WHAT IS SELF-LOVE?

These days, many people know the word “self-love” as the meaning to love ourselves. Learning about how well you know yourself and how you treat yourself and others. However, do we really know what “self-love” is? Based on the word, maybe you could tell that it is the process of loving and making ourselves happy. However, do we really know what kind of happiness is that? Although some people think that loving themselves can be called selfish and careless towards other people, self-love is not that negative and is more complicated than you think. 

Self-love is an important aspect of life that can improve health and longevity by motivating humans to strive for their own good. Self-love is an act of loving oneself by being responsible, respectful, and understanding oneself (Fromm 1947).

On the other hand, Chinese people are more specific about what self-love is and how we self-protect and self-control. Chinese scholars believe that self-love includes not only taking good care of your body but also respecting, pleasing, and valuing your body’s abilities, reputation, position, characters, and future (Lin et al., 2003; Yang, 2009, p. 66; Huang, 2017, p. 56). 

Based on research from the Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, China, there are some components of self-love:

• Self-cherishing

Appreciate all of you and know that life is not about competition but about how to appreciate and enjoy life. Thinking “I Am Important” will help you appreciate your body, health, work, and family. You should always be kind and caring not only to yourself but to others too.

• Self-acceptance

Understanding that no one is perfect as everyone has flaws will help us accept ourselves to know what we need to improve by exploring and learning new things to help us achieve our goals. Therefore, it will help us realize that there is no point in making ourselves better to get others’ approval. 

• Self-persistence

To organize our lives according to what we want, we must have principles and boundaries to know our limits and improve our self-control. It will help us distinguish what we like and what we don’t like while removing any unnecessary conflicts. 

• Self-responsibility

All human beings have their responsibilities, and we have to do our obligations and responsibilities to show how reliable we are to ourselves and others.

• Self-resistant

Knowing what is right and wrong will help you choose your decisions wisely so you can fight off bad things happening to yourself. As doing bad things is considered self-ignorant, try to reflect and act towards your definition of rights. 

But this self-love should not be done excessively. Why? Anything in excess will lead to bad things. Excessive self-love can cause people to become more selfish and narcissistic because they don’t accept other people’s opinions and only care about themselves. We feel that we are always right and everyone is wrong, and that mindset can be justified as greed, not self-love. As self-love is an act of caring towards yourself and others, you should always cherish other people too.

Therefore, we have to understand self-love in a more positive way. Spending time with yourself is really important. Self-love is living and doing good things for oneself, not for the sake of others while remembering to be kind to others. As loving someone is easier than loving yourself, the act of self-love isn’t an easy thing to do. Through struggles in fighting off all the negative things in our head, accepting all your weaknesses and strengths would be a struggle for you to boost your confidence level in becoming a better person. Thus, self-love is important because it is the key for us to achieve our own happiness.

References:

Fatmawati, Winnie. (2019). Melihat Bahaya Self Love Berlebih. Akurat.co, 17/11/2019 access on 12 April 2022 at 20:43 PM. https://akurat.co/melihat-bahaya-self-love-berlebih

Mutiwasekwa, Sarah Len. (2019).Self-Love: You cannot love someone else until you learn to love yourself. PsychologyToday.com, 12/11/2019 access on 12 April 2022 at 20:12 PM. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-upside-things/201911/self-love

Xue, L. M., Huang, X. T., Wu, N., & Yue, T. (2021). A Qualitative Exploration of Chinese Self-Love. Frontiers in psychology, 12.

https://jacobinmag.com/2020/08/erich-fromm-frankfurt-school-marxism-weimar-germany

https://www.inc.com/sujan-patel/15-ways-to-become-a-happier-person.html