Do you love yourself ?!!!

Picture taken from our living room's window.

I was reading somewhere that " The most important person in your life is you". It is interesting that i never noticed and never paid attention to this simple truth. It is so easy to forget about it and live for someone else. I grow up in a culture that being selfless and sacrificing oneself is highly prised and thinking about oneself is condemn and is thought as selfishness. But as time goes by, i am noticing the difference between being selfish and loving myself. I also am learning the difference of sacrificing oneself and caring about others.

Big differences.

To be a better person you need to first:

• Love yourself. Loving yourself does not mean being self centered and selfish. It means you care about yourself as much as others. Hopefully even more. Loving yourself comes with loving everything about yourself. In today's culture i hear a lot of self hate words. Like "I hate my hips. I hate my hair. I am not that smart. I am too short, too tall, too fat, too slim". I lot of it comes from the commercials and the media. But a part of it is, us, just trying to get some compliments. The bottom line is, We live once( at least that is what i believe). We are here in this body and in this brain and in this situation. We could waste our life complaining and focusing about what we hate about ourselves, or we can start learning to just love ourselves just the way we are and be thankful that we are alive in this world. Just love yourself. It might take some times to learn how to do it. But you can learn.

• Respect yourself. Respecting yourself goes a long way for our mental and emotional health. If we respect ourselves, we live a higher quality and healthier life. By high quality, i don't mean materialistically! The quality and respecting self could be quiting that awful job and get a job that you enjoy doing, even when the money is less. Or it could be to get rid of your stuff and use the money for building a retirement fund for a better future. Or even could be, not tolerating a bad service or a bad job and complaining about it. Respecting yourself could come in many different forms.

• Value yourself. Valuing yourself could be similar to valuing your time. When you value yourself, you are not going to go hungry just to help someone that does not deserve your help. When you value yourself, you learn to say No to unwanted commitments and stop trying to make others happy. When you value yourself, you live for yourself, not others. You don't spend your time or money to affect other's opinion about yourself. You spend your time or money on others just because seeing them happy makes you happy.

• Take care of yourself. I have seen far too many people let themselves go just to take care of someone else. parents , children, siblings, friends...They eat unhealthy, lack sleep, get depressed, cry, gain weight, get poor, get in to big debt... One of the big reasons is love. The other reason is guilt.  But the problem is that this kind of sacrificing usually is mainly self destructing. Many times it even has no effect on the loved person's life. A mom that lets herself go to do more for her kids, can not ever guaranty a better future foe her kids. A father that works tree jobs, to be able to buy the latest gadget for his kids even though he sleeps only 4 hours, can not guaranty a great future for his kids. As a human being, we deserve and we have the right to take care of ourselves. Take care our bodies by working out and eating healthy. Getting enough sleep and reducing our stress. Take care of your emotions, protect yourself and your family from the harms of materialism and the stress associated with it.

• Be good to yourself. Stop blaming yourself for every thing. You are human after all. Nobody is perfect. what does perfect mean anyway? Stop being so hard on yourself. life is short, beautiful, simple and none complex. Stop making it so complicated. Just love yourself and others and take it easy.Enjoy your life and be content with what you got. Stop worrying about what you didn't get.Just be good to yourself.

Do you Love yourself?