than you want your morning cup of coffee, more than you want to love another human being, and more than you want another human being to love you. You need to love the person that you are instead of wishing you were somebody that you will never be. And you need to give your body and mind the credit that they deserve for handling all of the pain and misery that you put them through.

Growing up, I never imagined that I would be writing about self-love when I was twenty-five years old. In fact, I didn’t know that I would be writing at all. But after the years of pain and illness that I went through, I realized that it was time to start focusing on me. Not in a selfish way, but in a way that I need to be the best version of me if I want to give the world my very best.

For me, that meant that I needed to learn how to love myself. My greatest weakness in life has always been being proud of the person that I am and recognizing all of the good that I have already achieved. I have always wanted bigger and better, while never being satisfied with what I already had in life.

Since making self-love a priority in my life, my life has completely turned upside down. It’s not that there was some magic equation that made me a lot happier, it’s that I started taking the time to put myself first, to recognize all of my accomplishments, and to strive to be the best version of me that I can possibly be despite what anybody else says. Needless to say, I wanted it badly enough and so I found a way.

So far, it has been the best decision of my life. Never before have I believed in myself as much as I do today, never have I loved the life that I am living more than I do, and never have I had the amount of confidence in myself that I can achieve anything and everything. I know what I am worth, and it’s all because I started to take the time and recognize it by putting my needs first.

Whatever you are looking for in life, know that the first step to any success is by believing in all that you are capable of achieving. Everything starts with a thought, and if you don’t love yourself and believe in all that you can achieve, then that thought will never transpire into anything more than just a thought.

Take the time to put yourself first, start recognizing all that you are and all that you have achieved, and start loving yourself like it’s your only option. If you want to reach your true potential, there truly is no other option.

Michael Bonnell

3/30/2019

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