Love yourself

A couple of days ago a good friend of mine came to visit me here in Germany. I like to pick her brain as she is an ambitious person while still maintain a good faith in God. I can chitchat with her for so many hours and talk about many things, from shallow topic: about our mutual friends, or deep topic, life, career, world economy.

Long story short, we arrived to one topic about why I have never felt enough about myself. I told her that rationally, I should count my blessings instead of my unattained goals. But, talk is always easier than walking the talk. I’ve told her t­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­hat for some years, couple of my good friends told me that “You deserve to be happy”, “You deserve to be loved” or simply said “You should look down more often”.

And you know what my dear-friend-from-Indonesia said?

“I think you should love yourself more, Ta”

“What do you mean?”

“I think as a social person, you really love meet new people. It’s good; it’s actually one of your strength. However, you should try to have more conversation with your inner-self and try to understand yourself better so that you can learn how to love yourself. I think it might be one of the reasons for your falling relationship. If you haven’t loved yourself, how can you believe that other people love you?”

If you have met me in person, trust me, you will never ever guess that I am not a happy person. I can easily fool you to think me as a free spirited person with happy go lucky attitude. Therefore, to receive that feedback from a close friend, it was such a slap in the face.However, some part of me thought this advice worth to try. So I googled “sign of not loving yourself” and I found many interesting articles and suddenly I didn’t feel less normal (alone). HA. If you have the following signs, maybe you are one of us?

First sign is being too hard to myself. My inner critic can be a nasty bitch. It is hard for me to accept that I failed on something. Yes I know that everyone fails from time to time. But knowing it and accepting it are two different animals. Maybe I will try to remember that my success is related to how I handle my failure and setback; the way I handle failure that will set me apart from the rest.

Another sign is how constantly I am comparing myself. Sometimes I wondered why this girl who looks less prettier and less smart than me can have a boyfriend while I am still being single for (quite) sometime. This comparison has done nothing good beside made me feel inadequate. I think I should just focus on loving my life.

Third sign is maybe sometimes I haven’t really honest with my emotion. As an Asian with happy go lucky persona, I have found it hard to accept my emotion such as angry, upset or sad. For some problems which I think too personal to be shared to my close friends, I tend to hold it inside me or write it in my blog. I have never let people get too close to me where they can diagnose my emotion clearly. Even some friends felt that the person who wrote this blogs is a different person with whom they have interacted. I don’t know whether it’s a good thing. However, maybe I should allow myself to feel what needs to be felt so that I can move on and move forward.

Yeah, that’s a bit of conclusion from my latest self-reflection. Maybe I will implement those advises and learn to love myself a bit more. Will surely keep you posted guys J

Cheers,

Raisa