Why You Don't Have to Love Yourself

How my personal experience taught me what to focus on instead.

When I started About Progress, it was "just" a blog that hardly anybody read. With it, I began to pour my heart out to the Internet in ways I desperately needed. I shared about my struggles with eating disorders, depression, and anxiety for the first time publicly (which was a surprise for 99% of the people closest to me). I talked about my faith struggles in ways that were terrifying. I explored my own short life's history, and the things about myself and my dance with perfectionism, that led to me being in the stuck place I was in.

It was the writing that helped me figure out who I was and where I wanted to be. It was the writing and then the doing that helped me heal my own relationship to myself.

Why my transformation had little to do with loving myself.

January of 2016--just four years ago--my life looked very similar to the life I have now, but felt completely the opposite. In a nutshell: I was lost. I knew that my life was slipping through my fingers. I was not "Monica" anymore. Whoever I was then, I was NOT a fan of her--there was no love lost between us and I wanted the old me back.

I had to find my way back to me. Thus, started a giant experiment of finding "Monica" again by embracing and leaning into my mediocrity, sharing my journey along the way, and working on progress over perfection.

I guess you could say that "the rest is history," but it really isn't. I'm still a work in progress. I'm still getting in better touch with who I am. I'm still working on myself. I'm still diving deep into the struggles I have, and facing as deeply as I can what I need and want to improve on.

But, it's from such a different place than I was over 4 years ago. I respect myself. I respect that I am human, that I'm messy, that I'm brave, that I'm a little broken.

I respect that life will never feel easy; that one hard season will turn into another.

I respect that I continually evolve in my interests and my gifts; that my own desires for the future are taking shape.

I started this all when "self-love" was being blasted over the loud speakers of the Internet. I definitely wanted to uncover that love for myself; but what I discovered in my process of finding the old me and together moving towards a better me, is that you don't have to love yourself right away. You have to respect yourself.

This kind of respect feels different than self-love. Yes, I love myself--but not every square inch of me, from the inside out. I don't love all my weaknesses and poor habits. I don't love each shape or sag of my body from my head to my toes. But, I respect the heck out of me.

That respect is my anchor as I navigate the waves of highs and lows life brings. That respect helps me steer my own ship through it all. Not perfectly--never perfectly. My ship will often get dirtied; sometimes it'll get almost torn in half. But I'm still steering it.

When I look back on the last four years, what I see is not a woman who learned to fully love herself--I see a woman who fought with everything she had to respect herself.

What's the beef with Self-Love?

Self-Love is great--I think it's a solid movement and I support the intent behind it. But "just love yourself" can translate to things I don't completely like:

1. It's a big stretch to love yourself when you're in practice of doing anything but
2. It can become more of a treat-yourself mentality that leans on the superficial
3. It translates sometimes to a "take me or leave me" attitude about who we are and our weaknesses
4. It ignores the fact that love really isn't a stagnant feeling

Let me explain more of that last one. You most certainly love somebody in your life: from a parent, sibling, child, spouse, and friend. But you don't "FEEL" that love constantly. It ebbs and flows. But the acts of love--respect--can always remain.

So, even if you can't fully love every part of you, or if it's too difficult to break up the shameful narrative you've been saying to yourself for years and years, start with respect. That is the real foundation to love, after all.

Where to start?

Start with the facts.

Respect who you are. Respect what you want out of your life. Respect the season you are in and the limitations that season might bring. Respect the facts of all of these things, take them in, and move forward with that respect to commit to doing and being better.

You don't have to prove yourself worthy of respect like you might feel you do with love. It's there for you, no matter what.

On days where I feel frustrated with my old habits in thought and body creeping in again, where I realize I'm more jaded and grumpy than I want to be as a person, when I find that I am lacking in ways that really matter to me, I accept the facts. I see who I am fully--the good and the bad, I recognize where I want to be, and I do so without shaming myself into moving forward--I do so with respect.

Self-love is a great thing to aim for; self respect is the way to get there.

What are your thoughts? Do you see some parallels in your own life? For more, I recommend listening to THIS episode.

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